Afrocentric history...anything to this?

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Puppycow said:
white people are probably the descendants of black people, and the first people to arrive in Europe or Mongolia were probably black, and then gradually evolved to be lighter skinned.
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Black people only came to inhabit as much of central & southern Africa as they do now starting about three thousand years ago, when they gained certain cultural advantages that made them more powerful than their neighbors. Even then, they didn't spread overnight, and were barely getting into what is now northeastern South Africa about one and a half thousand years ago.

Before that, they were limited to a narrow band of Africa right along the equator, probably in relatively exposed environments. The best remaining indicators of what traits might have been typical of the people who lived in the rest of central & southern Africa (either farther from the equator or thick forests) until then are the people who live only in smaller isolated pockets of Africa now, some of them still speaking languages unrelated to black people's languages: pygmies, Khoi, and San... all of whom have lighter skin than black people, although darker than most Eurasians. (And of course northern Africa's people have been brown Caucasoids, just like any other Middle Easterners, since long before the migrations I'm talking about anyway.)

The first emigrants from Africa could have had skin as dark as modern black people's, if they came from a part of Africa that makes people that way. But it's much more likely that they came from an area that only makes people a relatively dark brown, because that describes most of Africa in general and the parts closest to Eurasia in particular.

I don't think there's been any evidence yet indicating the hair texture of the Eurasian immigrants when they first migrated. My hunch is that it was already significantly looser than the hair of modern African populations, because looser hair is found on not only Eurasians but also Australoids. A couple of 40000-year-old skulls from a Romanian cave have shown that their noses hadn't gotten so narrow yet; maybe narrower than the African average, but only slightly, if even at all. Their teeth and jaws were significantly larger than either black or white people have today, although black people come closer. The shape of the brain case must be known, but I haven't seen it reported. (Longer & narrower would be more like modern black people; rounder and wider would be more like modern white people.)
 
Wildy said:
Can you explain why you think they are plausible?
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I'm by no means an expert on anatomy, but "European" skulls tend to look different in the jaw and nose area than "African" ones. I don't know the terminology.

And yes, I realize that telling someone's "race" based on skull shapes is impossible. But it can be an indicator.

y'know what, I'm just going to chalk this up to "time + internet - social life = stressing over stupid things":boxedin:
 
geni said:
Depends if "Africans may have had more impact on european history than generaly thought" counts as anything.
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It doesn't. I'm already fully aware that the western civilization I'm quite fond of is the joint creation of many different peoples, including black.
 
Delvo said:
Black people only came to inhabit as much of central & southern Africa as they do now starting about three thousand years ago, when they gained certain cultural advantages that made them more powerful than their neighbors. Even then, they didn't spread overnight, and were barely getting into what is now northeastern South Africa about one and a half thousand years ago.

Before that, they were limited to a narrow band of Africa right along the equator, probably in relatively exposed environments. The best remaining indicators of what traits might have been typical of the people who lived in the rest of central & southern Africa (either farther from the equator or thick forests) until then are the people who live only in smaller isolated pockets of Africa now, some of them still speaking languages unrelated to black people's languages: pygmies, Khoi, and San... all of whom have lighter skin than black people, although darker than most Eurasians. (And of course northern Africa's people have been brown Caucasoids, just like any other Middle Easterners, since long before the migrations I'm talking about anyway.)

The first emigrants from Africa could have had skin as dark as modern black people's, if they came from a part of Africa that makes people that way. But it's much more likely that they came from an area that only makes people a relatively dark brown, because that describes most of Africa in general and the parts closest to Eurasia in particular.

I don't think there's been any evidence yet indicating the hair texture of the Eurasian immigrants when they first migrated. My hunch is that it was already significantly looser than the hair of modern African populations, because looser hair is found on not only Eurasians but also Australoids. A couple of 40000-year-old skulls from a Romanian cave have shown that their noses hadn't gotten so narrow yet; maybe narrower than the African average, but only slightly, if even at all. Their teeth and jaws were significantly larger than either black or white people have today, although black people come closer. The shape of the brain case must be known, but I haven't seen it reported. (Longer & narrower would be more like modern black people; rounder and wider would be more like modern white people.)
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Question. Since you seemed well versed in African history, do you know if most of sub Saharan Africa was primarily made of fairly isolated hunter gatherer societies prior to European colonization? Even though i'm African American I unfortunately know little about African History.
 
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Part of the problem is that history is a continuum, but history education is a zero sum game. There's only so much time to present a curriculum and a near-infinite amount of relevant information, so for everything put in the curriculum, something else has to be left out.

History is easier to teach as a narrative story, so the things left in are the things that make a good narrative. There's also going to be a bias to the narrative, even if no bias is intended.

For example, most of the narratives about the history of the reformation talk an awful lot about martin Luther and his break from the catholic church, but don't put it in the context of the peasant wars. That leaves Luther looking like a visionary reformer rather than a product of the system who was willing to supress reform when it impared his own profits. The point is that while both narratives are constructed from true facts neither narrative is entirely true and unbiased and only one is taught.

Similarly, European and American children were taught a narrative that emphasized the progress of the 'white' races, and deemphasized the progress of the nonwhite races. It's a set of true facts, but it's a selected set and a biased narrative. There's an element of malice in the selection of the narrative as well, in that the people who constructed it were products of a world view that did not consider all people to be equal and they were generally not interested in correcting this view.

An unbiased narrative history of civilization would be a project for multiple lifetimes; no historian can be both that specialized and that much of a generalist simultaneously. The key is to generate a narrative that acknowleges its limitations and is deliberately unbiased and nonmalicious as possible.

Afrocentric history also fails on this point. In attempting to correct the previous biased narrative, it constructs one that is biased in the opposite direction. It is no more true, possibly less in that some of the folks looking for evidence to support it have used a very low standard of evidence, and equally malicious. The truth, as they say, is somewhere in the middle. There were cities in Africa. There were cities in Asia. There were cities in the Americas. Civilization is a product of human thought, not white or black thought. History is humanocentric.
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
Similarly, European and American children were taught a narrative that emphasized the progress of the 'white' races, and deemphasized the progress of the nonwhite races. It's a set of true facts, but it's a selected set and a biased narrative. There's an element of malice in the selection of the narrative as well, in that the people who constructed it were products of a world view that did not consider all people to be equal and they were generally not interested in correcting this view.
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There was undoubtedly malice and racism involved, but I think that the intent was more white Christian history. Note how the ancient Germans, Celts, Scythians, etc. are rarely mentioned; there is a clear emphasis on the white christian world, including Greece and Rome only because they're in a straight line backward from the Holy Roman Empire. Most Eurocentrics weren't much concerned about whites before christianity; what delicious irony that the church is founded on the teachings of Arabs and was racially diverse at its inception!

An unbiased narrative history of civilization would be a project for multiple lifetimes; no historian can be both that specialized and that much of a generalist simultaneously. The key is to generate a narrative that acknowleges its limitations and is deliberately unbiased and nonmalicious as possible.
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I don't think the switch would be all that difficult. The same basic events would be taught, as they are undeniably relevant, but the contributions of everyone involved would be acknowledged. So black WW2 combat units, for example, would simply be discussed when relevant along with everything else. As you said, most of what we're taught is basically true, but incomplete. The problem would be solved mainly by addition rather than revamping.
 
@narcopuppy , andrew wiggins, I think that almost certainly depend on the school system/ country. Whereas it is right that some part are over emphasised (WW2, Cold war take a huge disproportionate amount of time IMHO) the history professor we had touched the non Christian history in a positive way. But the reason why the christian history was more accentued , or betetr said local history, because it is the most recent history. Knowing how much the arab world or india world did in anatomy (resp math) is nice to know but it does not help understanding "today" (the purported goal of our history lessons) which is why we got so much gorged on cold war and WW2 (and WW1).

Heck prehistory got a very very short shrift, and time period where human did not exists were not even TOUCHED in history because history was only for the part we human were in it (we got 1 or 2 week short summary .... In geography lessons... Biology got a much longer time with evolution).

I don't think it is really a bias against remote non white non christian or non whatever history, but rather an emphasis on recent history.
 
Aepervius said:
I don't think it is really a bias against remote non white non christian or non whatever history, but rather an emphasis on recent history.
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I see your point, but I disagree. You're making your point as if there were two history classes, 'history of the world' and 'recent history'. Recent history is going to concentrate on recent and local stuff. I'm referring specifically to the OP's questions, which were more about how ancient history was and is presented, and until I see the chinese inventors, the arab mathematicians, the african city builders ranked with the european rennaisance, I think I see a bias.
 
Narcopuppy said:
There was undoubtedly malice and racism involved, but I think that the intent was more white Christian history. Note how the ancient Germans, Celts, Scythians, etc. are rarely mentioned; there is a clear emphasis on the white christian world, including Greece and Rome only because they're in a straight line backward from the Holy Roman Empire.
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And also because Greece and Romans were literate cultures, which means they can actually be studied from a historical perspective. The start of "history" of the British Isles actually starts with the Roman invasion; our only primary sources for the historical study of the Celts are Roman sources such as Tacitus.

Even if you broaden history, technically defined as "the study of the documented past," to include archeology, there's still several zillion times more artifacts of the Greeks and Romans than of the Celts and Germans. Name a major Irish city of 300 BCE, and I'll name a dozen of Greece.
 
Narcopuppy said:
There was undoubtedly malice and racism involved, but I think that the intent was more white Christian history. Note how the ancient Germans, Celts, Scythians, etc. are rarely mentioned; there is a clear emphasis on the white christian world, including Greece and Rome only because they're in a straight line backward from the Holy Roman Empire. Most Eurocentrics weren't much concerned about whites before christianity; what delicious irony that the church is founded on the teachings of Arabs and was racially diverse at its inception!
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Rest assured that, say, Julius Civilis and the Batavians get a honoourable mention in Dutch history classes. :) But of course, as DrKitten already pointed out, there's a much bigger body of knowledge about the Romans than about the Germanic tribes. But I wouldn't expect an American highschool history curriculum to mention Civilis.

Narcopuppy said:
I don't think the switch would be all that difficult. The same basic events would be taught, as they are undeniably relevant, but the contributions of everyone involved would be acknowledged. So black WW2 combat units, for example, would simply be discussed when relevant along with everything else. As you said, most of what we're taught is basically true, but incomplete. The problem would be solved mainly by addition rather than revamping.
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And conversely, I don't think I heard about the significance of (American) black combat units in high school - though of course it touched on the civil rights movement.

These are two examples how history curricula can differ between western countries. I don't think you can speak of the western history narrative, but rather that history is taught from the perspective of your own country. And as Andrew Wiggin noted, there's just far too much history to cover all, so you must restrict yourself to the "relevant" bits. And in that respect, yes, the Romans are relevant from a Dutch perspective, the Bantu expansion not.
 
But I wouldn't expect an American highschool history curriculum to mention Civilis.
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American high school history tends to be East Coast and Anglocentric: the British colonizers settled along the Atlantic seacoast, rebelled, and eventually spread out to the West Coast, largely overlooking the French and Spanish colonies (the Dutch do get mentioned because it's kind of hard to ignore New York, and they got ousted by the British anyway), not to mention the Native American settlements. At least it was in New York state many decades ago, when some of this was still current events :D.

In World History we got a couple of weeks that mentioned Egypt, China and the Maya, then it was strictly European history and even then largely Anglocentric (which was a lot of fun when taught by Irish nuns who had to follow the state curriculum but felt free to add editorial comments). How I developed a love of history has nothing to do with how it's taught: I credit my father, who liked to visit historical sites and find odd little stories about them. (I still do that: did you know that one of the founders of the city of San Jose, CA was an Apache? What he was doing there I've yet to uncover, but there's got to be something interesting there.)

And in that respect, yes, the Romans are relevant from a Dutch perspective, the Bantu expansion not.
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But the Bantu expansion had an impact on the Dutch settlers in southern Africa, so I wouldn't call it entirely irrelevant. Everybody's and everything's connected in the long run.

ETA: the Dutch had a bit influence in the development of the western third of New York State in the form of the Holland Land Company, which purchased most of it from the Iroquois then parceled it out for development. There's not much of them left in the area except for some street and town names (like Batavia, where their office was), but land deeds still refer to the Holland Land Company measurements.
 
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well also, besides being silly...it's not about history, it's politics.

OK even if someone of some race "invented" everything...to say it is "Stolen" is silly. Heck if you start a religion (and wow, what race would want to claim THAT...look at all the problems caused by religion), you want people to join up!

Great I would say. How about using the wonderful know how and genius to clean up the mess Africa is now... and which some countries are doing a great job with (seriously, African nations really working well at development and recovery are never given any credit). Yeah, I lived in Belgium long enough to get what a horror exploitation in Africa was (and is). No favors done by Europe and such there.

But, looking to a past that isn't real...why not focus on all the great things Africa has done in the past and is doing now. I see no glory in claiming what are suspect "great" inventions and ignoring the real history of Africa, especially before colonial invasion. A lot of good stuff there, with exciting leaders and a complex political and trading system to be proud of.
 
Retrograde said:
But the Bantu expansion had an impact on the Dutch settlers in southern Africa, so I wouldn't call it entirely irrelevant. Everybody's and everything's connected in the long run.
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Entirely irrelevant, no. But relatively irrelevant. As you point out, everybody and everything's somewhat relevant, but there's not time to cover everything and everybody in a classroom or textbook of reasonable length. Or even one of unreasonable length.
 
TheAntiV said:
It's too laughable to take seriously. The evidence they claim to have for example is humorous at best. I met one guy who claimed the Vikings were black.
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He probably meant most of the Minnesota Vikings football team.
 
Wildy said:
I have no clue how they've declared the people buried in that grave to be black. I seriously don't, I'm assuming that they believe the skulls aren't white so they are therefore automatically black.
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The whole "Afrocentric history" thing is what happens when you take a complex issue and try to reduce it to black and white.
 
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