Professor John Glover Jackson, author of "An Introduction to African Civilization." This book represented a comprehensive review of the development of continental history. (Photo: James E. Brunson)
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos
By Dr Kwaku Person-Lynn
SUPPRESSING African world history is top priority in the intellectual world. It contains stories that will forever transform world history.
The greatest area of change and correction is revealing that world civilisation evolved from African civilisation.
It was ancient before Europeans started the struggle of creating civilisation. Africans were the only people with experience and the capacity to teach from its universities. Europeans (ancient Greeks and Romans) had no great learning centres. The Nile Valley was the intellectual, spiritual, educational, industrial centre for the ancient world.
The areas of science, medicine, mathematics, engineering, parenting, architecture, philosophy, religion, public works projects, distribution, preparing food and so many other human activity areas were created there and were distributed throughout the world by various conquerors and travellers.
This revelation changes the entire complexion of all we were taught. Once this is realised, there will be no accurate history books published outside of a few exceptions: John G. Jackson’s Introduction To Civilisations and Chancellor Williams’ Destruction Of Black Civilisation, the various volumes of The Journal Of Civilisations, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, along with some other rare literature. These works are closer to accuracy than the large majority of books published on the subject.
What is missing is a current book, incorporating the vast amount of incredible new information, adding a new component, DNA studies.
This new literary effort can only be legitimate from an African point of view. Writers of European descent have written the majority of books on African history. This is not to say Europeans cannot write history. They are better at writing their own history than any one else. It is more the concept of starting from within, rather than without. Beginning with the primary, rather than the traditional method of analysing and interpreting from the secondary.
Europeans have written volumes on African history. A mammoth amount is colonial or slave history, written from that perspective. To have a holistic approach to history, one must examine as many perspectives as possible.
A view that has been alive for a few years is that one must start with the origin of humanity.
There is such a lack of respect for Ernest E. Just, an American African biologist who worked at Howard University, early 1900s, who through his fertilisation and cell separation research brought us DNA. Thanks to his efforts, the origin of humanity work is almost at its conclusion.
All of the present evidence leads straight to Africa more specifically, Ethiopia.
The African influence in world civilisations is so massive it may take a few decades to document all that it means.
Unfortunately, there are strenuous efforts to obstruct this information from public consumption and dissemination. There are people afraid of change. There are innate beliefs that people of African descent do not have the intellectual capacity to do serious scholarship. And there are those who suffer from the mental illness of colour prejudice.
Lack of knowledge can be one cause of negative conduct.
The bulk of immoral behaviour by people of African descent, particularly the youth, today is acquired from birth, several generations, learning and acting someone else’s habits, customs, behaviour, principles, culture, almost totally abandoning everything their ancestors taught.
Cursory examination of things projected in Western culture indicates that it does not put much value in truth and moral character. That can be devastating and self destructive to young people being born and raised in that kind of environment. It will make people with little resources prey on each other. Understanding that this is arranged by purposeful design is the beginning of developing counter measures.
One of many reasons why it is mandatory information of African world history be researched, written, distributed, read and analysed. In one sense, it is liberating. It frees a person from seeing the world from one perspective; primarily that people of European descent created all the great things. As self-serving as that has been for the perpetrators of that type of thinking, much of it is based on gross inaccuracies and omissions.
Western intellectuals are fearful their authoritative scholarship and public trust may not prove as precise and accepted as it once was.
This could cause a great dilemma among Western scholars as students, faculty and the general public become aware of this.
Their next statement may be, "Since most of our teachers and books did not give us all of the information or withheld information, maybe we should look elsewhere." The foremost concern is where that elsewhere may be.
--Dr Kwaku Person-Lynn, Ph.D. is the author of On My Journey Now - The Narrative and Works of Dr John Henrik Clarke, The Knowledge Revolutionary. First Word: Black Scholars, Thinkers, Warriors, Knowledge, Wisdom, Mental Liberation. He can be reached on DrKwaku@hotmail.com.
This article is reproduced from the African Executive.
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