This Classic presents historical, archaeological, and anthropological evidence to support the theory that ancient Egypt was a Black civilization.
The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality presents Dr. Diop’s main thesis that historical, archaeological and anthropological evidence supports the theory that the civilization of ancient Egypt, the first that history records, was actually Negroid in origin. The book contains over fifty illustrations, many of them newly selected for this book, which further document Dr. Diop’s theories.
Laymen and scholars alike will welcome the publication of this one volume translation of the major sections of C. A. Diop’s two books, Nations nègres et culture and Antériorité des civilisations nègres, which have profounly influenced thinking about Africa around the world. It was largely because of theses works that at the World Festival of the Arts held in Dakar in 1966, Dr. Diop shared with the late W. E. B. Dubois an award as the writer who had exerted the greatest influence on Negro thought in the 20th century.
The main points covered are:
1. Ancient Egypt was a Negro civilization. The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt. In particular, the study of languages, institutions, and so forth, cannot be treat properly; in a word, it will be impossible to build African humanities, a body of African human sciences, so long as that relationship does not appear legitimate. The African historian who evades the problem of Egypt is neither modest nor objective, nor unruffled; his is ignorant, cowardly and neurotic.
2. Anthropologically and culturally speaking the Semitic world was born during proto-historic times from the mixture of white-skinned and black-skinned people in western Asia. This is why an understanding of the Mesopotamian Semetic world, Judaic or Arabic requires constant reference to the underlying Black reality.
3. The triumph of the monogenetic thesis of humanity, even at the stage of “Homo sapiens-sapiens,” compels one to admit that all races descended from the Black race, according to a filiation process that science will one day explain.
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