Who Invited These Black People To Columbus’ “Discovery” Party?
The untold story of the African voyage to the Americas.
Imagine a stranger walking into your home, glancing around, and claiming they “discovered” it. That’s how I view Christopher Columbus’s “discovery” of America. You can’t discover a place already inhabited by thriving communities with a history spreading thousands of years. This narrative perpetuates Eurocentric ideas of conquest and paints the conquered societies as uncivilized. Columbus did not discover the Americas; the continent was already home to diverse cultures and civilizations. While what is now known as England was filled with disease, marauding tribes and invading Vikings, the Inca Empire in South America was exploring astronomy and mathematics and building extensive networks of roads and bridges, including the famous Inca Trail. Their cities, such as Cusco and Machu Picchu, featured finely crafted stone buildings. The Aztec and Mayan empires were just as incredible.
While Columbus’s voyage from Europe to the Americas was a significant achievement, he was not the first to cross the Atlantic. Growing evidence supports Norse Vikings, led by Leif Erikson, established a short-lived settlement in North America around the 11th century, approximately 500 years before Columbus. Admiral Zheng He of the Ming Dynasty’s court is known for his impressive voyages throughout the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific between 1405 and 1433. Some researchers speculate that his fleets landed on the American Pacific coast in 1421, 70 years before Columbus. However, few researchers outside scholars of African and Arab descent discuss the African voyage to the Americas.
In 1322–1324, Mansa Musa, the great Malian King, traveled to Mecca on a holy pilgrimage. The trip was historically legendary because of the size of the accompanying entourage and the immense amounts of gold he took with him. During a stop in Egypt, Mansa Musa befriended famous Arab scholar Al-Omari. During a cordial conversation, Al-Omari asked Mansa Musa how he came to power. Mansa Musa told him he came to rule after his predecessor, Abubakar II, sailed west to explore new lands. Mansa Musa told a story of how Abubakar II enlisted the expertise of engineers from Lake Chad, known for their shipbuilding skills inherited from their Egyptian forebears, and meticulously studied various vessels navigating the Niger and Senegal rivers to build a formidable fleet he would send across the Atlantic ocean. During the first expedition around 1310–1312, only one ship returned to Mali out of 200 dispatched. The lone captain of the returning vessel described how what appeared to be a river current in the middle of the ocean took the other vessels away, and he never saw them again, deciding to return home at that point. Abubakar II, still determined to explore the other side of the ocean, sent off on the journey himself. Al-Omari documented that Abubakar II embarked on the journey with an immense fleet of 2000 ships, thousands of soldiers, sailors, and servants and sailed across the western sea to find a new kingdom. According to Al-Omari, Abubakar II found new land on the other side, which would be the Americas. Was Abubakar’s voyage a success? There’s strong evidence that suggests so. For instance, the river current described by the returning captain may actually have been the Canary Current which flows off the coast of West Africa into the Atlantic towards the Americas.
The esteemed Russian-American Harvard scholar, linguist, and author of “Africa and the Discovery of America,” Leo Wiener, meticulously examined and found linguistic, cultural, and agricultural similarities between Meso-American natives and West Africans that predated European contact. Wiener was convinced West Africans sailed to the Americas almost two hundred years before Columbus, as the similarities could only be explained through a transatlantic connection. Additional evidence surprisingly comes from Columbus himself, who documented in his diaries that the indigenous people presented him with gold-tipped spears upon arriving in Hispaniola, claiming they were gifts from black-skinned individuals from the South and Southeast. Columbus had the spears taken back to Spain for analysis, and they discovered the spear’s metallurgical properties were similar to those forged in African Guinea. In his account titled “The Narrative of the Third Voyage,” Columbus penned: “Certain principal inhabitants of the island of Santiago came to see him, and they said that to the south-west of the island of Huego, which is one of the Cape Verde, distant twelve league from this, may be seen an island, and that the King Don Juan was greatly inclined to send to make discoveries to the south-west and that canoes had been found which start from the coasts of Guinea (West Africa) and navigate to the west with merchandise.” Another explorer, Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, renowned for “discovering” the Pacific Ocean in 1513, reported encountering tall men, resembling people of African descent who fought his soldiers with the indigenous Indians during his journeys in Panama. These conflicts with Balboa’s soldiers showed Africans had become part of the indigenous communities over time.
Other evidence comes from Art historian Professor Alexander Von Wuthenau, who wrote the book “Unexpected Faces in Ancient America 1500 BC-A.D: 1500, The Historical Testimony of Pre-columbian Artists” which drew attention to portrayals of clay, gold, copper, and copal from ancient and medieval Central and South America that depict individuals with “Negroid” features. These portraits vividly depict characteristics with curled or kinky hair, occasional goatee beards (not typical of American-Indian populations), prominent jaws, distinct coloration, broad noses, and full lips. Artwork of folks looking like Tyrone and not of the indigenous Indians should be all the evidence we need (shrug emoji here). Additionally, the art showcased elements like African-style ear pendants, headdresses, hairstyles, facial tattoos, and scarification.
These remarkable discoveries have posed questions for anthropologists. They ponder how Africans, whom the West assumed had no prior knowledge of long-distance sea navigation, could have traversed the daunting 1,500-mile expanse of the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Americas. However, it’s important to recognize that Africans were not unfamiliar with seafaring. In the books “Ancient And Modern Britons,” by Scottish author David Mac Ritchie and “Nature Knows No Color-Line,” by J.A. Rogers, it’s described that in pre-Christian Irish history, there are accounts of challenges to Irishmen’s control of Ireland due to the incursions of African seafarers, the Fomorians, who maintained a significant stronghold on Torrey Island. Despite Western beliefs, West Africans also had a strong maritime presence.
Perhaps a defining finding is detailed in the 1975 New York Times article “Bad News for Columbus, Perhaps” By Ivan van Sertima, an account is given of a team from the Smithsonian Institution who uncovered a burial site in the US Virgin Islands containing two African male skeletons, both estimated to have reached their late thirties at their deaths. The graves were indicated to be dug in date 1250 AD! Examination of the dental features of these individuals revealed a form of “dental mutilation” consistent with practices observed in early African cultures. Furthermore, one of the skeletons bore a clay vessel of pre-Columbian Indian design clasped around its wrist, adding to the complexity of the find. This discovery would put another African civilization voyaging to the Americas 60 years before Mali!
This discovery is not an isolated case. Skulls that closely resemble those of African populations have been unearthed in various regions. Historian Frederick Peterson, in his examination of ancient Mexico, emphasized the presence of a “strong Negroid substratum” intermingled with the Olmec civilization. The Olmecs were an indigenous American people who inhabited the Gulf Coast.
In the 19th century, European powers propagated the “Dark Continent” trope to portray Africa as a vast expanse inhabited by underdeveloped and uncivilized people. This narrative served as a justification for the brutal enslavement and mistreatment of individuals of African descent. West African history and accomplishments are rich and important considering the majority of the ancestry of the black diaspora came from this region. Consequently, black history has often been filtered through the lens of the so-called “victors,” leading to distortion of the remarkable achievements of black societies that forged some of the greatest civilizations in human history, including the civilization of Egypt (yep I went there). When extraordinary discoveries emerge that challenge established narratives, there is a tendency to label them as pseudoscience, reinterpret them through a Eurocentric lens, or even suppress them to maintain existing narratives. This approach not only discredits the dedicated efforts of highly accredited African and non-African scholars (all but two I cited in this article are European scholars), researchers, and scientists but also perpetuates a skewed view of history that fails to acknowledge the immense contributions and achievements of African civilizations throughout the ages.
While Christopher Columbus’s voyages undoubtedly played a pivotal role in connecting the Old World with the New World, characterizing his expeditions as the exclusive “discovery” of the Americas is invalid. Plus, he was a genocidal rapist criminal, I just had to remind folks. Substantial evidence reveals that our ancestors from Africa charted these waters centuries before him. We, collectively, should be proud of our history. Shout out to Ivan Van Sertima, author of the groundbreaking “They Came Before Us.” Shout out to the black folks who crashed Columbus’ “discovery” party when they traveled to visit their cousins over a hundred years before he left Europe!
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