Monday, October 30, 2017

Reconstructing history

There’s not a lot of written history about the area that is now Liberia before the American settlers came.

To know what happened, you have to piece together strands of evidence from widely separated records, and from traditions, language families, and genetic families across a fairly large area of Africa—and I am not in any position to do that myself.

I greeted the appearance of Between the Kola Forest and the Salty Sea with enthusiasm, and bought a copy. After reading the introduction, I'm starting to wonder. He seems to have his references to Ham a little mixed (may not be entirely his fault--references are inconsistent), doesn't seem to have a good handle on the history of slavery in Africa (all European and uniquely evil), UPDATED see full review conflates "blue-eyed Aryans" with all Europeans, and approvingly cites the "black Egyptian" claims. Sorry, I read Herodotus too, and can look at the pictures the Egyptians painted, and read some of their folk-tales—ancient Egyptians were not of sub-Saharan descent. Recent DNA studies bear out the obvious—modern Egyptians have more sub-Sarahan ancestry than ancient ones. That Nubia conquered the north a time or three I can believe--I'd be surprised if they didn't. That Nubians were the ancient Egyptians isn't possible.

If he can't get the well-documented stuff right, I wonder what admixture of imagination is going into the less-documented material? I shall continue—I expect to learn something—but I am less happy.

1 comment:

  1. My U.S. History textbook from high school had a similar issue. It left out the Quakers from the section on the Abolition Movement, and whoever had no idea how the various indigenous tribes governed themselves.

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