The book is a special May selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and Tandom House is about to publish a second printing. The Book Review received about 70 letters, the most reader reaction it's had on an issue since the reviewer attacked Robert Frost several yeas ago. He also points to the Negroid features of giant stone heads in Mexico, our of which have been radio carbon dated at 814 B.C.īut, in his review in the March 13 issue of The New York Times Book Review, Glyn Daniel, aracheology professor at Cambridge University, called the book "ignorant rubbish" and described Van Sertima as one of several "deluded scholars."ĭaniel's review provoked a barrage of letters - from scholars and laypersons - defending Van Sertima. In his book, "They Came Before Columbus," Van Sertima, a Rutgers professor, says that African influences can be found in an array of cultural similarities between Africa and the ancient Americas - pyramid construction, the use of boat litters, the parasol, the plumed serpent motif, bronze-casting techniques. Anthropologist-linguist Ivan Van Sertima has set ablaze a mini-controversy with his thesis that Africans set foot upon - and made significant cultural impact on - the New World 22 centuries before Columbus sailed into the West Indies.
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