第1个回答 2013-05-18
BLACK HISTORY: IT BEGAN BEFORE 1492 AD AND IS MORE THAN JUST SLAVERY
Black History Month in the US is important in its recognition of African-American achievements in the US since 1492. Yet, the celebration of Black History Month has been limited to three basic events in Black American history. That is the period of slavery and what some of our ancestors endured during slavery and our fight for freedom and acceptance by the ruling majority.
Hence, celebrating Black history has been limited to celebrating the days of slavery and celebrating the 'first Black' person to be allowed in some aspect of the majority society or celebrating the first Black person to accomplish a position that was long denied. These may include recognizing the first Blacks to be made Congressmen during the Reconstruction or the scientists like George W Carver or the first Black person to become a millionaire through hard work, invention, ingenuity and good planning such as Madame CJ Walker, the inventor and creator of many beauty products for Black and other women.
Although it is crucial that we know our history in the United States and the Americas during slavery and up to the present date. We were not created during slavery nor did we spring out of the Atlantic without a history, culture or heritage. Our history began in Africa tens of thousands of years before the Ice Age. In fact, it has been found that by 100,000 BC to 70,000 BC, Africans in the Semlike River Valley of Congo (Zaire) were creating sophisticated tools of stone and bone. In the Blombos Caves of South Africa, the first evidence of etchings was found on a block of red ocre dated about 70,000 to 100,000 years old. In that same cave, the first evidence of jewelry was found to be over 50,000 years old.
At these periods, Africans were undertaking some of the most important journeys in history by land and by sea. Many voyaged to the Middle East, India, Central Asia, Melanesia, Australia, East Asia and later on by about 30,000 BC, some made it to the Americas through the Asia route and through the Atlantic route. The evidence for a possible sea journey of Africans to the Americas is based on two facts of ancient African history.
One is the presence of a prehistoric maritime culture in the present-day 'dry' Sahara which was 'wet' and filled with a gigantic inland sea about 30,000 years ago. The second is the fact that the African/Black cultures that existed in the landed regions of the 'wet' lake-filled Sahara migrated to India, the Americas, SE Asia, Japan, Melanesia and Australia as early as 100,000 BC to as recently as 2000 BC.
In fact, Africoid/Black peoples in Papua, India, Melanesia, (see, "The Black Untouchables of India," by VT Rajshekar) have admitted that their ancestors originated in Africa and settled Asia as the first humans there
BLACK MATERIAL HISTORY AND CIVILIZATION
The earliest beginnings of Black civilization began not in Egypt or Nubia but in the Dafur Region of Sudan. This region contained some of the earliest evidence of settled human communities on earth and was part of a prehistoric Sahara civilization called the Aquatic Civilization. The Aquatic civilization was the first on earth to produce various arts and crafts, ship building of papyrus and many cultural traits later found in Egypt including mummyfication.
As the Sahara dried out, a number of African people speaking the Manding super language began migrating to Egypt, Central and Southern Africa, the Americas, India, Mesopotamia, the Indian Ocean Islands, China, Australia. These migrations occurred later on in human history between 30,000 BC to 2,000 BC when African culture was well established and was being spread out from Africa to other parts of the world.
The civilizations produced by the Mother Civilization of the Sahara continued to exist after the Sahara dried and turned to desert. This culture reestablished itself in the Sahara Crescent where the plateau was higher and more hospitable for the flourishing of culture. (See 'Sahara Crescent," Clyde Winters writings).