Cheikh Anta Diop -- Senegal
He established and was the director of the radiocarbon laboratory at the Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir. Diop published his technique and methodology for a melanin dosage test in scholarly journals, and used this technique to determine the melanin content of the Egyptian mummies. Forensic investigators later adopted this technique to determine the "racial identity" of badly burnt accident victims. In 1974, Diop participated in a UNESCO symposium in Cairo, where he presented his theories to specialists in Egyptology. He also wrote the chapter about the origins of the Egyptians in the UNESCO General History of Africa. Diop's work The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974.
He gained a much wider audience, as he proved that archaeological and anthropological evidence supported his view that Pharaohs were of Negroid origin. Diop's work has posed important questions about the cultural bias inherent in scientific research. Diop showed above all that European archaeologists before and after the decolonisation had continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilizations. Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African people, and that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.
Diop supported his arguments with references to ancient authors such as Herodotus and Strabo. For example, when Herodotus wished to argue that the Colchian people were related to the Egyptians, he said that the Colchians were "black, with curly hair" Diop used these writers statements to illustrate his theory that the ancient Egyptians had the same physical traits as modern black Africans (skin colour, hair type). His interpretation of anthropological data (such as the role of matriarchy) and archeological data led him to conclude that Egyptian culture was a Black African culture.
In linguistics, he believed that the Wolof language of contemporary West Africa is related to ancient Egyptian. A 2004 review of DNA research in the African Archaeological Review supports some of Diop's criticisms. It found that some European researchers had earlier tried to make Africans seem a special case, somehow different from the rest of the world's population flow and mix. This seemed to apply in matters both of evolution and gene pool makeup. The reviewers found that some researchers seemed to have shifted their categories and methods to maintain this "special case" outlook.
Diop consistently held that Africans varied widely in skin color, facial shape, hair type, height, and a number of additional factors, just like other human populations. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognising as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world.
It is held by Keita, et al. that when the data are looked at in toto without the clustering manipulation and selective exclusions above, then a more accurate and realistic picture emerges of African diversity. For example, ancient Egyptian matches with Indians and Europeans are generic in nature (due to the broad categories used for matching purposes with these populations) but are not due to gene flow. Ancient Egyptians such as the Badarians show greater statistical affinities to tropical African types and are not identical to Europeans. Diop's concept was of a fundamentally Black population that incorporated new elements over time, rather than mixed-race populations crossing arbitrarily assigned racial zones.
Diop never asserted, as some claim, that all of Africa follows an Egyptian cultural model. Instead he claimed Egypt as an influential part of a "southern cradle" of civilization. While Diop holds that the Greeks learned from a superior Egyptian civilization, he does not argue that Greek culture is simply a derivative of Egypt. Instead he views the Greeks as forming part of a "northern cradle" distinctively growing out of certain climatic and cultural conditions.
Diop attempted to demonstrate that the African peoples shared certain commonalities, including language roots and other cultural elements like regicide, circumcision, totems, etc. These he held, formed part of a tapestry that laid the basis for African cultural unity that could assist in throwing off colonialism. His cultural theory attempted to show that Egypt was part of the African environment as opposed to incorporating it into Mediterranean or Middle Eastern venues.
The conclusion was that some of the oldest native populations in Egypt can trace part of their genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa. Selectively lumping such peoples into arbitrary Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Caucasoid categories because they do not meet the narrow definition of a "true" type, or selectively defining certain traits like aquiline features as Eurasian or Caucasoid, ignores the complexity of the DNA data. Similar narrow definitions are not attempted with groups often classified as Caucasoid.
Over his career Diop published a number of books including seven that were translated into English. Of the many books Diop published in French all were dedicated to African empowerment and the reconstruction of a colonially fragmented identity. He died On 7, February 1986, in Dakar at the age of 63. After his death the Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir university was renamed in his honour: Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.
Cheikh Anta Diop 29 December 1923 in Thieytou, Diourbel Region was a historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians were black Africans.
Diop was born to an aristocratic Muslim Wolof family of the Mouride sect in Senegal, where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Senegal before moving to Paris for graduate studies to become a physicist. He remained there for 15 years studying under Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and ultimately translating parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof. Diop's education included History, Egyptology, Physics, Linguistics, Anthropology, Economics, and Sociology. He also studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris. As a student of Gaston Bachelard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, André Leroi-Gourhan, and others" Diop "acquired proficiency in such diverse disciplines as rationalism, dialectics, modern scientific techniques, prehistoric archaeology etc." Diop was "the only Black African of his generation to have received training as an Egyptologist." He applied this encyclopaedic knowledge to his researches on African history.
In 1948 with Madeleine Rousseau, a professor of art history, Diop edited a special edition of the journal Musee vivant, published by the Association populaire des amis des musées. The special edition featured the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and an overview of contemporary African culture and society. Diop contributed an article to the journal: "Quand pourra-t-on parler d’une renaissance africaine" (When will we be able to speak of an African Renaissance?). He examined a wide range of fields and proposed that African culture should be rebuilt on the basis of ancient Egypt, in the same way that European culture was built upon the legacies of ancient Greece and Rome.
In 1951, Diop submitted a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Paris in which he argued that Black people had peopled ancient Egypt. He said that the Egyptian language and culture had later been spread to West Africa. He could not find a jury of examiners for his thesis, but in 1954, he published many of his ideas as the book Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture). While continuing to study nuclear physics at the Collège de France, he continued to work on his thesis and finally obtained his doctorate in 1960.
Since his early days in Paris he had been politically active in the Rassemblement Democratique Africaine (RDA), and was general secretary of the RDA students in Paris from 1950 to 1953. The RDA students continued to be highly active in politicising the anti-colonial struggle and popularised the slogan "National independence from the Sahara to the Cape, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic." The movement’s key task was restoring the African national consciousness that had been warped by slavery and colonialism. It was particularly necessary to avoid the pitfall of facility. As it could seem tempting to delude the masses engaged in a struggle for national independence by manipulating scientific truth, by unveiling a mythical, embellished past. Diop believed that the political struggle for African independence would not succeed without acknowledging the civilizing role of the African, dating from ancient Egypt.
He return to Senegal in 1960, the same year, Senegal gained its independence and he continued what would be a life long political struggle. In the course of over 25 years Diop founded three political parties that formed the major opposition in Senegal, these parties opposed the pro-French policies of President Leopold Senghor’s government. "Black Africa : the economic and cultural basis for a federated state" is the book that best expresses Diop's political aims and objectives. In it he argues that only a united and federated African state will be able to overcome underdevelopment. This critical work constitutes a rational study of not only Africa's cultural, historic and geographic unity, but of Africa's potential for energy development and industrialisation. Diop argues for the need to build a capable continental army, able to defend the continent and its people and proposes a plan for the development of Africa's raw materials and industrialisation. All these factors combined based on the formation of a federated and unified Africa. Culturally and otherwise, are surmised to be the only way for Africa to become the power in the world that she should rightfully be. In protest to the refusal of the Senghor administration to release political prisoners, Diop was largely absent from politics between 1966 - 1975.
He established and was the director of the radiocarbon laboratory at the Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir. Diop published his technique and methodology for a melanin dosage test in scholarly journals, and used this technique to determine the melanin content of the Egyptian mummies. Forensic investigators later adopted this technique to determine the "racial identity" of badly burnt accident victims. In 1974, Diop participated in a UNESCO symposium in Cairo, where he presented his theories to specialists in Egyptology. He also wrote the chapter about the origins of the Egyptians in the UNESCO General History of Africa. Diop's work The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974. He gained a much wider audience, as he proved that archaeological and anthropological evidence supported his view that Pharaohs were of Negroid origin. Diop's work has posed important questions about the cultural bias inherent in scientific research. Diop showed above all that European archaeologists before and after the decolonisation had continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilizations. Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African people, and that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.
Diop supported his arguments with references to ancient authors such as Herodotus and Strabo. For example, when Herodotus wished to argue that the Colchian people were related to the Egyptians, he said that the Colchians were "black, with curly hair" Diop used these writers statements to illustrate his theory that the ancient Egyptians had the same physical traits as modern black Africans (skin colour, hair type). His interpretation of anthropological data (such as the role of matriarchy) and archeological data led him to conclude that Egyptian culture was a Black African culture. In linguistics, he believed that the Wolof language of contemporary West Africa is related to ancient Egyptian. A 2004 review of DNA research in the African Archaeological Review supports some of Diop's criticisms. It found that some European researchers had earlier tried to make Africans seem a special case, somehow different from the rest of the world's population flow and mix. This seemed to apply in matters both of evolution and gene pool makeup. The reviewers found that some researchers seemed to have shifted their categories and methods to maintain this "special case" outlook.
Diop consistently held that Africans varied widely in skin color, facial shape, hair type, height, and a number of additional factors, just like other human populations. What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognising as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? Just as the inhabitants of Scandinavia and the Mediterranean countries must be considered as two extreme poles of the same anthropological reality, so should the Negroes of East and West Africa be considered as the two extremes in the reality of the Negro world. It is held by Keita, et al. that when the data are looked at in toto without the clustering manipulation and selective exclusions above, then a more accurate and realistic picture emerges of African diversity. For example, ancient Egyptian matches with Indians and Europeans are generic in nature (due to the broad categories used for matching purposes with these populations) but are not due to gene flow. Ancient Egyptians such as the Badarians show greater statistical affinities to tropical African types and are not identical to Europeans. Diop's concept was of a fundamentally Black population that incorporated new elements over time, rather than mixed-race populations crossing arbitrarily assigned racial zones.
Diop never asserted, as some claim, that all of Africa follows an Egyptian cultural model. Instead he claimed Egypt as an influential part of a "southern cradle" of civilization. While Diop holds that the Greeks learned from a superior Egyptian civilization, he does not argue that Greek culture is simply a derivative of Egypt. Instead he views the Greeks as forming part of a "northern cradle" distinctively growing out of certain climatic and cultural conditions.
Diop attempted to demonstrate that the African peoples shared certain commonalities, including language roots and other cultural elements like regicide, circumcision, totems, etc. These he held, formed part of a tapestry that laid the basis for African cultural unity that could assist in throwing off colonialism. His cultural theory attempted to show that Egypt was part of the African environment as opposed to incorporating it into Mediterranean or Middle Eastern venues.
The conclusion was that some of the oldest native populations in Egypt can trace part of their genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa. Selectively lumping such peoples into arbitrary Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Caucasoid categories because they do not meet the narrow definition of a "true" type, or selectively defining certain traits like aquiline features as Eurasian or Caucasoid, ignores the complexity of the DNA data. Similar narrow definitions are not attempted with groups often classified as Caucasoid.
Over his career Diop published a number of books including seven that were translated into English. Of the many books Diop published in French all were dedicated to African empowerment and the reconstruction of a colonially fragmented identity. He died On 7, February 1986, in Dakar at the age of 63. After his death the Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir university was renamed in his honour: Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar.