Cheikh Anta Diop
Encyclopedia
Cheikh Anta Diop 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
. Cheikh Anta Diop University
, in Dakar
, Senegal
is named after him.
Wolof
family in Senegal
where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. Diop's family was part of the Mouride
sect, the only independent Muslim group in Africa according to Diop. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Senegal before moving to Paris
for graduate studies where he ended his scholastic education.
, Marie Curie
's son-in-law, 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
. While studying in Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris through which he "gained an understanding of the Greco-Latin world. 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 archeology and so on." Diop was also "the only Black African of his generation to have received training as an Egyptologist." "More importantly" he "applied this encyclopedic knowledge to his researches on African history."
In 1948 Diop edited with Madeleine Rousseau, a professor of art history, a special edition of the journal Musėe vivant, published by the Association populaire des amis des musées (APAM). APAM had been set up in 1936 by people on the political left wing to bring culture to wider audiences. The special edition of the journal was on the occasion of the centenary of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and aimed to present an overview of issues in contemporary African culture and society. Diop contributed an article to the journal: "Quand pourra-t-on parler d’une renaissance africaine" (When we will be able to speak of an African Renaissance?). He examined various fields of artistic creation, with a discussion of African languages, which, he said, would be the sources of regeneration in African culture. He 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 ancient Egypt had been peopled by Black people. His supervisor was Marcel Griaule
. Diop specified that he used the terms "negro", "black", "white" and "race" as "immediate givens" in the Bergsonian sense, and went on to suggest operational definitions of these terms. He said that the Egyptian language and culture had later been spread to West Africa
. At first he could not find a jury of examiners for his thesis, but in 1954, he published many his ideas as the book Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture). It made him one of the most controversial historians of his time. While continuing to study nuclear physics
in the laboratories of the Collège de France
, he continued to work on his thesis. He finally obtained his doctorate in 1960.
. He was general secretary of the RDA students in Paris from 1950 to 1953. Under his leadership the first post-war pan-African student congress was held organized in 1951. Importantly it included not only francophone Africans, but English speaking ones as well. The RDA students continued to be highly active in politicizing the anti-colonial struggle and popularized the slogan "National independence from the Sahara to the Cape, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic." The movement identified as a key task restoring the African national consciousness, warped by slavery and colonialism. Diop, inspired by the efforts of Aimé Césaire
toward these ends, but not being a literary man himself, took up the call to rebuild the African personality from a strictly scientific, socio-historical perspective. He was keenly aware of the difficulties that such an scientific effort would entail and warned that "It was particularly necessary to avoid the pitfall of facility. It could seem to tempting to delude the masses engaged in a struggle for national independence by taking liberties with scientific truth, by unveiling a mythical, embellished past. Those who have followed us in our efforts for more than 20 years know now that this was not the case and that this fear remained unfounded." Diop was highly critical of "the most brilliant pseudo-revolutionary eloquence that ignores the need" for rebuilding the African national consciousness "which must be met of our people are to be reborn culturally and politically."
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 singled out the contradiction of "the African historian who evades the problem of Egypt".
In 1960, upon his return to Senegal, he continued what would be a life long political struggle. Diop would in the course of over 25 years found three political parties that formed the major opposition in Senegal. The first, "Le Bloc des Masses Senegalaises (B.M.S.)" was formed in 1961. By 1962 Diop's party working on the ideas enumerated in "Black Africa : the economic and cultural basis for a federated state" became a serious threat to the regime of then President Leopold Senghor. Diop was subsequently arrested and thrown in jail where he nearly died. The party was shortly thereafter banned for opposing Senghor's efforts to consolidate power in his own hands.
"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 industrialization. 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 industrialization. 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.
After the B.M.S. was dissolved, Diop and other former members reconstituted themselves under a new party, the Front National Senegalais (F.N.S.) in 1963. The party, though not officially recognized, continued strong political activity along the same lines as the B.M.S. Under significant political pressure president Senghor attempted to appease Diop by offering him and his supporters a certain numbers of government positions. Diop strongly refused to enter into any negotiations until two conditions were met. The first, that all political prisoners be released, and the second that discussions be opened on government ideas and programs, not on the distribution of government posts. In protest to the refusal of the Senghor administration to release political prisoners, Diop remained largely absent from the political scene from 1966 to 1975.
laboratory at the IFAN (Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir). Diop dedicated a book about the IFAN radiocarbon laboratory "to the memory of my former professor Frédéric Joliot who welcomed me into his laboratory at the College de France." (After his death the university was named in his honor: Cheikh Anta Diop University
of Dakar.) He had said, "In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin color and, hence, the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility."
Diop published his technique and methodology for a melanin dosage test in scholarly journals. Diop 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.
Some critics have argued that Diop's melanin dosage test technique lacks sufficient evidence. They contend the test is inappropriate to apply to ancient Egyptian mummies, due to the effects of embalming and deterioration over time.
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 first work translated into English, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974. It gained a much wider audience for his work. He proved that archaeological and anthropological
evidence supported his view that Pharaoh
s were of Negroid origin. Some scholars draw heavily from Diop's groundbreaking work, while others in the Western academic world do not accept all of Diop's theories. 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 decolonization had understated and continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilizations.
The Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet's discoveries at the site of Kerma
shed some light on the theories of Diop. They show close cultural links between Nubia and Ancient Egypt, though the relationship had been acknowledged for years. This does not necessarily imply a genetic relationship, however. Mainstream Egyptologists such as F. Yurco note that among peoples outside Egypt, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians, shared the same culture in the predynastic period, and used the same pharaonoic political structure. He suggests that the peoples of the Nile Valley were one regionalized population, sharing a number of genetic and cultural traits.
Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African peoples that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.
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 statements by these writers 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 in particular that the Wolof
language of contemporary West Africa
is related to ancient Egyptian.
of Carleton S. Coon
and others. Coon used racial rankings of inferiority and superiority, defined "true Blacks" as only those of cultures south of the Sahara, and grouped some Africans with advanced cultures with Caucasian clusters. Based on Coon's work, the Hamitic Hypothesis held that most advanced progress or cultural development in Africa was due to the invasions of mysterious Caucasoid Hamites. Similarly, the Dynastic Race Theory
of Egypt asserted that a mass migration of Caucasoid peoples was needed to create the Egyptian kingships, as slower-witted Negro tribes were incapable. Genetic studies have disproved these notions. A 2004 review of DNA research in 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.
(1964), Diop castigated European scholars who posited a separate evolution of various types of humankind and denied the African origin of homo sapiens.
Critics of Diop cite a 1993 study that found the ancient Egyptians to be more related to North African, Somalian, European, Nubian and, more remotely, Indian populations, than to Sub-Saharan Africans. Diop always maintained that Somalians, Nubians, Ethiopians and Egyptians were all part of a related range of African peoples in the Nilotic zone that also included peoples of the Sudan and parts of the Sahara. He said that their cultural, genetic and material links could not be defined away or separated into a regrouped set of racial clusters. Critics of this study in turn hold that it achieves its results by manipulation of data clusters and analysis categories, casting a wide net to achieve generic, general statistical similarities with populations such as Europeans and Indians. At the same time, the statistical net is cast much more narrowly in the case of 'blacks', carefully defining them as an extreme type south of the Sahara and excluding related populations like Somalians, Nubians and Ethiopians, as well as the ancient Badarians, a key indigenous group.
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) and 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. As regards the key Badarian group, a 2005 study by anthropologist S. O. Y. Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt found that the predynastic Badarian series clusters much closer with the tropical African series than European samples.
Diop's theory on variability is also supported by a number of scholars mapping human genes using modern DNA analysis. This has shown that most of human genetic variation (some 85–90%) occurs within localized population groups, and that race only can account for 6–10% of the variation. Arbitrarily classifying Maasai, Ethiopians, Shillouk, Nubians, etc., as Caucasian is thus problematic, since all these peoples are northeast African populations and show normal variation well within the 85–90% specified by DNA analysis. Modern physical anthropologists also question splitting of peoples into racial zones. They hold that such splitting is arbitrary insertion of data into pre-determined pigeonholes and the selective grouping of samples.
Scholars such as Bruce Trigger
condemned the often shaky scholarship on such northeast African peoples as the Egyptians. He declared that the peoples of the region were all Africans, and decried the "bizarre and dangerous myths" of previously biased scholarship, "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism." Trigger's conclusions were supported by Egyptologist Frank Yurco, who viewed the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalians, etc. as one localized Nile valley population. He did not believe that such a population needed to be arbitrarily split into tribal or racial clusters.
A series of books on ancient Egypt, published in 2004, found that there is little basis for positing a close connection between Dynastic Egypt and the African interior. Nevertheless, it awarded Diop and similar scholars credit for posing these problems.
He accused his critics of having used the narrowest possible definition of "Blacks" in order to differentiate various African groups like Nubians into a European or Caucasoid racial zone. Under the "true negro" approach, Diop contended that those peoples who did not meet the stereotypical classification were attributed to mixture with outside peoples, or were split off and assigned to Caucasoid clusters.
He also claimed that opponents were hypocritical in stating that the race of Egyptians was not important to define, but they did not hesitate to introduce race under new guises. For instance, Diop suggested that the uses of terminology like "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern", or statistically classifying all who did not meet the "true" Black stereotype as some other race, were all attempts to use race to differentiate among African peoples.
Diop's presentation of his concepts at the Cairo UNESCO symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script", in 1974, exposed the inconsistencies and contradictions in how African data was handled. This exposure remains a hallmark of Diop's contribution. As one scholar at the 1974 symposium put it:
A majority of academics disavow the term black for the Egyptians, but there is no consensus on substitute terminology. Some modern studies use DNA to define racial classifications, while others condemn this practice as selective filling of pre-defined, stereotypical categories.
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. Many academics reject the term black, however, or use it exclusively in the sense of a sub-Saharan type. One approach that has bridged the gap between Diop and his critics is the non-racial bio-evolutionary approach. This approach is associated with scholars who question the validity of race as a biological concept. They consider the Egyptians as (a) simply another Nile valley population or (b) part of a continuum of population gradation or variation among humans that is based on indigenous development, rather than using racial clusters or the concept of admixtures. Under this approach, racial categories such as "Blacks" or "Caucasoids" are discarded in favor of localized populations showing a range of physical variation. This way of viewing the data rejected Diop's insistence on Blackness, but at the same time it acknowledged the inconsistency with which data on African peoples were manipulated and categorized.
. Diop focuses on Africa, not Greece, contrary to the preoccupation of other Africancentrists.
These concepts are laid out in Diop's "Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946-1960," and "The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity,", These concepts can be summarized as follows:
Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model:
Northern Cradle-Greek Model:
Zones of Confluence: Meeting or mingling area for the two cradles above
Most anthropologists see commonalities in African culture but only in a very broad, generic sense, intimately linked with economic systems, etc. There are common patterns such as circumcision, matriarchy etc., but whether these are part of a unique, gentler, more positive "Southern cradle" of peoples, versus a more grasping, patriarchal-flavored "Northern cradle" are considered problematic by many scholars, as is grouping the complexity of human cultures into two camps. Extremely warlike peoples, for example, the Zulu, appear frequently in the "Southern Cradle". Many cultures the world over show similar developments and a mixture of traits.
Analyses of other scholars (Hiernaux 1975, Keita, 1990 et al.) eschew "southern" and "northern" camps and point to a narrower focus that demonstrates cultural, material and genetic connections between Egypt and other nearby African (Nubian, Saharan, and Sudanic) populations. These connections appear not only in linguistics, (see Languages demonstrating section below) but in cultural areas such as religion. As regards Egyptian religion for example, there appear to be more solid connections with the cultures of the Sudan and northeast Africa than Mesopotamia, according to mainstream research:
Diop further argued that the languages of Nile Valley peoples also demonstrated a broad commonality and unity organic to African peoples and attempted to demonstrate relationships between Ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt and Wolof, a Senegalese language of West Africa, with the latter two having their origin in the former. (Diop: Parenté génétique de l’egyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines). Diop's work has been further expanded by Afrocentric scholar Ivan van Sertima
.
While modern linguistic studies have challenged Diop's Wolof language connection,
as regards the key Nile Valley peoples, they have moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages. They place the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996) Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.
Some modern linguistic research throws Diop's Wolof claim into question but connections have been found in several African languages that share features with Egyptian, such as the Chadic languages of west and central Africa, the Cushitic languages of northeast Africa, and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
, stretching from India, to Australia to Africa, with physical similarities in terms of dark skin and a number of other characteristics. In an interview in 1985, Diop argued that race was a relevant category and that phenotype or physical appearance is what matters in historic social relations.
Civilization,' argues against the European stereotypical conception. He holds that the range of peoples and phenotypes under the designation "negre" included those with a wide range of physical variability, from light brown skin and aquiline noses to jet black skin and frizzy hair, well within the diversity of peoples of the Nilotic region. Diop also acknowledged that the ancient Egyptians absorbed "foreign" genes at various times in their history (the Hyskos for example) but held that this admixture did not change their essential ethnicity.
Diop also appeared to express doubts about the concept of race. At a UNESCO colloquium in Athens
in 1981, he asserted: "I don't like to use the notion of race (which does not exist)...We must not attach an obsessional importance to it. It is a hazard of the evolution." This outlook was unlike many of the contemporary white writers he questioned. Indeed he eschewed racial chauvinism, arguing: 'We apologise for returning to notions of race, cultural heritage, linguistic relationship, historical connections between peoples, and so on. I attach no more importance to these questions than they actually deserve in modern twentieth-century societies.'
Diop repudiated racism or supremacist theories, arguing for a more balanced view of African history than it was getting during his era. Since he struggled against how racial classifications were used by the European academy in relation to African peoples, much of his work has a strong 'race-flavored' tint. A number of individuals such as US college professor Leonard Jeffries
have advanced a more chauvinist view, citing Diop's work.
The entire region shows a basic unity based on both the Nile and Sahara, and cannot be arbitrarily diced up into pre-assigned racial zones. As Egyptologist Frank Yurco notes:
Such tropical elements were thus in place from the earliest beginnings of Egyptian civilization, not isolated somewhere South behind the Saharan barrier. This is considered to be an indigenous development based on microevolutionary principles (climate adaptation, drift and selection) and not the movement of large numbers of outside peoples into Egypt.
As regards living peoples, the pattern of complexity repeats itself, calling into question the merging and splitting methods of Jensen, et al. Research in this area challenges the groupings used as (a) not reflecting today's genetic diversity in Africa, or (b) an inconsistent way to determine the racial characteristics of the Ancient Egypt
ians. Studies of some inhabitants of Gurna, a population with an ancient cultural history, in Upper Egypt, illustrate the point. In a 2004 study, 58 native inhabitants from upper Egypt were sampled for mtDNA.
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 on the ground. Critics note that similar narrow definitions are not attempted with groups often classified as Caucasoid.
(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996)
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
, anthropologist, physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
, and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial
Colonialism
Colonialism is the establishment, maintenance, acquisition and expansion of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. It is a process whereby the metropole claims sovereignty over the colony and the social structure, government, and economics of the colony are changed by...
African culture
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
. He is regarded as an important figure in the development of the Afrocentric
Afrocentrism
Afrocentrism is cultural ideology mostly limited to the United States, dedicated to the history of Black people a response to global racist attitudes about African people and their historical contributions by revisiting this history with an African cultural and ideological center...
viewpoint, in particular for his theory that the ancient Egyptians
Ancient Egyptian race controversy
The question of the race of ancient Egyptians was raised historically as a product of the scientific racism of the 18th and 19th centuries, and was linked to models of racial hierarchy. A variety of views circulated about the racial identity of the Egyptians and the source of their culture...
were black Africans
Black people
The term black people is used in systems of racial classification for humans of a dark skinned phenotype, relative to other racial groups.Different societies apply different criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and often social variables such as class, socio-economic status also plays a...
. Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cheikh Anta Diop University , also known as the University of Dakar, is a university in Dakar, Senegal. It is named after the Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop and has an enrollment of over 60,000.-History:...
, in Dakar
Dakar
Dakar is the capital city and largest city of Senegal. It is located on the Cap-Vert Peninsula on the Atlantic coast and is the westernmost city on the African mainland...
, Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
is named after him.
Early life and career
Diop was born to an aristocratic MuslimMuslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
Wolof
Wolof people
The Wolof are an ethnic group found in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania.In Senegal, the Wolof form an ethnic plurality with about 43.3% of the population are Wolofs...
family in Senegal
Senegal
Senegal , officially the Republic of Senegal , is a country in western Africa. It owes its name to the Sénégal River that borders it to the east and north...
where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. Diop's family was part of the Mouride
Mouride
The Mouride brotherhood is a large Islamic Sufi order most prominent in Senegal and The Gambia, with headquarters in the holy city of Touba, Senegal...
sect, the only independent Muslim group in Africa according to Diop. He obtained a bachelor's degree in Senegal before moving to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
for graduate studies where he ended his scholastic education.
Studies in Paris
In 1946, at the age of 23, Diop went to Paris to become a physicist. He remained there for 15 years, studying physics under Frédéric Joliot-CurieFrédéric Joliot-Curie
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie , born Jean Frédéric Joliot, was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.-Early years:...
, Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
's son-in-law, and ultimately translating parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity
Theory of relativity
The theory of relativity, or simply relativity, encompasses two theories of Albert Einstein: special relativity and general relativity. However, the word relativity is sometimes used in reference to Galilean invariance....
into his native Wolof
Wolof language
Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...
.
Diop's education included History
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, Egyptology
Egyptology
Egyptology is the study of ancient Egyptian history, language, literature, religion, and art from the 5th millennium BC until the end of its native religious practices in the AD 4th century. A practitioner of the discipline is an “Egyptologist”...
, Physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
, Linguistics
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
, Anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, Economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
, and Sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
. While studying in Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris through which he "gained an understanding of the Greco-Latin world. As a student of Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard was a French philosopher. He made contributions in the fields of poetics and the philosophy of science. To the latter he introduced the concepts of epistemological obstacle and epistemological break...
, Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Frédéric Joliot-Curie
Jean Frédéric Joliot-Curie , born Jean Frédéric Joliot, was a French physicist and Nobel laureate.-Early years:...
, André Leroi-Gourhan
André Leroi-Gourhan
André Leroi-Gourhan was a French archaeologist, paleontologist, paleoanthropologist, and anthropologist with an interest in technology and aesthetics and a penchant for philosophical reflection.- Biography :...
, and others" Diop "acquired proficiency in such diverse disciplines as rationalism, dialectics, modern scientific techniques, prehistoric archeology and so on." Diop was also "the only Black African of his generation to have received training as an Egyptologist." "More importantly" he "applied this encyclopedic knowledge to his researches on African history."
In 1948 Diop edited with Madeleine Rousseau, a professor of art history, a special edition of the journal Musėe vivant, published by the Association populaire des amis des musées (APAM). APAM had been set up in 1936 by people on the political left wing to bring culture to wider audiences. The special edition of the journal was on the occasion of the centenary of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and aimed to present an overview of issues in contemporary African culture and society. Diop contributed an article to the journal: "Quand pourra-t-on parler d’une renaissance africaine" (When we will be able to speak of an African Renaissance?). He examined various fields of artistic creation, with a discussion of African languages, which, he said, would be the sources of regeneration in African culture. He 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.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
thesis
Thesis
A dissertation or thesis is a document submitted in support of candidature for an academic degree or professional qualification presenting the author's research and findings...
at the University of Paris
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
in which he argued that ancient Egypt had been peopled by Black people. His supervisor was Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule
Marcel Griaule was a French anthropologist known for his studies of the Dogon people of West Africa, and for pioneering ethnographic field studies in France....
. Diop specified that he used the terms "negro", "black", "white" and "race" as "immediate givens" in the Bergsonian sense, and went on to suggest operational definitions of these terms. He said that the Egyptian language and culture had later been spread to West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
. At first he could not find a jury of examiners for his thesis, but in 1954, he published many his ideas as the book Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture). It made him one of the most controversial historians of his time. While continuing to study nuclear physics
Nuclear physics
Nuclear physics is the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei. The most commonly known applications of nuclear physics are nuclear power generation and nuclear weapons technology, but the research has provided application in many fields, including those...
in the laboratories of the Collège de France
Collège de France
The Collège de France is a higher education and research establishment located in Paris, France, in the 5th arrondissement, or Latin Quarter, across the street from the historical campus of La Sorbonne at the intersection of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue des Écoles...
, he continued to work on his thesis. He finally obtained his doctorate in 1960.
Political activity
Diop had since his early days in Paris been politically active in the Rassemblement Democratique Africaine (RDA), an African nationalist organisation led by Félix Houphouët-BoignyFélix Houphouët-Boigny
Félix Houphouët-Boigny , affectionately called Papa Houphouët or Le Vieux, was the first President of Côte d'Ivoire. Originally a village chief, he worked as a doctor, an administrator of a plantation, and a union leader, before being elected to the French Parliament and serving in a number of...
. He was general secretary of the RDA students in Paris from 1950 to 1953. Under his leadership the first post-war pan-African student congress was held organized in 1951. Importantly it included not only francophone Africans, but English speaking ones as well. The RDA students continued to be highly active in politicizing the anti-colonial struggle and popularized the slogan "National independence from the Sahara to the Cape, and from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic." The movement identified as a key task restoring the African national consciousness, warped by slavery and colonialism. Diop, inspired by the efforts of Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Fernand David Césaire was a French poet, author and politician from Martinique. He was "one of the founders of the négritude movement in Francophone literature".-Student, educator, and poet:...
toward these ends, but not being a literary man himself, took up the call to rebuild the African personality from a strictly scientific, socio-historical perspective. He was keenly aware of the difficulties that such an scientific effort would entail and warned that "It was particularly necessary to avoid the pitfall of facility. It could seem to tempting to delude the masses engaged in a struggle for national independence by taking liberties with scientific truth, by unveiling a mythical, embellished past. Those who have followed us in our efforts for more than 20 years know now that this was not the case and that this fear remained unfounded." Diop was highly critical of "the most brilliant pseudo-revolutionary eloquence that ignores the need" for rebuilding the African national consciousness "which must be met of our people are to be reborn culturally and politically."
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 singled out the contradiction of "the African historian who evades the problem of Egypt".
In 1960, upon his return to Senegal, he continued what would be a life long political struggle. Diop would in the course of over 25 years found three political parties that formed the major opposition in Senegal. The first, "Le Bloc des Masses Senegalaises (B.M.S.)" was formed in 1961. By 1962 Diop's party working on the ideas enumerated in "Black Africa : the economic and cultural basis for a federated state" became a serious threat to the regime of then President Leopold Senghor. Diop was subsequently arrested and thrown in jail where he nearly died. The party was shortly thereafter banned for opposing Senghor's efforts to consolidate power in his own hands.
"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 industrialization. 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 industrialization. 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.
After the B.M.S. was dissolved, Diop and other former members reconstituted themselves under a new party, the Front National Senegalais (F.N.S.) in 1963. The party, though not officially recognized, continued strong political activity along the same lines as the B.M.S. Under significant political pressure president Senghor attempted to appease Diop by offering him and his supporters a certain numbers of government positions. Diop strongly refused to enter into any negotiations until two conditions were met. The first, that all political prisoners be released, and the second that discussions be opened on government ideas and programs, not on the distribution of government posts. In protest to the refusal of the Senghor administration to release political prisoners, Diop remained largely absent from the political scene from 1966 to 1975.
Research in Senegal
After 1960, Diop went back to Senegal and continued his research and political career. He established and was the director of the radiocarbonRadiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
laboratory at the IFAN (Institut Fondamental de L'Afrique Noir). Diop dedicated a book about the IFAN radiocarbon laboratory "to the memory of my former professor Frédéric Joliot who welcomed me into his laboratory at the College de France." (After his death the university was named in his honor: Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cheikh Anta Diop University
Cheikh Anta Diop University , also known as the University of Dakar, is a university in Dakar, Senegal. It is named after the Senegalese historian and anthropologist Cheikh Anta Diop and has an enrollment of over 60,000.-History:...
of Dakar.) He had said, "In practice it is possible to determine directly the skin color and, hence, the ethnic affiliations of the ancient Egyptians by microscopic analysis in the laboratory; I doubt if the sagacity of the researchers who have studied the question has overlooked the possibility."
Diop published his technique and methodology for a melanin dosage test in scholarly journals. Diop 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.
Some critics have argued that Diop's melanin dosage test technique lacks sufficient evidence. They contend the test is inappropriate to apply to ancient Egyptian mummies, due to the effects of embalming and deterioration over time.
In 1974, Diop participated in a UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
symposium in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, where he presented his theories to specialists in Egyptology. He also wrote the chapter about the origins of the Egyptians
Egyptians
Egyptians are nation an ethnic group made up of Mediterranean North Africans, the indigenous people of Egypt.Egyptian identity is closely tied to geography. The population of Egypt is concentrated in the lower Nile Valley, the small strip of cultivable land stretching from the First Cataract to...
in the UNESCO General History of Africa.
Diop's first work translated into English, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974. It gained a much wider audience for his work. He proved that archaeological and anthropological
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
evidence supported his view that Pharaoh
Pharaoh
Pharaoh is a title used in many modern discussions of the ancient Egyptian rulers of all periods. The title originates in the term "pr-aa" which means "great house" and describes the royal palace...
s were of Negroid origin. Some scholars draw heavily from Diop's groundbreaking work, while others in the Western academic world do not accept all of Diop's theories. 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 decolonization had understated and continued to understate the extent and possibility of Black civilizations.
The Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet's discoveries at the site of Kerma
Kerma
Kerma was the capital city of the Kingdom of Kerma, which was located in present day Egypt and Sudan. The Kerma site has been confirmed by archaeology to be at least 9,500 years old. Around 3000 BC, a cultural tradition began around Kerma...
shed some light on the theories of Diop. They show close cultural links between Nubia and Ancient Egypt, though the relationship had been acknowledged for years. This does not necessarily imply a genetic relationship, however. Mainstream Egyptologists such as F. Yurco note that among peoples outside Egypt, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians, shared the same culture in the predynastic period, and used the same pharaonoic political structure. He suggests that the peoples of the Nile Valley were one regionalized population, sharing a number of genetic and cultural traits.
Diop argued that there was a shared cultural continuity across African peoples that was more important than the varied development of different ethnic groups shown by differences among languages and cultures over time.
Importance of ancient civilizations
Diop supported his arguments with references to ancient authors such as HerodotusHerodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
and Strabo
Strabo
Strabo, also written Strabon was a Greek historian, geographer and philosopher.-Life:Strabo was born to an affluent family from Amaseia in Pontus , a city which he said was situated the approximate equivalent of 75 km from the Black Sea...
. For example, when Herodotus wished to argue that the Colchian
Colchis
In ancient geography, Colchis or Kolkhis was an ancient Georgian state kingdom and region in Western Georgia, which played an important role in the ethnic and cultural formation of the Georgian nation.The Kingdom of Colchis contributed significantly to the development of medieval Georgian...
people were related to the Egyptians, he said that the Colchians were "black, with curly hair" Diop used statements by these writers 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
Matriarchy
A matriarchy is a society in which females, especially mothers, have the central roles of political leadership and moral authority. It is also sometimes called a gynocratic or gynocentric society....
) and archeological data led him to conclude that Egyptian culture was a Black African culture. In linguistics, he believed in particular that the Wolof
Wolof language
Wolof is a language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia, and Mauritania, and is the native language of the Wolof people. Like the neighbouring languages Serer and Fula, it belongs to the Atlantic branch of the Niger–Congo language family...
language of contemporary West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
is related to ancient Egyptian.
Critique of previous scholarship on Africa
Diop's early condemnation of European bias in his 1954 work Nations Negres et Culture, and in Evolution of the Negro World has been supported by later scholarship. Diop's view that the scholarship of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was based on a racist view of Africans was regarded as controversial when he wrote in the 1950s through to the early 1970s, the field of African scholarship still being influenced by the scientific racismScientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
of Carleton S. Coon
Carleton S. Coon
Carleton Stevens Coon, was an American physical anthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer and professor at Harvard, and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists.-Biography:Carleton Coon was born in Wakefield, Massachusetts to a...
and others. Coon used racial rankings of inferiority and superiority, defined "true Blacks" as only those of cultures south of the Sahara, and grouped some Africans with advanced cultures with Caucasian clusters. Based on Coon's work, the Hamitic Hypothesis held that most advanced progress or cultural development in Africa was due to the invasions of mysterious Caucasoid Hamites. Similarly, the Dynastic Race Theory
Dynastic Race Theory
The Dynastic Race Theory was the earliest thesis to attempt to explain how predynastic Egypt developed into the sophisticated monarchy of Dynastic Egypt. The Theory holds that the earliest roots of the Ancient Egyptian dynastic civilisation were imported by invaders from Mesopotamia who then...
of Egypt asserted that a mass migration of Caucasoid peoples was needed to create the Egyptian kingships, as slower-witted Negro tribes were incapable. Genetic studies have disproved these notions. A 2004 review of DNA research in 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.
Physical variability of the African people
Diop consistently held that Africans could not be pigeonholed into a rigid type that existed somewhere south of the Sahara, but they varied widely in skin color, facial shape, hair type, height, and a number of additional factors, just like other human populations. In his "Evolution of the Negro World" in Présence AfricainePrésence Africaine
Présence africaine is a panafrican quarterly cultural, political, and literary magazine, published in Paris and founded by Alioune Diop in 1947. In 1949, Présence africaine expanded to include a publishing house and a bookstore on the rue des Écoles in the Latin Quarter of Paris...
(1964), Diop castigated European scholars who posited a separate evolution of various types of humankind and denied the African origin of homo sapiens.
Critics of Diop cite a 1993 study that found the ancient Egyptians to be more related to North African, Somalian, European, Nubian and, more remotely, Indian populations, than to Sub-Saharan Africans. Diop always maintained that Somalians, Nubians, Ethiopians and Egyptians were all part of a related range of African peoples in the Nilotic zone that also included peoples of the Sudan and parts of the Sahara. He said that their cultural, genetic and material links could not be defined away or separated into a regrouped set of racial clusters. Critics of this study in turn hold that it achieves its results by manipulation of data clusters and analysis categories, casting a wide net to achieve generic, general statistical similarities with populations such as Europeans and Indians. At the same time, the statistical net is cast much more narrowly in the case of 'blacks', carefully defining them as an extreme type south of the Sahara and excluding related populations like Somalians, Nubians and Ethiopians, as well as the ancient Badarians, a key indigenous group.
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) and 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. As regards the key Badarian group, a 2005 study by anthropologist S. O. Y. Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt found that the predynastic Badarian series clusters much closer with the tropical African series than European samples.
Diop's theory on variability is also supported by a number of scholars mapping human genes using modern DNA analysis. This has shown that most of human genetic variation (some 85–90%) occurs within localized population groups, and that race only can account for 6–10% of the variation. Arbitrarily classifying Maasai, Ethiopians, Shillouk, Nubians, etc., as Caucasian is thus problematic, since all these peoples are northeast African populations and show normal variation well within the 85–90% specified by DNA analysis. Modern physical anthropologists also question splitting of peoples into racial zones. They hold that such splitting is arbitrary insertion of data into pre-determined pigeonholes and the selective grouping of samples.
Egypt within the African context
Diop's arguments to place Egypt in the cultural and genetic context of Africa met a wide range of condemnation and rejection.Scholars such as Bruce Trigger
Bruce Trigger
Bruce Graham Trigger, was a Canadian archaeologist, anthropologist, and ethnohistorian.Born in Preston, Ontario, he received a doctorate in archaeology from Yale University in 1964. His research interests at that time included the history of archaeological research and the comparative study of...
condemned the often shaky scholarship on such northeast African peoples as the Egyptians. He declared that the peoples of the region were all Africans, and decried the "bizarre and dangerous myths" of previously biased scholarship, "marred by a confusion of race, language, and culture and by an accompanying racism." Trigger's conclusions were supported by Egyptologist Frank Yurco, who viewed the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalians, etc. as one localized Nile valley population. He did not believe that such a population needed to be arbitrarily split into tribal or racial clusters.
A series of books on ancient Egypt, published in 2004, found that there is little basis for positing a close connection between Dynastic Egypt and the African interior. Nevertheless, it awarded Diop and similar scholars credit for posing these problems.
The Egyptians as a Black population
One of Diop's most controversial issues centers on the definition of who is a true Black person. Diop insisted on a broad interpretation similar to that used in classifying European populations as white.He accused his critics of having used the narrowest possible definition of "Blacks" in order to differentiate various African groups like Nubians into a European or Caucasoid racial zone. Under the "true negro" approach, Diop contended that those peoples who did not meet the stereotypical classification were attributed to mixture with outside peoples, or were split off and assigned to Caucasoid clusters.
He also claimed that opponents were hypocritical in stating that the race of Egyptians was not important to define, but they did not hesitate to introduce race under new guises. For instance, Diop suggested that the uses of terminology like "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern", or statistically classifying all who did not meet the "true" Black stereotype as some other race, were all attempts to use race to differentiate among African peoples.
Diop's presentation of his concepts at the Cairo UNESCO symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script", in 1974, exposed the inconsistencies and contradictions in how African data was handled. This exposure remains a hallmark of Diop's contribution. As one scholar at the 1974 symposium put it:
A majority of academics disavow the term black for the Egyptians, but there is no consensus on substitute terminology. Some modern studies use DNA to define racial classifications, while others condemn this practice as selective filling of pre-defined, stereotypical categories.
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. Many academics reject the term black, however, or use it exclusively in the sense of a sub-Saharan type. One approach that has bridged the gap between Diop and his critics is the non-racial bio-evolutionary approach. This approach is associated with scholars who question the validity of race as a biological concept. They consider the Egyptians as (a) simply another Nile valley population or (b) part of a continuum of population gradation or variation among humans that is based on indigenous development, rather than using racial clusters or the concept of admixtures. Under this approach, racial categories such as "Blacks" or "Caucasoids" are discarded in favor of localized populations showing a range of physical variation. This way of viewing the data rejected Diop's insistence on Blackness, but at the same time it acknowledged the inconsistency with which data on African peoples were manipulated and categorized.
The influence of Egypt
Diop never asserted, as some claim, that all of Africa follows an Egyptian cultural model. Instead he claims Egypt as an influential part of a "southern cradle" of civilization, an indigeous development based on the Nile Valley. 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. His thought is thus not the "Stolen Legacy" argument of writers like George James or the "Black Athena" notions of Martin BernalMartin Bernal
Martin Gardiner Bernal is a Professor Emeritus of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is a scholar of modern Chinese political history...
. Diop focuses on Africa, not Greece, contrary to the preoccupation of other Africancentrists.
Cultural unity of African peoples as part of a southern cradle
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.These concepts are laid out in Diop's "Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946-1960," and "The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity,", These concepts can be summarized as follows:
Southern Cradle-Egyptian Model:
- Abundance of vital resources.
- Sedentary-agricultural.
- Gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature with a spirit of justice.
- Matriarchal family.
- Emancipation of women in domestic life.
- Territorial state.
- Xenophilia.
- Cosmopolitanism.
- Social collectivism.
- Material solidarity - alleviating moral or material misery
- Idea of peace, justice, goodness and optimism.
- Literature emphasizes novel tales, fables and comedy.
Northern Cradle-Greek Model:
- Bareness of resources.
- Nomadic-hunting (piracy)
- Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival.
- Patriarchal family.
- Debasement/enslavement of women.
- City state (fort)
- Xenophobia.
- Parochialism.
- Individualism.
- Moral solitude.
- Disgust for existence, pessimism.
- Literature favors tragedy.
Zones of Confluence: Meeting or mingling area for the two cradles above
Most anthropologists see commonalities in African culture but only in a very broad, generic sense, intimately linked with economic systems, etc. There are common patterns such as circumcision, matriarchy etc., but whether these are part of a unique, gentler, more positive "Southern cradle" of peoples, versus a more grasping, patriarchal-flavored "Northern cradle" are considered problematic by many scholars, as is grouping the complexity of human cultures into two camps. Extremely warlike peoples, for example, the Zulu, appear frequently in the "Southern Cradle". Many cultures the world over show similar developments and a mixture of traits.
Analyses of other scholars (Hiernaux 1975, Keita, 1990 et al.) eschew "southern" and "northern" camps and point to a narrower focus that demonstrates cultural, material and genetic connections between Egypt and other nearby African (Nubian, Saharan, and Sudanic) populations. These connections appear not only in linguistics, (see Languages demonstrating section below) but in cultural areas such as religion. As regards Egyptian religion for example, there appear to be more solid connections with the cultures of the Sudan and northeast Africa than Mesopotamia, according to mainstream research:
-
- "It is doubtful whether Osiris can be regarded as equal to Tammuz or Adonis, or whether Hathor is related to the "Great Mother." There are closer relations with northeast African religions. The numerous animal cults (especially bovine cults and panther gods) and details of ritual dresses (animal tails, masks, grass aprons, etc) probably are of African origin. The kinship in particular shows some African elements, such as the king as the head ritualist (i.e., medicine man), the limitations and renewal of the reign (jubilees, regicide), and the position of the king's mother (a matriarchal element). Some of them can be found among the Ethiopians in Napata and Meroe, others among the Prenilotic tribes (Shilluk)."
Languages demonstrating African cultural unity
Diop rejected white civilizer-flavored linguistic theories, such as that advanced by researcher Carl Meinhof, which held that an influx of Caucasoid- or Hamitic-speaking peoples entered Africa to dominate slower-witted negro tribes. More careful race-neutral scholarship after World War II, such as that of Greenberg, et al. largely supports Diop's rejection of the white civilizer approach.Diop further argued that the languages of Nile Valley peoples also demonstrated a broad commonality and unity organic to African peoples and attempted to demonstrate relationships between Ancient Egyptian, modern Coptic of Egypt and Wolof, a Senegalese language of West Africa, with the latter two having their origin in the former. (Diop: Parenté génétique de l’egyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines). Diop's work has been further expanded by Afrocentric scholar Ivan van Sertima
Ivan van Sertima
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima was an associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States....
.
While modern linguistic studies have challenged Diop's Wolof language connection,
as regards the key Nile Valley peoples, they have moved away from earlier notions of a "Hamitic" race speaking Hamito-Semitic languages. They place the Egyptian language in a more localized context, centered around its general Saharan and Nilotic roots.(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996) Linguistic analysis (Diakanoff 1998) places the origin of the Afro-Asiatic languages in northeast Africa, with older strands south of Egypt, and newer elements straddling the Nile Delta and Sinai.
Some modern linguistic research throws Diop's Wolof claim into question but connections have been found in several African languages that share features with Egyptian, such as the Chadic languages of west and central Africa, the Cushitic languages of northeast Africa, and the Semitic languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Broad black worldwide phenotype
While acknowledging the common genetic inheritance of all humankind and common evolutionary threads, Diop identified a black phenotypePhenotype
A phenotype is an organism's observable characteristics or traits: such as its morphology, development, biochemical or physiological properties, behavior, and products of behavior...
, stretching from India, to Australia to Africa, with physical similarities in terms of dark skin and a number of other characteristics. In an interview in 1985, Diop argued that race was a relevant category and that phenotype or physical appearance is what matters in historic social relations.
If we speak only of genotype, I can find a black who, at the level of his chromosomes, is closer to a Swede than Peter BothaPik BothaRoelof Frederik "Pik" Botha is a former South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era...
is. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. It is the physical appearance which counts. This black, even if on the level of his cells he is closer to a Swede than Peter Botha, when he is in South Africa he will still live in Soweto. Throughout history, it has been the phenotype which has been at issue, we mustn't lose sight of this fact. The phenotype is a reality, physical appearance is a reality. And this appearance corresponds to something which makes us say that Europe is peopled by white people, Africa is peopled by black people, and Asia is people by yellow people. It is these relationships which have played a role in history."
Diop as a racialist
Academic detractors charge Diop with racism, based particularly on his claim that the ancient Egyptians were Black. Defenders maintain that Diop's critics routinely misrepresent his views, typically defining negroes as a 'true' type south of the Sahara to cast doubt on his work, Questions such as "Were the ancient Egyptians black?" are typically misrepresented and framed in these stereotypical terms, it is claimed, so as to quickly dismiss his work and avoid engaging it point by point. Diop by contrast in his 'African Origin ofCivilization,' argues against the European stereotypical conception. He holds that the range of peoples and phenotypes under the designation "negre" included those with a wide range of physical variability, from light brown skin and aquiline noses to jet black skin and frizzy hair, well within the diversity of peoples of the Nilotic region. Diop also acknowledged that the ancient Egyptians absorbed "foreign" genes at various times in their history (the Hyskos for example) but held that this admixture did not change their essential ethnicity.
Diop also appeared to express doubts about the concept of race. At a UNESCO colloquium in Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
in 1981, he asserted: "I don't like to use the notion of race (which does not exist)...We must not attach an obsessional importance to it. It is a hazard of the evolution." This outlook was unlike many of the contemporary white writers he questioned. Indeed he eschewed racial chauvinism, arguing: 'We apologise for returning to notions of race, cultural heritage, linguistic relationship, historical connections between peoples, and so on. I attach no more importance to these questions than they actually deserve in modern twentieth-century societies.'
Diop repudiated racism or supremacist theories, arguing for a more balanced view of African history than it was getting during his era. Since he struggled against how racial classifications were used by the European academy in relation to African peoples, much of his work has a strong 'race-flavored' tint. A number of individuals such as US college professor Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries
Leonard Jeffries Jr. is an American professor of black studies at the City College of New York, part of the City University of New York. He achieved national prominence in the early 1990s for his controversial statements about Jews and other white people...
have advanced a more chauvinist view, citing Diop's work.
Diop and the arbitrary sorting of categories
Diop's fundamental criticism of scholarship on the African peoples was that classification schemes pigeonholed them into categories defined as narrowly as possible, while expanding definitions of Caucasoid groupings as broadly as possible. He held that this was both hypocrisy and bad scholarship, that ignored the wide range of indigenous variability of African peoples.Diop and criticism of the Saharan barrier thesis
Diop held that despite the Sahara, the genetic, physical and cultural elements of indigenous African peoples were both in place and always flowed in and out of Egypt, noting transmission routes via Nubia and the Sudan, and the earlier fertility of the Sahara. More contemporary critics assert that notions of the Sahara as a dominant barrier in isolating sub-Saharan populations are both flawed and simplistic in broad historical context, given the constant movement of people over time, the fluctuations of climate over time (the Sahara was once very fertile), and the substantial representation of "sub Saharan" traits in the Nile Valley among people like the Badari.The entire region shows a basic unity based on both the Nile and Sahara, and cannot be arbitrarily diced up into pre-assigned racial zones. As Egyptologist Frank Yurco notes:
- "Climatic cycles acted as a pump, alternately attracting African peoples onto the Sahara, then expelling them as the aridity returned (Keita 1990). Specialists in predynastic archaeology have recently proposed that the last climate-driven expulsion impelled the Saharans...into the Nile Valley ca. 5000-4500 BCE, where they intermingled with indigenous hunter-fisher-gatherer people already there (Hassan 1989; Wetterstorm 1993). Such was the origin of the distinct Egyptian populace, with its mix of agriculture/pastoralism and hunting/fishing. The resulting Badarian people, who developed the earliest Predynastic Egyptian culture, already exhibited the mix of North African and Sub-Saharan physical traits that have typified Egyptians ever since (Hassan 1985, Yurco 1989; Trigger 1978; Keita 1990; Brace et al. 1993)... Language research suggests that this Saharan-Nilotic population became speakers of the Afro-Asiatic languages... Semitic was evidently spoken by Saharans who crossed the Red Sea into Arabia and became ancestors of the Semitic speakers there, possibly around 7000 BC... In summary we may say that Egypt was a distinct North African culture rooted in the Nile Valley and on the Sahara."
Diop and criticism of true Negro classification schemes
Diop held that scholarship in his era isolated extreme stereotypes as regards African populations, while ignoring or downplaying data on the ground showing the complex linkages between such populations. Modern critics of the racial clustering approach coming after Diop echo this objection, using data from the oldest Nile Valley groupings as well as current peoples. This research has examined the ancient Badarian group, finding not only cultural and material linkages with those further south but physical correlations as well, including a southern modal cranial metric phentoype indicative of the Tropical African in the well-known Badarian group.Such tropical elements were thus in place from the earliest beginnings of Egyptian civilization, not isolated somewhere South behind the Saharan barrier. This is considered to be an indigenous development based on microevolutionary principles (climate adaptation, drift and selection) and not the movement of large numbers of outside peoples into Egypt.
As regards living peoples, the pattern of complexity repeats itself, calling into question the merging and splitting methods of Jensen, et al. Research in this area challenges the groupings used as (a) not reflecting today's genetic diversity in Africa, or (b) an inconsistent way to determine the racial characteristics of the Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
ians. Studies of some inhabitants of Gurna, a population with an ancient cultural history, in Upper Egypt, illustrate the point. In a 2004 study, 58 native inhabitants from upper Egypt were sampled for mtDNA.
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 on the ground. Critics note that similar narrow definitions are not attempted with groups often classified as Caucasoid.
Our results suggest that the Gurna population has conserved the trace of an ancestral genetic structure from an ancestral East African population, characterized by a high M1 haplogroup frequency. The current structure of the Egyptian population may be the result of further influence of neighbouring populations on this ancestral population
Diop and criticism of mixed-race theories
Diop disputed sweeping definitions of mixed races in relation to African populations, particularly when associated with the Nile Valley. He acknowledged the existence of 'mixed' peoples over the course of Egyptian history but also argued for indigeous variants already in situ as opposed to massive insertions of Hamites, Mediterraneans, Semites or Cascasoids into ancient groupings. Mixed race theories have also been challenged by contemporary scholars in relation to African genetic diversity. These researchers hold that they too often rely on a stereotypical conception of pure or distinct races that then go on to intermingle. However such conceptions are inconsistently applied when it comes to African peoples, where typically, a "true negro" is identified and defined as narrowly as possible, but no similar attempt is made to define a "true white". These methods it is held, downplay normal geographic variation and genetic diversity found in many human populations and have distorted a true picture of African peoples.- Keita and Kittles (1999) argue that modern DNA analysis points to the need for more emphasis on clinal variation and gradations that are more than adequate to explain differences between peoples rather than pre-conceived racial clusters. Variation need not be the result of a "mix" from categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid, but may be simply a contiuum of peoples in that region from skin color, to facial features, to hair, to height. The present of aquiline features for example, may not be necessarily a result of race mixture with Caucasoids, but simply another local population variant in situ. On a bigger scale, the debate reflects the growing movement to minimize race as a biological construct in analyzing the origins of human populations.
Diop and the African context
In summary, modern anthropological and DNA scholarship repeats and confirms many of the criticisms made by Diop as regards to arbitrary classifications and splitting of African peoples, and confirms the genetic linkages of Nile Valley peoples with other African groups, including East Africa, the Sahara, and the Sudan. This modern research also confirms older analyses, (Arkell and Ucko 1956, Shaw 1976, Falkenburger 1947, Strouhal 1971, Blanc 1964, et al.,). This same modern scholarship however in turn challenges aspects of Diop's work, particularly his notions of a worldwide black phenotype.- Perhaps Diop's greatest achievement is his insistence in placing Nile Valley peoples in their local and African context, drawing a picture of a stable, ancient population deriving much of its genetic inheritance from that context, as opposed to attempts to split, cluster, subdivide, define and regroup them into other contexts. Such a vision of inherent unity and continuity, ironically, is also supported in part by modern mainstream Egyptologists such as Frank Yurco:
(F. Yurco "An Egyptological Review", 1996)
Works
- Rousseau, Madeleine and Cheikh Anta Diop (1948) "1848 Abolition de l'esclavage - 1948 evidence de la culture nègre", Le musée vivant, issue 36-37. Special issue of journal "consacré aux problèmes culturels de l'Afrique noire a été établi par Madeleine Rousseaux et Cheikh Anta Diop." Paris: APAM, 1948.
- (1954) Nations nègres et culture. Paris: Éditions africaines. Second edition (1955), Nations nègres et culture: de l'antiquité nègre-égyptienne aux problèmes culturels de l'Afrique noire d'aujourd'hui, Paris: Éditions Africaines. Third edition (1973) Paris: Présence Africaine, ISBN 2708702633, ISBN 2708703625. Fourth edition (1979) ISBN 2708706888.
- (1959) L' unité culturelle de l'Afrique noire: domaines du patriarcat et du matriarcat dans l'antiquité classique, Paris: Présence Africaine. Second edition (c1982) Paris: Présence Africaine, ISBN 2708704060, ISBN 9782708704060. English edition (1959) The cultural unity of negro Africa Paris. Subsequent English edition (c1962) Paris: Présence africaine. Subsequent English edition (1978) The cultural unity of Black Africa: the domains of patriarchy and of matriarchy in classical antiquity, Chicago: Third World Press, ISBN 0883780496. Subsequent English edition (1989) London: Karnak House, ISBN 0907015441.
- (1960) L' Afrique noire pré-coloniale. Étude comparée des systèmes politiques et sociaux de l’Europe et de l’Afrique noire, de l’antiquité à la formation des états modernes. Paris: Présence africaine. Second edition (1987) ISBN 2708704796. (1987) Precolonial Black Africa: a comparative study of the political and social systems of Europe and Black Africa, from antiquity to the formation of modern states. Translated by Harold J. Salemson. Westport, Conn.: L. Hill, ISBN 088208187X, ISBN 0882081888, ISBN 9780882081878, ISBN 9780882081885.
- (1960) Les Fondements culturels, techniques et industriels d’un futur état fédéral d’Afrique noire. Paris. Second revised and corrected edition (1974) Les Fondements économiques et culturels d'un état fédéral d'Afrique noire, Paris: Présence africaine.
- (1967) Antériorité des civilisations nègres: mythe ou vérité historique? Series: Collection Préhistoire-antiquité négro-africaine. Paris: Présence africaine. Second edition (c1993) ISBN 2708705628, ISBN 9782708705623.
- (1968) Le laboratoire de radiocarbone de l'IFAN. Series: Catalogues et documents, Institut Français d'Afrique Noire No. 21.
- (1974) The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. (Translation of sections of Antériorité des civilisations négres and Nations nègres et culture). Translated from the French by Mercer Cook. New York: L. Hill, ISBN 0882080210, ISBN 0882080229
- (1974) Physique nucléaire et chronologie absolue. Dakar: IFAN. Initiations et études Africaines no. 31.
- (1977) Parenté génétique de l'égyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines: processus de sémitisation, Ifan-Dakar: Les Nouvelles Éditions Africaines, ISBN 2723601625.
- (1978) Black Africa : the economic and cultural basis for a federated state. Translation by Harold Salemson of Fondements économiques et culturels d'un état fédéral d'Afrique noire. Westport, Conn.: Lawrence Hill & Co, ISBN 0882080962, ISBN 1556520611. New expanded edition (1987) ISBN 0865430586 (Africa World Press), ISBN 088208223X.
- UNESCO Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of Meroitic Script. Cheikh Anta Diop (ed.) (1978), The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of Meroitic script: proceedings of the symposium held in Cairo from 28 January to 3 February 1974, UNESCO. Subsequent edition (1997) London: Karnak House, ISBN 0907015999.
- (c1981) Civilisation ou barbarie: anthropologie sans complaisance. Présence africaine, ISBN 2708703943, ISBN 9782708703940. English edition (c1991) Civilization or barbarism: an authentic anthropology Translated from the French by Yaa-Lengi Meema Ngemi, edited by Harold J. Salemson and Marjolijn de Jager. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lawrence Hill Books, c1991. ISBN 1556520484, ISBN 1556520484, ISBN 1556520492.
- (1989) Nouvelles recherches sur l'égyptien ancien et les langues négro-africaines modernes. Paris: Présence africaine, ISBN 2708705075.
- (1989) Egypte ancienne et Afrique Noire. Reprint of article in Bulletin de l'IFAN, vol. XXIV, series B, no. 3-4, 1962, pp. 449 à 574. Université de Dakar. Dakar: IFAN.
- (c1990) Alerte sous les tropiques: articles 1946-1960: culture et développement en Afrique noire. Paris: Présence africaine, ISBN 2708705482. English edition (1996) Towards the African renaissance: essays in African culture & development, 1946-1960. Translated by Egbuna P. Modum. London: Karnak House, ISBN 0907015808, ISBN 0907015859.
- Joseph-Marie Essomba (ed.) (1996) Cheikh Anta Diop: son dernier message à l'Afrique et au monde. Series: Sciences et connaissance. Yaoundé, Cameroun: Editions AMA/COE.
- (2006) Articles : publiés dans le bulletin de l'IFAN, Institut fondamental d'Afrique noire, (1962–1977). Series: Nouvelles du sud ; no 35-36. Yaoundé: Silex. ISBN 2912717159, ISBN 9782912717153, ISBN 9789956444120, ISBN 995644412X.
Festschrift
- Prince Dika-Akwa nya Bonambéla (ed.) (2006), Hommage du Cameroun au professeur Cheikh Anta Diop. Dakar: Panafrika. Dakar: Nouvelles du Sud. ISBN 2912717353, ISBN 9782912717351.
Further reading
- François-Xavier Fauvelle (1996), L'Afrique de Cheikh Anta Diop: histoire et idéologie. Karthala Editions (in French)
External links
- Watch Video: Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop on African Origins of Humanity
- Cheikh Anta Diop Conference
- Cheikh Anta Diop at Africa Within
- A Brief Biography of an African Champion at Raceandhistory.com
- Summary of Cheikh Anta Diop's Work (in French) at Ankhonline.com
- Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar
- Cheikh Anta Diop, The Pharaoh of Knowledge
- Listen to interviews with Cheikh Anta Diop (in French) at Rufisque News