Audio Visual Analysis of Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop

On August 1,2011 ,professor frank Riley presented his world civilization class with an assignment to define civilization and it's pre requisites. In an effort define and form a logical response I did some research. During my research I came across ,a book titled "A clash of civilizations" written by Mr Samuel Huntington. Mr Huntington states in his book that a civilization is thus the highest cultural grouping of people and the broadcast level of cultural identity when distinguishing humans from other species.

But the mind boggling question at hand is before you can have a civilization where do the people that make up a civilization originate?

On August 4th 2011, i had the distinguished pleasure of viewing an interview of a man by the name of Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop that redefined my thoughts on concepts from my earliest experience with academia,helping me to realize that my history had been twisted with propaganda .Dr.Diop is considered to be a well respected scholar and a modern champion of African identity. he had the revolutionary idea to use the scientific method to disprove the many myths surrounding ancient origins of a people. He developed a way to test the levels of melanin in Egyptian mummies, which revealed that the ancient Egyptians were, indeed, Africans. He also argued that the Egyptian language was related to African dialects and can be connected to the Wolof language of today. By far, the most important theory that he sought to prove was that human life began in Africa. With the first half of the interview finished I must admit I was beyond shocked ,taken aback ,and eager to hear more of my history in which I had neglected to embrace due to the limited teachings of western civilization.

Finally part 2 of the interview began and Mr Diop stated that the first civilizations emerged in the Nile Basin on the eastern coast of Africa. It is from this basin that African people fanned out across the continent and onto other lands around 6th century BC. There are are two theories of human origin that exist and they are called monogenetic and polygenetic theories . The monogenetic view states that there is one source for mankind; man was born in one place and became different due to the climatic conditions to which he was exposed to. The polygenetic opinion claims that man has several locations of origin, which would explain the physiological differences between the races. this theory supports the notion that man was born in Africa, Europe, and Asia and there was no evolutionary or climatic development. Dr Diop states that there are two reasons why this theory is faulty. He says that nature never strikes twice in its evolution; she "the mother of the earth " doesn't create the same being twice. In addition, complete fossils have been found on the African continents, which proves that life began there.