Afrykanie w przedkolumbijskim Meksyku i Peru
Africans in Pre-Columbian Mexico and Peru

Author(s): Karol Piasecki
Subject(s): Anthropology, Cultural history, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, 19th Century
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Pre-Columbian America; Africans; physical anthropology
Summary/Abstract: According to a widely accepted model, America’s pre-Columbian people are of Asian descent. The current a priori rejection of the possibility of trans-ocean travel in Antiquity results from a failure to take into account the diffusion of ideas and from postcolonial political correctness and the prevailing paradigm of progress. Not only has considering the possibilities of pre-Columbian migration to America by sea now been abandoned, but clear evidence of such contacts has also been rejected. Undertaking research in this field is met with reluctance by the scientific community, especially in America. The anthropological evidence of pre-Columbian African-American contacts is of three types: 1) iconographic representations bearing the characteristics of the Black Variety, 2) human bone remains, the structure of which indicates belonging to the Black Variety or its hybrids with other varieties (White or Yellow), 3) Black Variety traits found among the Native American peoples, which are the result of pre-Columbian mestization. The second type of material is the most important, although also in the case of the first one we are dealing not with individual features of the physical structure but with a whole set of them, which statistically cannot be the result of chance or artistic stylization. The most important evidence, which unfortunately should be treated as preliminary and incomplete, comes from two regions: ancient Mexico and ancient Peru. In the first region it consists of archaeological finds associated with the Olmec culture or the pre-Olmec era (skulls indicating the population of the Black or mixed Black and White Varieties, as well as sculptures and bas-reliefs with features of the Black Variety, or mixed Black and White ones). For ancient Peru, the evidence is predominantly the ceramics of the Moche culture. The article presents mainly the results of osteological and iconographic research carried out and published by Andrzej Wierciński and the author. As the influence of the African and European populations was found, this suggests that the overseas visitors probably came from the contact region of both population massifs, i.e. the western Mediterranean, most likely from the Bronze Age. The results of the research prove beyond any doubt that Africans visited America before Columbus.

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