Good evening. We are very glad to have you with us for this very special program. This program is special because with this evening's guest, we reach a plateau in our quest to find out who we have been and who we are.
Our guest... is one of the leading anthropologists and Egyptologists in the world, Dr. Sheikh Anta Diop. Dr. Diop was born in Senegal and at age 23 he went to Paris, France to continue advanced studies in physics.
In 1966, the first world black festival of arts and culture held in Dakar, Senegal, honored Dr. Diop and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois as the scholars who exerted the greatest influence on black thought in the 20th century. Dr. Diop, who is also a linguist, is director of the radiocarbon laboratory at the Fundamental Institute of Black Africa at the University of Dakar in Senegal. In this first segment, Dr. Diop...
which is on horseback, on Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. We are able to say scientifically today, to say with certainty, that mankind was born in Africa. on the latitude more or less of Kenya, and that area which comprises Kenya, Ethiopia, and Tanzania. Et qui va même jusqu'en Afrique du Sud, suivant un axe nord-sud. And going on a north-south axis all the way south to South Africa.
Or, une humanité qui est née sous une telle latitude au niveau de l'équateur n'aurait pas pu survivre. if it had not been pigmented black from its appearance. Nature creates nothing by chance and it has protected humanity, which was born under the equator in Africa, by a screen of melanin, which is why the first men were not born. necessarily black until they had not yet come out of Africa. Nature doesn't do anything by chance, and it's for that reason that humanity, mankind, that was born in a sub-equatorial region, was given melanin to protect its skin, and it's for that reason that it is clear, it is certain, that first man had to be a black man.
It's only when this humanity will come out of Africa for all the people around the world. the rest of the earth that it will change its appearance according to the geographic regions and that other races will appear it is only after that race left africa to people other parts of the world that had different climatic uh different climatic uh phenomenon that that that man changed and became and took on different aspects a different had a different look of expansion, allowing them to leave Africa. So they have never been out of Africa in the current state of research. According to the scientific information that we have now, it appears that the first three of these species, which is not necessary to name, never acquired the potential or never arrived at the potential for exporting or leaving their own area.
No, they never had the potential to expand and to leave Africa. Yes. The three others did leave Africa.
And the fifth have disappeared. The fourth and the fifth of these species disappeared. There is only the sixth, which is the man we are. And what remains is man as we know him, that sixth species.
The fifth, the fifth is the one I projected here. You see it. This man looks a lot like the current man, but he has not yet reached the state of the current man. It's the fifth?
It's the fifth. This is... The fifth of these species, which as you will see, resembles very much man as we know him today.
Mais il n'était pas encore très différencié. He was not yet very, but man as we know him today was not differentiated a great deal from this man. Si vous le regardez, vous verrez que la différence qui le sépare de l'homme que nous sommes, c'est qu'il n'a pas de front. Vous voyez, les yeux sont presque à la place du front. You will see that the difference, the major difference here is...
that the fifth species did not have a forehead. You'll see that the eyes are situated very close to the top of the head. C'est très important, ce détail, il faut le remarquer, il n'a pas de front.
Donc, il n'a pas son cerveau intérieur, et très différent du cerveau intérieur de l'homme actuel. Si vous le regardez, c'est comme s'il avait les yeux ici. It's very important, this is a very important detail. It means that the brain inside was very different from the brain inside of man as we know him today.
Et quand on étudie... And studying his brain... He does not have the anterior lobe of the brain. In anatomical studies, it has been determined that he did not have this anterior lobe. That is the major difference, the fundamental difference between Homo sapiens sapiens.
which is what we are. This species was never able to overcome nature to an extent that he was able to create works of art. Ensuite, je passe au suivant.
This next slide. Là, nous arrivons à l'homme comme vous et moi. C'est l'homme du milieu.
And now we have the man in the middle is the man that we are. C'est le crâne du milieu. C'était un noir.
C'est l'homme que nous appelons dans la littérature, si vous voulez, préhistorique, l'homme de Grimaldi. This was a black man. And the right skull is the first white man to appear on Earth following the transformation of the man of the millennium.
is in our collection at the University of Dakar. L'homme qui est à droite maintenant, on le verra que l'homme qui est au milieu est entré en Europe il y a 40,000 ans. 40,000 years ago, the man in the middle left Africa and went to Europe.
Il va vivre en Europe de moins 40,000 ans à moins 20,000 ans. Et c'est pendant cette période d'adaptation That man, that is... The skull at the extreme right of the screen is that of Cro-Magnon Man.
It was between 40... and 20,000 years ago that the man in the middle left Africa to go into Europe at a time during what is called the final or the last glaciation. The climate in Europe was extremely cold. It was much colder.
than it is now. And during this period of some 20,000 years, he underwent the adaptation to become what we know as white men. Donc, c'est bel et bien. Si on s'en tient, sans préjugé. For rigorous scientific data, we are obliged to affirm in all serenity that it is the adaptation of the Grimaldi to this climate.
It is very clear to all of the scientists involved in this field, even if they are only... able to say it in their within themselves and unable to say it publicly that the man that we know conventionally to be a white man evolved from a black man over a period of some 20,000 years of adaptation to a different climate and if we are to say with any serenity resting totally on scientific data that is the conclusion that we must come to don't you I own being that humanity, by leaving Africa and adapting to the different climates of the Earth, gave birth to different races. That's how races were born, so race is a geographical notion. If the first man you see in the middle had never left Africa, there would have been no racial differentiation.
Humanity would be homogeneous and black. If the man that we see in the middle there had never left Africa to people other parts of the world, and if those people in other parts of the world in different climates had not, through the process of adaptation, become what they are in various regions of the world, all man would be homogeneous, and all men would be black. The rest of the Earth would not have been black.
If that man had not left Africa, the rest of the world would have remained a desert, would never have been people. So, here we are. You see, I answered the question you asked me. By asking where is the black in the evolution of the human species, I answer that, in all scientific rigor, the first... And so to answer precisely your first question, which is or was, to what extent or is, in what way do blacks figure in the origin of man, the answer is the first man was black, and it was he who gave birth to other races of the world.
You have knocked out my first five questions. You have annulled the need to ask the first five questions. Yes, yes, you have to ask them, because I had mentally noted things that I would like to answer.
You must still ask them, even if you do it quickly, because he has reserved other information in response to them. Why was it not possible for mankind to have been born in many parts of the earth? Why was it not possible for mankind to have been born in many parts of the earth?
Precisely, when the studies of human paleontology were not yet enough, When human anthropology had not quite evolved to the extent that it has now, there were two theories that kept confronting one another. There was the theory that he has just explained, that man was born in one place and became... different as he people other parts of the world that theory had its defenders there was another this first theory is the one we called that we always call the theory of monogenetism that is to say of a single origin This is called a monogenetic theory.
That is that there is one source for mankind. If the revolution was realized, there would have been a man born in Africa, another man born in Europe, another man born in Asia. So, the man would have known the appearance of humanity.
That would be the result, if you will. The second theory is that of, is a polygenetic theory, which believes or contends that man was born in Africa and also in Europe and also in Asia. In other words, that there were several, several, uh, locations in the world where man finds his origin.
And it is that that explains their differences. That theory has certain certain amount of sense, not that it made good sense, but it made a certain amount of sense. It would explain that there are different peoples in different parts of the world with different characteristics. But when we look closely, there are two facts that came to confirm this theory. But under closer scrutiny, there were two things that made this theory fall apart more or less.
Nature never passes through the mind. two times at the same point in its evolution. The first is that nature never strikes twice in its evolution.
It doesn't ever hit the same place two times. Nature doesn't create twice the same thing. In the animal kingdom... The same being.
The same being. In the animal kingdom, you can see that throughout the evolution of animals, at times... A being was created and it either disappeared or changed somewhat or a new being completely was created but never the same being twice. And to remain strictly scientific, it doesn't make common sense to say that man was created twice. On the other hand, prehistoric research has now proven that this theory seemed to be true.
The most unbelievable, which triumphed now at the level of all scientists. All men now know for sure that man has only one origin, and that it is in this same region of Kenya. Because it is there that we find, if you will, all the inner stages. All the inner stages.
It is in this region, that is this region in Kenya, where we find all of the most ancient evolutionary information. Thank you. And it's for this reason that scientists are now able to say with certainty that at least they know that this is the case, that man could only have been created one time.
All fossils that have been found outside of Africa have been found under close analysis to be much more recent than those found in Africa. And no other continent in the world has the complete series of fossils indicating the six specimens that I spoke of before. I told you that the first three specimens never came out of Africa.
That means that neither in Europe, nor in Asia, even less in America, we find these first three specimens, which are the beginning of humanity. These three specimens, which represent the very beginnings of mankind, cannot be found in Europe, they cannot be found in Asia, and of course cannot be found in America. They never left Africa.
The complete set remains in Africa. So, uh... The accumulation of the best information now makes it very clear that man had his origins in Africa. We have not found in the current state of science, on all the extent of America, from the land of fire to Alaska, there is only one modern man. And America was populated by the Detroit of Bering at the end of the last century.
glaciation dont j'ai parlé. Donc il n'existe que un seul spécimen, le dernier ici en Amérique. The only specimen as we've seen on the slide that appears in America is that of Homo sapiens sapiens.
America was peopled through the Bering Straits at the end of the final glaciation and it is for that reason that we find only Homo sapiens sapiens in America. In Asia we have Homo erectus. In Asia we have Homo erectus And the Neanderthal man and Homo sapiens In Europe we have the same Homo erectus, Neanderthal and Homo sapiens And all of them left Africa Some went through the Suez isthmus to go to the Southeast Asia And others went through the Gibraltar detroit to go through Spain in the middle of France. And from there, they went to Lake Baikal in the extreme east.
Some of them left by the Suez Canal or the Isthmus of Suez to go into Asia and Eastern Europe. And some went by the Straits of Gibraltar up into the north and into Europe. theory this polycentric theory is to that theory it is essential or it makes the it makes the effort to establish a hierarchy of races that and to indicate that some races are inferior to others we could have assumed that for one reason or another there is a negation of intellectual capacities.
Because they would not have had the same heritage. Did I translate that correctly? I repeat, I said that if the three races had different origins, we could have assumed that they could have different intellectual capacities, and therefore defend the idea of racial inequality.
Is that clear? If the three races had had different origins, then one could say that say that they had different intellectual capacities, having had a different intellectual history. Donc, on aurait pu défendre l'inégalité des races.
Cette théorie, donc, est pour la défense de l'inégalité des races, la théorie du polycentrisme. The polycentric theory, then, is essential to defending the notion that there are inequalities between the races. C'est pour ça qu'elle a eu des défenseurs... It's for this reason they've had people to, that it has been defended by, so rigorously by or vigorously by people.
But science has without question set it aside. So the monogenetic theory shows that since the human species is common, that all human species have the same intellectual capacities, whether they are black, white or yellow. I am not in touch with the monogenetic theory. It's the monogenetic theory then that poses or will support the notion that because our origins are the same, we have the same intellectual capacities. I am not hoping to say, by saying that however, that blacks are superior to whites.
That would also be false. No race is superior to any other. All races have the same intellectual capacity. for all races. We have done extremely advanced work here in America, in Europe and everywhere on brain anatomy.
studies of the anatomy of the brain have been numerous and very extensive here in this country, in Africa, and everywhere in the world. In Europe. And in Europe. And we have never found significant differences that allow racial uniracization, especially at the level of the anatomy of the inner brain, which I told you about.
And in no way has a difference... significant as any significant difference been found to indicate that there is some anatomical difference in the brains of the various races um and certainly not in the and certainly not in the case of the the fourth part of the forefront of the brain uh The question of human biology is also a question that is acquired by all the serene, objective scientists. The races have the same intellectual capacities.
One can be dominated momentarily by the other. In ancient times, the blacks dominated the whites, as we will see later. Then the blacks...
It was blacks who dominated, and that is perhaps not the case now. No. You have spent much of your life studying the history of Egypt.
Who were the ancient Egyptians? How did they look? Here, this reproduction is important. This is a very important reproduction.
This is in the tomb of Ramses III. This is found in the tomb of Ramses III. The 20th dynasty.
The person on the left. The person on the left. This is the general type represented by the Egyptian artist himself.
Le second, c'est le type général des Européens de l'art, si vous voulez, de tous les Occidentaux. And the second person or personage is the general type of all the Europeans represented by the artist. Le troisième, c'est le type général des Européens de l'art.
And the third personage is the general type representing all the other groups found in the interior of the continent. Of Africa. Of the continent of Africa. Beep.
Beep. Good evening and welcome to the final part of our interview with one of the leading international scholars in the fields of anthropology and Egyptology, Dr. Sheikh Anta Diop. Dr. Diop, a nuclear physicist, is director of the...
Radiocarbon laboratory at the University of Dakar in Senegal in this segment. Dr. Diop discusses a theme designed to well Let's take a look This is a picture of the tilt down man and it's to demonstrate to you the length to which certain anthropologists have gone to establish their theories the pilgrim man was created by a british anthropologist in 1912 by the name of uh a geologist i'm sorry he was a geologist mr dance he fabricated by piece by piece this fake fossil He dug in the dirt in Sussex in England. Like modern man, he has eyes and he has the forehead as we do, as modern man does.
But you will see. You can see that his mandible, I think it's called, is that of a monkey. Yes.
And his canines are that of a monkey. the field of physical anthropology to the theory of pre-Sapiens. It was to demonstrate that Homo sapiens was born in England. From this fabrication grew a theory called the pre-Sapien theory, which was manufactured to establish that this man was the predecessor of modern man. And that, in fact, man had his origins or was born in Europe.
Particulièrement en Angleterre. And especially in England. Vous avez ici des défenseurs, je ne sais pas si je peux les citer, mais il y a des anthropologues américains qui ont épousé cette thèse-là et nous savons aujourd'hui qu'elle est fausse.
And there are American anthropologists who took this theory as their own and defended it. And we know today today that it is false. And in France also there were anthropologists who defended the theory and of course we now know that it was false.
And we know that it is false or we learned that it was false by another. anthropologist, English anthropologist, who analyzed it and discovered that it was in fact fake. C'est le professeur Oakley qui travaille au British Museum et qui a démontré la fausseté de ce spécimen en 1954. It was in 1955 that Professor Oakley, working at the British Museum, analyzed this fossil and discovered it to be false.
Mais vous voyez, pendant près de cinq ans... But the bad had already been done. For 50 years, this was the theory that created the clash between the polycentric and the monocentric theories.
That is to those anthropologists or those scientists who are working with a clear head and a clear idea or objective spirit, and we must note them as we go along, as we must note Professor Oakley in this case. You have spent much of your life studying the history of the ancient Egyptians. Who were the ancient Egyptians? How did they look? I don't know.
Here you have the first king of the earth, the very first. And the Egyptians looked like this man. and the lines of the pharaohs that follow. The ancient Egyptians were not white, who had become progressively black.
and by losing their features. But at the beginning, they were authentic blacks who, at the base age, would get here. with whites They were instead black people, authentic black people but which never ceased to be black So, wait, I say in one word So you see that the ancient Egyptians were black like all the other natural creatures of Africa. You can see that the first men, the first Egyptians were black men, like black men that you see in Africa now. Here, This is a very important reproduction.
This is found in the tomb of Ramses III. The 20th dynasty. The person on the left.
This is the general type represented by the Egyptian artist himself. This is the general type represented by the Egyptian artist himself. Le second, c'est le type général de tous les Européens de l'art, si vous voulez, de tous les Occidentaux. And the second person or personage is the general type of all the Europeans represented by the artist.
Le troisième, c'est le type général de tous les Européens de l'art. And the third personage is the general type representing all the other groups found in the interior of the continent. Of Africa.
Of the continent of Africa. Yes. The fourth personage is the general type of all the Semites living in Asia. And this is...
This is a different race. The different races represented by the artist, and these are the races that existed in his time as he saw them. We are 1,200 years before Jesus Christ.
Yeah. Don't. You see that the Egyptians never got confused with the Europeans. So the Egyptians were never confused with the Europeans, nor with the Semites, and they never differentiated themselves on the color. And they never became different on an ethnic plane from the other Africans.
So this is fairly significant. from this point of view. Or cette image, c'est la première fois depuis que Lepsus, c'est un relevé d'un savant allemand qui s'appelle Lepsus. This was discovered by a German scientist who is called Lepsus. Et vous ne l'avez jamais vu reproduit dans un autre ouvrage avant cette projection.
And before this, you have not seen this reproduced in any other form? or any other work. Vous voyez donc que c'est de cette manière que la science, n'est-ce pas, s'est écartée petit à petit de la réalité et de la vérité historique en ce qui concerne l'Égypte.
And so you can see how history departed little by little from the reality. How did ancient writers describe the ancient Egyptians? Tous les écrivains grecs Even the Romans of Antiquity have deposited in the same way to affirm that the ancient Egyptians of their time who were already very mixed, were black.
All of the writers of ancient Greek and ancient Rome agreed that the Egyptians of their epoch, of their time, were in fact black. Or, this Egypt is the Egypt of the end, of the end of Egyptian history. But these were the Egyptians of the end of the great Egyptian civilization.
Jesus Christ, this is a period of 960. For a period of some 900 years, beginning at the 4th century before Jesus Christ and going through the 5th century after, the Greeks were constantly witnessing to the fact that the Egyptians were black. So they would be considered black from their origins, from their beginnings, all the way to the end of their history. all the way to the end of their civilization, as is indicated by the first king, the Slavich Result. I will show you quickly the others. Here you have Gozer, the third dynasty, 2778 BC.
Let's say 2800. 2,800 BC. With Djoser, all the technological elements of the Egyptian civilization were already in place. Everything we admire in Egypt, under this black pharaoh, already existed. The third dynasty?
The third dynasty, before the pyramids. The second will be the pyramid. With Djoser, all the elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place. With this king in the third dynasty, all of the things that we admire the Egyptians for are already in place. We will see that it is under his reign that the architecture in stone will be inaugurated, the great Egyptian architecture.
The great Egyptian architecture was evolved. under his reign. 2300 years before the birth of architecture in Greece. 2300 years before the birth of architecture in Greece. And also 2000 years before the birth of architecture.
We can say that at that time, the Greeks did not even exist in history. You can say, it can be said that at that point, the Greeks didn't even exist in history. Yes.
Mathematics Medicine Everything was already in place during his reign And so civilization or Egyptian civilization as we know it Was born under the reign of these pharaohs Here you have the Sphinx. This is the Sphinx. During the French mission that accompanied Napoleon when Napoleon went to Egypt.
These are Frenchmen who were part of a, on top of the Sphinx. They are measuring there on top of the Sphinx. They were part of a mission that accompanied Napoleon. Au 19e siècle. In the 19th century.
Vous voyez que le profil du Sphinx à cette époque-là était encore plus typiquement africain que maintenant. You see that the profile of the Sphinx at that time was even, was more authentically African than it is now. Depuis, l'érosion l'a détruit encore un petit peu. Vous savez, le vent de sable constamment qui frappe le visage.
Le vent et le sable ont érosé. eroded the Sphinx considerably. And you know that the nose of the Sphinx is in the British Museum. The nose of the Sphinx is in the British Museum. And we could have recovered it to see a little bit what the face was.
Egypt could very well try to recover it. That's at least the least of things. And the Egyptians are unable to have it back again to compare it with the Sphinx.
But maybe these trees are so typically African that no one wants to rebuild them as they were. It's... perhaps because the features are so typically African that no one wants to see that comparison be made. When was the slide, this drawing rendered done? Est-ce que vous pouvez nous dire la date de cette illustration?
Deux mille six cents avant Jésus-Christ, c'est l'époque des pyramides. Ici, nous sommes sous la quatrième dynastie, c'est le profil du pharaon Khefren. C'est la quatrième, oui? C'est pas le sphinx qu'il veut savoir, c'est l'illustration. at the time when Napoleon was there, wasn't he?
Yes. When was that? It was at the end of the 19th century. The end of the 19th century. I pass.
Here. You have here Amenophis I, you see that he is typically African. So you see that the pharaohs do not always paint their bodies in red ink. African habit.
All African peoples since the high prehistory have the habit of painting their bodies in red ink. This is Amenhotep I and you can see that he is, this is here with his natural skin color. He is not painted.
You can also see that his hair is kinky. It is this dynasty represented here that conquers all of the Western world. All of Western Asia. And also all of the... the Aegean Sea.
C'est une époque d'impérialisme africain. This is the period of African imperialism. À cette époque, c'est l'Afrique noire qui avait l'initiative historique. It's at that point that, it is at this point that Africans had the imperial initiative.
Et dominer tous les autres peuples, soit de la mer Aege, donc de la Méditerranée orientale ou de l'Asie occidentale. And they dominated all of the people from the Mediterranean. Mediterranean all the way into the Far East. A pharaoh of this dynasty, who was of this dynasty, who was called Thutmosis III, had conquered 111 states. Conquered 111 states in all.
And they made them part of the Egyptian Empire. Here you have Ramses II and a Tutsi. The relationship is also striking between the head of the pharaoh, the head of the Tutsi and the head of the pharaoh. is the second and a Tutsi warrior. It's remarkable the similarity between the Tutsi's hairdo and the helmet worn by the pharaoh.
He is one of the most prestigious of the Egyptian pharaohs. And you see the same reality, anthropological reality, that is African, the similarities between the two. You can see another... Another pharaoh who is also black.
Typical of that time. This is the founder of the 11th dynasty. For some 1,000 years, the city of Teb in Upper Egypt worshipped this pharaoh. Here you see a people who represent these gods in black color. It's Osiris who is always represented under the features of a black man.
Here you see the representation. of one people who always indicated their gods to be black of skin color. Here you have Nathan, the first prophet who said that God is the inventor of monotheism. This is the inventor of monotheism.
Yes. The first to say that there was one God. This is the first Pharaoh to say that there is one God and that God must not be represented by images. He was before Moses. There was no Bible, not yet.
And so it is even... Africa that is the origin of monotheistic religion as well. This pharaoh had six daughters with his queen.
Nefertari. One of the daughters is in the lap of the queen. You'll see her again in the...
That's right. See how she is typically African. An African would know that this is a totemic for her.
What happened? I have compared her with one of the African tribes that is known for the forming of the skull. Here I have a publication of the magazine of Ivan Van Sertema and Professor Finch.
Dr. Finch. I chose these because they are so much better done than others that I have. You can see the woman on the right is the mother of the pharaoh you saw earlier, the pharaoh Ignaton, who is on the left, and his mother is on the right, the queen Tai. This is the pharaoh on the left, and this is his mother on the right.
Her name is Tai. This queen played a preeminent role in the diplomacy of Egypt at that time. This woman is the queen of Egypt. this woman had a preeminent role in diplomacy in Egypt at that time. All of the kings that I have spoken to about, who made their conquests up to the...
In the previous dynasty. Yes. So write to this woman.
wrote to this woman to intervene in these matters with her son so that they could be in the good graces of the Pharaoh. this king. So the pharaoh was still very young.
And you can see that this woman is the mother of the first prophet of the earth. And you can see that. Here is the mother, who is very African, and here is the first prophet himself. There you see this mother who is so typically African, and then you see next to her, also typically African, the first prophet of the world. Why is the history of Egypt so crucial to black people?
What's at stake? Because, as I often say, The Egyptian civilization, according to what I have just shown you, played the same role as the civilization of Africa, as the Greco-Roman civilization of the West. Because Egyptian civilization played the same role for Africa that the Greco-Roman civilizations played for the Western civilization.
Recreate a human science body in Africa, we must leave Egypt. Renew with Egyptian antiquities. Tied to ancient Egypt. les civilisations africaines avec l'histoire. It's the only way to reconcile African civilisations with history.
What would you say to the black parent who is satisfied with his or her child learning only European or white history? No. Il faut apprendre l'histoire des autres, mais il faut se connaître d'abord. It's fine to learn the history. history of others but you must know your own self first.
Sinon, un peuple qui perd la mémoire historique est devenu un peuple fragile. If a people forgets its historical memory or loses its historical memory, it becomes a very fragile people. Il se désagrège.
C'est la conscience historique qui nous permet de rester un peuple fort. They regress and it is that historical memory which permits them to be a strong people. That's why even in the diaspora, this consciousness must be verified.
This link must continue to exist wherever we are. Even in the diaspora, these ties must remain. This is not going against the laws of the different states in which we live today. This can only help us. and make our lives better in the various countries in which we live.
La plénitude culturelle doit faciliter la fraternisation des races. The fullness of our culture will help us in finding or seeking the fraternity among races that we must have in this world.