Dr. Diop's Insights on Human Evolution

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 Dia. 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, France, was 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 discusses the evolution of mankind. Today, science knows for sure that humanity was born in Africa, under the latitude of Kenya, in this region, 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. And going on a north-south axis all the way south to South Africa. So it's clear that any humanity that had its birth in that region would have been a part of the history of the country. could not have survived in an equatorial region without pigmentation. Nature does not create anything by chance. It has protected humanity, which was born under the equator in Africa, by a melanin screen. This is why the first men were necessarily black until they had not yet left Africa. Nature does not 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 is only when this humanity will leave Africa to populate the rest of the Earth that it will change its appearance according to the geographical 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 phenomena that that man changed and became and took on different aspects, had a different look. to expand their potential to get out of Africa. So they have never been out of Africa in the current 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. The fourth and the fifth of these species disappeared. And what remains is man as we know him, that sixth species. 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. Deceased? This is the fifth of these species, which as you will see, resembles very much man as we know him today. He was not yet very, but man as we know him today was not differentiated a great deal from this man. If you look at him, you will see that the difference that separates him from the man we know is that he does not have a forehead. You see, the eyes are almost in place of the forehead. 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. It's very important this detail you have to notice it has no forehead so it has no its inner brain is very different from the inner brain of the current man if you look at it it's like he had the eyes here. 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. 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... And this specimen could never sublimate nature to create the work of art. Then I move on to the next slide. There, we come to the man like you and me, the man of the middle. It's the skull of the middle, it's a black man, it's the man we call in the prehistoric literature, the man of Grimaldi. We know that it was a man of black morphology. When we see his morphology, we see that it was black. You can see that the shape of his face is very typical. And we compared him with an African skull of today, the left skull. It's a Malian skull that we have in our collection in Dakar, in Lifan. And the right skull is the first white man to appear on Earth. After the transformation... formation of the man of the world. You can see in looking at the skull in the middle that the morphology of this skull is very much that of blacks. That is the skull of modern man. To the left of it we have the skull of modern African man, is one of those that is in our collection at the University of Dakar. The man who is on the right now, we have the 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 It 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. So it's very good. If we hold on without prejudice, to give strictly scientific, we are obliged to affirm in all serenity that it is the... the adaptation of the Grimaldian to this cold climate which gave birth finally to the type that we call conventionally now the type the coderm or the white man the white is out of the black after a process of adaptation to a cold climate. And all specialists today know that in their inner fort, even if they don't say it with so much clarity. It is very clear to all of the scientists involved in this field, even if they are only able to say it 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. So we see that humanity, by leaving Africa and adapting to the different climates of the Earth, gave birth to different races. Voilà comment l'aira. race is 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 adapt... adaptation, become what they are in various regions of the world, all men would be homogeneous and all men would be 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 if? 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 popped people other parts of the world that theory had its defenders the other in order to set premiere to recess and con appellate con appell to you like you do you want to generate This is called a monogenetic theory. That is that there is one source for mankind. would be the result of several centers. The origin of humanity would have known several centers. And we called this theory the polycentrism theory, or polygenetism. The second theory 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 centers. several locations in the world where where man finds his origin. And it is that that explains their differences. This theory was even the theory of common sense. I am not saying common sense, but common sense. That is, it seemed, a priori, at first glance, more normal that there existed a man on each continent. That theory made a 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 at it 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. First, nature. of animals, 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 is the case. It is in this region, that is this region in Kenya, where we find all of the most ancient evolution. information it's and it's for this reason that scientists are now able to say with certainly it's with certainty that they at least they know that this is that this is the case that man could only have been created one time to live for soon can we to go a less to the other lafayette and Daniel analyze a palace to you come before seal purestunk a suit away on a free a killer correspond 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 have been found outside of Africa. that I spoke of before. Je vous ai dit que les trois premiers ne sont jamais sortis de l'Afrique. Ça veut dire que ni en Europe, ni en Asie, encore moins en Amérique, on ne trouve ces trois premiers spécimens qui sont le début de l'humanité. 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. Thank you. So, so many evidence has been accumulated that today gives the certainty that man was born in Africa. The accumulation then of the best information now makes it very clear that man had its origins in Africa. Here in America, you only have the specimen Sapiens sapiens. We have not found in the current state of science, on all the extent of America, from the Earth of Fire to Alaska, there is only one modern man. And America was populated by the Bering Detroit. at the end of the last glaciation I mentioned. So there is only one specimen, the last one here in America. 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? In Europe we have the Homo erectus, the Neanderthal man and the Homo sapiens. In Europe we have the Homo erectus, the Neanderthal man and the Homo sapiens. In Europe we have the same Homo erectus, Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. The two of them left Africa, one went through the Suez isthmus to go to the Southeast Asia and the other went through the Detroit of Gibraltar to go to the South East Asia. They went 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. Polycentrism is a theory that absolutely wanted to establish the hierarchization of races, that wanted to demonstrate that there are inferior races and superior races. This polycentric theory is, to that theory, it is essential, or it makes the effort to establish a hierarchy of races, and to indicate that some races are inferior to others. Indeed, if the three races of humanity... If humanity had different origins, we could have assumed that for one reason or another there is a hierarchization 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... could 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... It's for this reason that it has been defended so 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... It's the monogenetic theory then that poses the, or will support the notion that because our origins are the same, we have the same intellectual capacities. I'm not hoping to say, by saying that, however, that blacks are superior. superior to whites, that would also be false. No race is superior to any other. All races have the same intellectual capacity. The anterior lobe that I showed in the slide earlier is exactly the same for all the races. We have done extremely extensive work here in America, in Europe and everywhere on brain anatomy. In Europe. And in Europe. Surtout au niveau de l'anatomie du cerveau antérieur dont je vous ai parlé. And no, in no way has a difference significant, has any significant difference been found to indicate that there is some anatomical difference in the brains of the various races. Surtout au niveau du cerveau antérieur. And certainly not in the case of the fore part or the forefront of the brain. Yeah. Donc tous les biologiques... know what I am saying at this moment. All these analyzes, the results of these analyzes are conclusive and all those who deal precisely with human biology know everything I told you today. On this point, this question also at the level of all serene, objective scientists is a question that is acquired. That the races have the same intellectual capacities. But there may be, one can momentarily... dominated by the other, that's all. In ancient times, blacks dominated whites, as we will see later. Later, blacks and whites took over, as today. All biologists and those scientists who are aware of this information know that there is no longer any question as to whether there is a superiority among the races. It is however possible that... one race or another can dominate temporarily another race or other races. In antiquity, 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. Oh 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 scheme designed to, well, let's take a look. This is a... picture of the Piltdown Man and it is to demonstrate to you the length to which certain anthropologists have gone to establish their theories. The Piltdown Man was created by a British anthropologist in 1912 by the name of? Downson. Downson. He's a geologist. A geologist, I'm sorry. He was a geologist, Mr. Downson. Il a fabriqué de toutes pièces ce fossile qui est faux. He fabricated piece by piece this fake fossil. Il l'a enfoui dans les sables du Sussex en Angleterre. He dug in the dirt in Sussex in English, in England. Vous voyez bien, regardez bien. He has the upper forehead like a modern man. He is like us. He has eyes and a big forehead. But look at his jaw. His jaw is a monkey jaw. During the autumn. With the two canines. Look at the two canines. It's a monkey jaw. And canines are that of a monkey. And precisely, this specimen, which is a foe, gave birth, in the field of physical anthropology, to the pre-Sapiens theory. It was to demonstrate that Homo sapiens was born in England. which was manufactured to establish that this man was the predecessor of modern man. Yeah, and that, in fact, man had his origins or was born in Europe. And especially in England. And there are American anthropologists who took this theory as their own and defended it, and we know today that it is false. And in France, also, there were anthropologists who defended the theory, and of course we now know it was false. And we know that it is false, so we learned that it was false by another anthropologist, English anthropologist, who analyzed it and discovered that it was in fact a fake. It was Professor Oakley who worked at the British Museum and who demonstrated the falseness of this specimen in 1954. It was in 1955 that Professor Oakley... Oakley working at the British Museum analyzed this fossil and discovered it to be false. But you see, for almost 50 years, the evil was already done because the scientific community was divided into two currents, one current defending the monogenetic theory and one current defending the polygenetic theory, especially based on this specimen. 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. So we must give credit to those anthropologists or those scientists who 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? Ancient Egyptians, how did they look? Here you have the first king of the earth, the very first. And the Egyptians... 3,300 years before Jesus Christ. Yes. You can see by his features and those of the pharaohs and kings that will follow it that the ancient Egyptians were not white. They would have become progressively black, losing their features. But at the beginning, they were authentic blacks who, at the base period, would have mixed. with whites So, wait, I say in one word So you see that the ancient Egyptians were black like all the other natural people of Africa. You can see that the first men, the Egyptians were black men, like black men that you see in Africa now. Here, This reproduction is important. This is a very important reproduction. This is found in the tomb of Ramses III. The 20th dynasty. The 20th dynasty. 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 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. So the Egyptians were never confused with the Europeans, nor with the Semites, and they never became different on an ethnic plane from the other Africans. So this is fairly significant from this point of view. This was discovered by a German scientist who is called Lepsus. And before this you have not seen it. seen this reproduced in any other form or any other work. And so you can see how history departed little by little from the reality. How did ancient writers describe the ancient Egyptians? All the Greek and even Roman writers of antiquity have deposited in the same sense to affirm to us that the ancient Egyptians of their time, yet who were already very mixed, were blacks. 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, that's a period of 900 years. 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 civilization, as is indicated by the first king, the slide which we saw. I will show you quickly the others. Here you have Gozer, 3rd dynasty, 2778 BC. This is the 3rd dynasty of Egyptian civilization here. Let's say 2800. 2,800 B.C. With Djoser, all the technological elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place. Everything we admire in Egypt, under this pharaoh, black, already existed. The third dynasty? The third dynasty, before the pyramids. The second will be the one of the pyramids. With Djoser, all the elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place. With this king, in the third dynasty, all 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... We can say that at that time, the Greeks didn't 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. So the Egyptian civilization we are talking about was born under the reign of these typically African pharaohs. This is the Sphinx. 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. You see that the profile of the Sphinx at that time was even, was more authentically African than it is now. The wind and the sand has eroded the Sphinx considerably. The nose of the Sphinx is in the British Museum. And they are unable, the Egyptians are unable to have it back again to compare it with us. that no one wants to reconstruct them as they were. Can you tell us the date of this illustration? 2620 BC, it's the time of the pyramids. Here we are under the 4th dynasty, it's the profile of the pharaoh Kefren. It's not the Sphinx that he wants to know. It's the illustration at the time when Napoleon was there, isn't it? Yes. When was it? It's 1800, 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 don't always paint their bodies in red ink. It's an African custom. All African peoples since the high prehistory have the custom 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 Aegean Sea. This is the period of Africa. At that time, it was black Africa that had the historic initiative. And dominated all other peoples, whether from the Aegean Sea, so from the eastern Mediterranean or from Western Asia. And they dominated all of the people from the Mediterranean all the way into the Far East. They were of this dynasty, who were called Moses 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 similarity is also striking between the Pharaoh's head, the head of the Tutsi and the Pharaoh's helmet. the second and a Tutsi warrior. It's remarkable the similarity between the Tutsi's hairdo and the helmet worn by the Pharaoh. But this pharaoh is one of the most prestigious pharaohs in Egyptian history. You see that on both sides you have the same African reality, the same African anthropological reality. You see the same reality, anthropological reality that is African, the similarities between the two. You can see 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. This is Osiris, who is always represented under the features of a black man. Here you see the representation of the gods. of one people who always indicated their gods to be black of skin color. This is the inventor of monotheism. 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. The Bible did not exist yet. At that time, religious thought was still part of Africa. It was Africa that initiated the monotheistic religion. Africa that is the origin of monotheistic religion as well. You see, this pharaoh had six daughters with Queen Nefertari. 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 that dress. See how she is typically African. And an African would know that this is a totemic. 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 Vansertima 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 woman... this woman had a preeminent role in diplomacy in Egypt at that time. All of the kings that I have spoken to you about, who made their conquests up to the... In the previous dynasty. Wrote to this woman. to intervene in these matters with her son so that they could be in the good graces of this king. The pharaoh was still very young. And it's him, so you can see that the mother... This woman is the mother of the first prophet of the earth. And you see, 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... She 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? But because, as I often say, the Egyptian civilization, according to everything I have just shown you, has played the same role as the civilization of Africa, as the Greek-Roman civilization of the West. Because Egyptian civilization played the same role for Africa that the Greco-Roman civilizations played for the Western civilization. And so, if we want to recreate a human body of science in Africa, we must leave Egypt. Renew with the Egyptian antiquities. Tied to ancient Egypt. It's the only way to reconcile African civilizations 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. But you must know yourself first. Otherwise, a people who loses their historical memory becomes a fragile people. If a people forgets its historical memory or loses its historical memory, it becomes a very fragile people. They regress, and it is that historical memory which permits them to be a strong people. Even in the diaspora, these ties must remain. This can only help us and make our lives better in the various countries in which we live. The fullness of our culture will help us in finding or seeking the fraternity among races that we must have. this world.

Our guest is one of the leading anthropologists and Egyptologists in the world, Dr. Sheikh Anta Dia. 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, France, was 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 discusses the evolution of mankind.

Today, science knows for sure that humanity was born in Africa, under the latitude of Kenya, in this region, 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.

And going on a north-south axis all the way south to South Africa. So it's clear that any humanity that had its birth in that region would have been a part of the history of the country. could not have survived in an equatorial region without pigmentation.

Nature does not create anything by chance. It has protected humanity, which was born under the equator in Africa, by a melanin screen. This is why the first men were necessarily black until they had not yet left Africa. Nature does not 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 is only when this humanity will leave Africa to populate the rest of the Earth that it will change its appearance according to the geographical 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 phenomena that that man changed and became and took on different aspects, had a different look.

to expand their potential to get out of Africa. So they have never been out of Africa in the current 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. The fourth and the fifth of these species disappeared. And what remains is man as we know him, that sixth species.

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. Deceased? This is the fifth of these species, which as you will see, resembles very much man as we know him today.

He was not yet very, but man as we know him today was not differentiated a great deal from this man. If you look at him, you will see that the difference that separates him from the man we know is that he does not have a forehead. You see, the eyes are almost in place of the forehead.

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. It's very important this detail you have to notice it has no forehead so it has no its inner brain is very different from the inner brain of the current man if you look at it it's like he had the eyes here. 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.

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... And this specimen could never sublimate nature to create the work of art. Then I move on to the next slide. There, we come to the man like you and me, the man of the middle.

It's the skull of the middle, it's a black man, it's the man we call in the prehistoric literature, the man of Grimaldi. We know that it was a man of black morphology. When we see his morphology, we see that it was black. You can see that the shape of his face is very typical.

And we compared him with an African skull of today, the left skull. It's a Malian skull that we have in our collection in Dakar, in Lifan. And the right skull is the first white man to appear on Earth.

After the transformation... formation of the man of the world. You can see in looking at the skull in the middle that the morphology of this skull is very much that of blacks.

That is the skull of modern man. To the left of it we have the skull of modern African man, is one of those that is in our collection at the University of Dakar. The man who is on the right now, we have the 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 It 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. So it's very good. If we hold on without prejudice, to give strictly scientific, we are obliged to affirm in all serenity that it is the...

the adaptation of the Grimaldian to this cold climate which gave birth finally to the type that we call conventionally now the type the coderm or the white man the white is out of the black after a process of adaptation to a cold climate. And all specialists today know that in their inner fort, even if they don't say it with so much clarity. It is very clear to all of the scientists involved in this field, even if they are only able to say it 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.

So we see that humanity, by leaving Africa and adapting to the different climates of the Earth, gave birth to different races. Voilà comment l'aira. race is 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 adapt... adaptation, become what they are in various regions of the world, all men would be homogeneous and all men would be 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 if?

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 popped people other parts of the world that theory had its defenders the other in order to set premiere to recess and con appellate con appell to you like you do you want to generate This is called a monogenetic theory. That is that there is one source for mankind.

would be the result of several centers. The origin of humanity would have known several centers. And we called this theory the polycentrism theory, or polygenetism.

The second theory 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 centers. several locations in the world where where man finds his origin.

And it is that that explains their differences. This theory was even the theory of common sense. I am not saying common sense, but common sense.

That is, it seemed, a priori, at first glance, more normal that there existed a man on each continent. That theory made a 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 at it 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. First, nature.

of animals, 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 is the case. It is in this region, that is this region in Kenya, where we find all of the most ancient evolution. information it's and it's for this reason that scientists are now able to say with certainly it's with certainty that they at least they know that this is that this is the case that man could only have been created one time to live for soon can we to go a less to the other lafayette and Daniel analyze a palace to you come before seal purestunk a suit away on a free a killer correspond 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 have been found outside of Africa. that I spoke of before. Je vous ai dit que les trois premiers ne sont jamais sortis de l'Afrique. Ça veut dire que ni en Europe, ni en Asie, encore moins en Amérique, on ne trouve ces trois premiers spécimens qui sont le début de l'humanité. 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.

Thank you. So, so many evidence has been accumulated that today gives the certainty that man was born in Africa. The accumulation then of the best information now makes it very clear that man had its origins in Africa.

Here in America, you only have the specimen Sapiens sapiens. We have not found in the current state of science, on all the extent of America, from the Earth of Fire to Alaska, there is only one modern man. And America was populated by the Bering Detroit.

at the end of the last glaciation I mentioned. So there is only one specimen, the last one here in America. 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? In Europe we have the Homo erectus, the Neanderthal man and the Homo sapiens.

In Europe we have the Homo erectus, the Neanderthal man and the Homo sapiens. In Europe we have the same Homo erectus, Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. The two of them left Africa, one went through the Suez isthmus to go to the Southeast Asia and the other went through the Detroit of Gibraltar to go to the South East Asia.

They went 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. Polycentrism is a theory that absolutely wanted to establish the hierarchization of races, that wanted to demonstrate that there are inferior races and superior races. This polycentric theory is, to that theory, it is essential, or it makes the effort to establish a hierarchy of races, and to indicate that some races are inferior to others. Indeed, if the three races of humanity...

If humanity had different origins, we could have assumed that for one reason or another there is a hierarchization 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...

could 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... It's for this reason that it has been defended so 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... It's the monogenetic theory then that poses the, or will support the notion that because our origins are the same, we have the same intellectual capacities.

I'm not hoping to say, by saying that, however, that blacks are superior. superior to whites, that would also be false. No race is superior to any other. All races have the same intellectual capacity. The anterior lobe that I showed in the slide earlier is exactly the same for all the races.

We have done extremely extensive work here in America, in Europe and everywhere on brain anatomy. In Europe. And in Europe. Surtout au niveau de l'anatomie du cerveau antérieur dont je vous ai parlé.

And no, in no way has a difference significant, has any significant difference been found to indicate that there is some anatomical difference in the brains of the various races. Surtout au niveau du cerveau antérieur. And certainly not in the case of the fore part or the forefront of the brain. Yeah.

Donc tous les biologiques... know what I am saying at this moment. All these analyzes, the results of these analyzes are conclusive and all those who deal precisely with human biology know everything I told you today. On this point, this question also at the level of all serene, objective scientists is a question that is acquired. That the races have the same intellectual capacities.

But there may be, one can momentarily... dominated by the other, that's all. In ancient times, blacks dominated whites, as we will see later. Later, blacks and whites took over, as today. All biologists and those scientists who are aware of this information know that there is no longer any question as to whether there is a superiority among the races.

It is however possible that... one race or another can dominate temporarily another race or other races. In antiquity, 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. Oh 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 scheme designed to, well, let's take a look.

This is a... picture of the Piltdown Man and it is to demonstrate to you the length to which certain anthropologists have gone to establish their theories. The Piltdown Man was created by a British anthropologist in 1912 by the name of? Downson. Downson.

He's a geologist. A geologist, I'm sorry. He was a geologist, Mr. Downson. Il a fabriqué de toutes pièces ce fossile qui est faux. He fabricated piece by piece this fake fossil.

Il l'a enfoui dans les sables du Sussex en Angleterre. He dug in the dirt in Sussex in English, in England. Vous voyez bien, regardez bien.

He has the upper forehead like a modern man. He is like us. He has eyes and a big forehead. But look at his jaw. His jaw is a monkey jaw.

During the autumn. With the two canines. Look at the two canines.

It's a monkey jaw. And canines are that of a monkey. And precisely, this specimen, which is a foe, gave birth, in the field of physical anthropology, to the pre-Sapiens theory.

It was to demonstrate that Homo sapiens was born in England. which was manufactured to establish that this man was the predecessor of modern man. Yeah, and that, in fact, man had his origins or was born in Europe.

And especially in England. And there are American anthropologists who took this theory as their own and defended it, and we know today that it is false. And in France, also, there were anthropologists who defended the theory, and of course we now know it was false. And we know that it is false, so we learned that it was false by another anthropologist, English anthropologist, who analyzed it and discovered that it was in fact a fake. It was Professor Oakley who worked at the British Museum and who demonstrated the falseness of this specimen in 1954. It was in 1955 that Professor Oakley...

Oakley working at the British Museum analyzed this fossil and discovered it to be false. But you see, for almost 50 years, the evil was already done because the scientific community was divided into two currents, one current defending the monogenetic theory and one current defending the polygenetic theory, especially based on this specimen. 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. So we must give credit to those anthropologists or those scientists who 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? Ancient Egyptians, how did they look? Here you have the first king of the earth, the very first.

And the Egyptians... 3,300 years before Jesus Christ. Yes. You can see by his features and those of the pharaohs and kings that will follow it that the ancient Egyptians were not white.

They would have become progressively black, losing their features. But at the beginning, they were authentic blacks who, at the base period, would have mixed. with whites So, wait, I say in one word So you see that the ancient Egyptians were black like all the other natural people of Africa. You can see that the first men, the Egyptians were black men, like black men that you see in Africa now.

Here, This reproduction is important. This is a very important reproduction. This is found in the tomb of Ramses III. The 20th dynasty.

The 20th dynasty. 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 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. So the Egyptians were never confused with the Europeans, nor with the Semites, and they never became different on an ethnic plane from the other Africans.

So this is fairly significant from this point of view. This was discovered by a German scientist who is called Lepsus. And before this you have not seen it. seen this reproduced in any other form or any other work. And so you can see how history departed little by little from the reality.

How did ancient writers describe the ancient Egyptians? All the Greek and even Roman writers of antiquity have deposited in the same sense to affirm to us that the ancient Egyptians of their time, yet who were already very mixed, were blacks. 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, that's a period of 900 years. 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 civilization, as is indicated by the first king, the slide which we saw. I will show you quickly the others.

Here you have Gozer, 3rd dynasty, 2778 BC. This is the 3rd dynasty of Egyptian civilization here. Let's say 2800. 2,800 B.C. With Djoser, all the technological elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place.

Everything we admire in Egypt, under this pharaoh, black, already existed. The third dynasty? The third dynasty, before the pyramids. The second will be the one of the pyramids. With Djoser, all the elements of Egyptian civilization were already in place.

With this king, in the third dynasty, all 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... We can say that at that time, the Greeks didn't 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.

So the Egyptian civilization we are talking about was born under the reign of these typically African pharaohs. This is the Sphinx. 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. You see that the profile of the Sphinx at that time was even, was more authentically African than it is now. The wind and the sand has eroded the Sphinx considerably.

The nose of the Sphinx is in the British Museum. And they are unable, the Egyptians are unable to have it back again to compare it with us. that no one wants to reconstruct them as they were. Can you tell us the date of this illustration?

2620 BC, it's the time of the pyramids. Here we are under the 4th dynasty, it's the profile of the pharaoh Kefren. It's not the Sphinx that he wants to know.

It's the illustration at the time when Napoleon was there, isn't it? Yes. When was it? It's 1800, 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 don't always paint their bodies in red ink. It's an African custom. All African peoples since the high prehistory have the custom 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 Aegean Sea. This is the period of Africa. At that time, it was black Africa that had the historic initiative.

And dominated all other peoples, whether from the Aegean Sea, so from the eastern Mediterranean or from Western Asia. And they dominated all of the people from the Mediterranean all the way into the Far East. They were of this dynasty, who were called Moses 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 similarity is also striking between the Pharaoh's head, the head of the Tutsi and the Pharaoh's helmet. the second and a Tutsi warrior.

It's remarkable the similarity between the Tutsi's hairdo and the helmet worn by the Pharaoh. But this pharaoh is one of the most prestigious pharaohs in Egyptian history. You see that on both sides you have the same African reality, the same African anthropological reality.

You see the same reality, anthropological reality that is African, the similarities between the two. You can see 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.

This is Osiris, who is always represented under the features of a black man. Here you see the representation of the gods. of one people who always indicated their gods to be black of skin color. This is the inventor of monotheism.

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.

The Bible did not exist yet. At that time, religious thought was still part of Africa. It was Africa that initiated the monotheistic religion. Africa that is the origin of monotheistic religion as well. You see, this pharaoh had six daughters with Queen Nefertari.

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 that dress. See how she is typically African. And an African would know that this is a totemic. 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 Vansertima 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 woman...

this woman had a preeminent role in diplomacy in Egypt at that time. All of the kings that I have spoken to you about, who made their conquests up to the... In the previous dynasty.

Wrote to this woman. to intervene in these matters with her son so that they could be in the good graces of this king. The pharaoh was still very young.

And it's him, so you can see that the mother... This woman is the mother of the first prophet of the earth. And you see, 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...

She 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? But because, as I often say, the Egyptian civilization, according to everything I have just shown you, has played the same role as the civilization of Africa, as the Greek-Roman civilization of the West.

Because Egyptian civilization played the same role for Africa that the Greco-Roman civilizations played for the Western civilization. And so, if we want to recreate a human body of science in Africa, we must leave Egypt. Renew with the Egyptian antiquities.

Tied to ancient Egypt. It's the only way to reconcile African civilizations 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. But you must know yourself first. Otherwise, a people who loses their historical memory becomes a fragile people. If a people forgets its historical memory or loses its historical memory, it becomes a very fragile people. They regress, and it is that historical memory which permits them to be a strong people.

Even in the diaspora, these ties must remain. This can only help us and make our lives better in the various countries in which we live. The fullness of our culture will help us in finding or seeking the fraternity among races that we must have. this world.

Transcript for:Dr. Diop's Insights on Human Evolution

Transcript for:
Dr. Diop's Insights on Human Evolution