African Origin Of Western Civilization Summary

From as early as kindergarten, history has been taught to children in classrooms all across the world. In western civilization, specifically the United States, that history can often be construed, or biased in favor of those telling it. The issue with this is that the bias is often never mentioned, nor challenged, as students across all grades never really challenge what is taught in their classrooms. They don’t question that the people writing the textbook may have a political agenda, or that their teachers themselves have their own biases which they integrate into their own curriculum. The book African Origin of Civilization by Cheikh Anta Diop, challenges a common belief that white people are responsible for the beginnings of Western Civilization. …show more content…
Diop also states that Egyptian civilization has more in common with African cultures rather than European ones. Specifically, a history of circumcision, totemism, and matriarchy which are commonly seen throughout Africa, but were rarely found in European cultures. Circumcision has commonly been associated with muslim and jewish cultures, and is still practiced all over the world, but its origins are from within the borders of Africa. In Egyptian civilization, property and leadership often passed through the mother’s side, which was not the case in Europe during ancient times. These obvious differences in culture and practice or further evidence of the falsification of history, a practice that Diop recognizes is still practiced to this day. In ancient times it was believed that Egyptians came from Ethiopians, but beginning in the 1800’s scholars began to distance themselves from the thought of a black Egyptian civilization. Preferring to assume that any blacks found in Egypt at that time period were slaves to the white civilization. An unsurprising course of action given the cultural landscape of imperialization during that time period. A theory commonly cited to prove this new belief was that Egypt was first colonized by Libyans, a lighter skinned people from the west of Africa who were believed to have European roots. The Libyans did in fact rule ancient Egypt, but this was not until much after the civilization began. Furthermore, ancient paintings from Egyptians depict four different people with different skin tones. White to signify europeans, tan or yellow to signify asians, black to signify Africans, and Egyptians painted themselves a dark red. However their Gods were commonly painted