very informative, great read!

I was very disappointed with this read. When I first heard of the book I was very excited to explore the theory of Africans visiting the Americas before Columbus. However, after a few chapters in, the book became heavily confusing with a lot of linguistic jargon and a lot of back and forth between evidence that made no sense. One big issue I had with the book was its structure. It seemed as if Van Sertima was dropping a lot of information and I felt that I didn't have enough time to understand his evidence.

Overall I was super unhappy while reading and felt his argument was very weak. Partially because he based a large portion of his finding on featurism and the Darwinist categorization of features such as skeletal remains. What I was hoping was substantial evidence that Africans could have visited America, I got a book that seemed to have been motivated to disprove racist assertions by white people who discredited African contributions. While I understand that Africa and its contribution to the world are greatly underappreciated and undermined, I believe Van Sertima's book just wasn't strong enough to present evidence on African arrival in the Americas. Though I wasn't too pleased with his findings, I am still open to the thought that Africans did travel to the Americas but this book doesn't seem to convince me that it actually happened.

This book was very interesting to read, I must say. The plethora a source that the author was able to connect show the depth of his knowledge and passion to what he studied. However, with any history book that I've read, there are moment in the book where I don't find the topic interesting (i.e. the history of corn section). I really enjoyed his commentary when addressing other historian, very sassy. Overall, my interest is peaked in this topic and further studying/reading from me will be done.