Vivante (see my recent post on him) also wrote an article about Pre-Hispanic Blacks in America (Armando Vivante, El Problema de los Negros Prehispanos Americanos - Notas sobre los melanodermos precolombinos, Revista del Museo de La Plata, 1967, vol. 6, No. 36). In it, Vivante gathers the different bibliographic references and outlines the information that was available at the time of the Spanish discovery and conquest of America.
He concludes that the available information isn't enough to settle the issue, and that its quality is variable. Genetic studies (he wrote this in 1967) could help settle the issue. Of course, we now know that genetic studies believe that the African slave trade introduced Black genes into America and admixed with the local Native Americans, this would obscure or confound any attempts to define a Pre-Columbian Black genetic signal and isolate it from later ones.
After reviewing the concept of being Black, and how each chronicler could have interpreted it, he comments that it is difficult to visualize what skin color, curly hair, flat noses, full lips, etc. meant to each explorer who reported Blacks in America.
Friar Gregorio García first proposed the Atlantic route into America in 1607: "so it could have been possible that some people from Ancient Europe or Africa have been taken by the force of the wind and cast upon unknown shores beyond the Ocean."
The article mentions the statues and objects belonging to the Olmec culture, which are said to have "negroid features". Too well known to discuss in this post. Vivante notes that the evidence is scarce, of doubtful credibility, and cautiously supports the notion that these Aerican Blacks were probably Africans that made their way into America as slaves of the first Spanish and Portuguese expeditions, leaving the door open to other interpretations: "Pericot and García (1936, 81) suggest that the discovery of Black people in early America is a result of the error of mistaking immigrant [Black] populations after the Conquest, or simply mestizo populations, for Indigenous people; and what this author says regarding race can certainly be extended to culture. But must this always, invariably, be the case?"
Further Reading
I have found additional bibliography for those interested in the subject:
● Van Sertima, Ivan (1976). They Came Before Columbus. Random House. ISBN 9781560007920.
● Clyde Winters, (2011). Comment. Genetic Evidence of Early African Migration into America.
● Spanish clergyman Bartolomé de las Casas who defended the human rights of the American natives and criticized the Spanish military conquest, wrote between 1527 and 1566 the Historia de las Indias in its Vol II, Ed.1875. the following quote was taken, speaking about Cristopher Columbus and black people in the islando of Hispaniola, what is now Santo Domingo and Haiti (p. 226):
"And that he [Columbus] intended to test what the Indians of this Hispaniola [Santo Domingo Island] said, that black people had come to it from the south and southeast, and that they bring the irons of the spears of a metal they call guanin, of which he had sent to the Kings the test, where it was found that of the thirty-two parts, eighteen were of gold, and six of silver, and eight of copper."
● Francisco Lopez de Gomara mentions Balboa's discovery of the Pacific Ocean (See Historia General de las Indias 1552-1554. Ch. LXII - Descubrimiento de la mar del Sur, p. 93), and that he found black people in Panama Isthmus:
"Balboa entered Cuareca; he found neither bread nor gold, for it had been taken before the fighting. However, he did find some black slaves belonging to the lord. He asked where they had come from, and they could tell him nothing more than that there were men of that color nearby, with whom they were constantly at war. These were the first black people seen in the Indies, and I even think that no more have been seen since."
It is possible that African slaves had been brought to the mainland during the 21-year period between the Discovery of america in 1492 and Balboa's expedition in 1513, and that these people formed the black population that Balboa saw.
The subject is intriguing and worth further investigation.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
No comments:
Post a Comment