Talk:Black Athena

Arbitrary section head

Since Afroasiatic refers to a language family, not to an ethnicity or culture, some comment about what is meant with "Afroasiatic roots" is needed. Is there any such term as "Orientocentrism", "Levantocentrism" to contrast with Eurocentrism and Afrocentrism? From "Afroasiatic" alone, it is not clear what the thesis has got to do with Afrocentrism, since Afro-Asiatic languages were spoken all over the ANE. dab (ᛏ) 11:39, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree, in face the domain of Afroasiatic hardly includes any of "black" and sub-Saharan Africa which is what almost anyone first encountering the term thinks of. Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, etc. and more importantly ALL of the semitic languages (so most of the middle-east) are Afroasiatic.209.2.229.73 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:32, 30 September 2010 (UTC).

I would disagree. The reason there is a need for Afrocentrism, is that the study of Africa from the point of view of Europe does a huge disservice to the history of Africa and the world. It is too easy to slip into the eurocentric point of view. Case in point.

"in face the domain of Afroasiatic hardly includes any of "black" and sub-Saharan Africa which is what almost anyone first encountering the term thinks of. Egyptian, Berber, Chadic, etc. and more importantly ALL of the semitic languages (so most of the middle-east) are Afroasiatic."

I have no doubt that this statement is well intended, but it falls into the trap of separating 'black Africa' from 'white Africa' or 'sub-saharan Africa' from 'not-sub-saharan Africa', also known as the Middle East, Near East, North Africa, East Africa, on various occasions. 1) All Afro-asiatic languages are from Africa, and 8 out of 9 are only spoken in Africa. The one that is spoken outside of Africa, Semitic, again has the greatest diversity (is the oldest) in East Africa, then Southern Arabia, then the Levant, then Mesopotamia. In other words, the greatest diversity is in East Africa, and the farther away you get from East Africa, the smaller the diversity of Semitic languages. This means that Semitic is an East African language family, part of the African mega language family of Afro-Asiatic. Arabic and Hebrew are languages of African origin. 2) The predominant haplogroup in 'sub-saharan Africa' is E1b1a. The predominant haplogroup in North and East Africa is E1b1b. E1b1a and E1b1b are very closely related, and originate between 20k and 30k years ago, in East Africa. These haplogroups are much closer to eachother than the haplogroups of Europe or the Middle East that aren't also E1b1b. In fact haplogroup E is a typical African haplogroup.MrSativa (talk) 01:48, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Although Afroasiatic normally refers to the Afroasiatic language family, it is clear that Bernal is not using it in this sense. In the Conclusion to his book, he refers to its theme way in which he sees, "...Western Asian and North African history over the past 10,000 years..." and particularly, "...cultural change across the Eastern Mediterranean in the second millenium BC." Bernal is therefore using "Afroasiatic" as an abbreviation for Western Asia and North Africa, particularly their Eastern Mediterranean parts. It was probably not very clever to use a term with a linguistic meaning covering languages spoken as far away from the Eastern Mediterranean as Nigeria and northern Kenya, and this confusing use of the term had led to associations with Afrocentrism. Shscoulsdon (talk) 14:12, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

References

Interview

You may want to add links to two radio interviews of Martin Barnal on his "Black Athena" project, part 1 and part 2.

NPOV Badly Needed

Yow! One or two sentences devoted to the thesis, then a whole series to controversy; little explanation of actual arguments, pseudohistory category. Let's get to work. --Carwil 21:01, 29 August 2005 (UTC)

Problem is that the book is not well regarded by any scholars of linguistics, archaeology or history. It is literally only a political setpiece for the Afrocentrism movement. There is a line between presenting Black Athena in a neutral light and presenting it as possibly true, which would be a travesty. How do we normally treat works that have been scientifically disproven? Surely we shouldn't present them as fact. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.66.45.117 (talk) 20:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

"Problem is that the book is not well regarded by any scholars of linguistics, archaeology or history. It is literally only a political setpiece for the Afrocentrism movement." The problem is that the thesis upsets a lot of people, who would like to think that their opinions are based on science, when they are just based on more myths - can you say 'the Greek miracle'? The strongest part of Black Athena, is that it documents the changing attitudes to Ancient Egypt and ancient history among the European elites throughout the last four centuries. For that alone, it should be read.MrSativa (talk) 02:03, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

It would be a waste of time since the book is only full of unproven theories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.86.4.223 (talk) 15:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Need help

This guy wrote three large volumes, he used literally thousands of references.

Then there should probably be more in line citations then I'm seeing now. --Pstanton (talk) 23:07, 9 February 2009 (UTC)

criticism

Should we include a criticism section in this page? For example show how he never is able to prove that it was central africans created the modern west. Or how he states specifically in his introduction that he intends to prove a point that has bearing on the civil rights movement? The Isiah 07:03, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

An account of controversy around Bernal's work can certainly appear here. It should of course be expressed in neutral terms (what is here now uses loaded language, and falls down in places when judged by the NPOV policy). Charles Matthews 09:20, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. Ten months since concerns were raised. Any progress on providing substantial content to balance the thinly supported but strongly pressed "conflicting views" section?

Perhaps somebody should send Bernal an e-mail?

SkepticL 23:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Don't think that's necessary. In order to give readers of all points of view confidence in the article's neutrality, the article structure should simply be as follows: describe the arguments of the three volumes, in order, but not in as much detail as chapter by chapter; then a section "responses" where all scholarly reviews and responses, as well as reviews in the serious press are presented. The responses section can either be in chronological order, or with the favourable views first and the unfavourable ones after. Itsmejudith 17:09, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Sending Bernal an e-mail would seem to be the very definition of original research. We should be looking for reliable secondary sources. Msalt (talk) 15:59, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Bad article!

Maybe someone who is not totally against the book (Black Athena) should have written the article. An unbiased opinion is seriously needed. This should be an article about Black Athena not conservative views about the books. since plenty of focus in this article was placed on debunking it, maybe at least some attention can be placed on the supporting arguments. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Pharmicon (talk • contribs) 13:04, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I completely agree. There are too many cheap characterisations throughout ('so-called', etc.).MrSativa (talk) 02:05, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi, I agree with the above comments. Unfortunately, I haven't read Black Athena, so I can't help much there. But I did remove the sentence noting that some obscure conservative group had listed Black Athena as one of the worst books ever written (my cat could write a list of the worst books ever written, but it doesn't mean that list belongs as a source on Wikipedia.) I checked their list, and it also included famous works by Alfred Kinsey and Margaret Meade, among others--not necessarily my favorite books, but both accepted classics in their fields. It made me think the list is politically motivated and not concerned with academic content, so its inclusion here violated Wikipedia's neutrality policy. I also removed the link to the book list at the bottom of the page. The other links point to the debate about the book, and so are more appropriate here because they represent a wide range of opinions about this book.

I am changing the statements claiming that the thesis was conclusively disproved by Mary Lefkowitz's work. She certainly takes an opposite point of view, but taking her claims as given is no more reasonable than taking Bernal's statements as given. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Theblade82 (talk • contribs) 05:45, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Only her claims are proven facts not science-fiction pseudohistory like Bernal's.

I agree with Theblade82, Lefkowitz was controversial in her own right and an outlier within the criticism of Bernal. "Disproved" is a judgment that should come from a reliable secondary source, not something a Wikipedia editor should make, whether willing to sign their name or not. Msalt (talk) 16:34, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

POV

I would suggest that the article does need some rebalancing and that the way to approach this is to ensure that Bernal's arguments are properly summarised before we say how they were received. We could probably also find some more favourable responses. Itsmejudith (talk) 22:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I agree. The article should include a thorough discussion of the book. It may also be helpful if both sides of the controversy are equally portrayed, so it is less biased. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lbeaulieu1 (talk • contribs) 22:46, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Bad...

As per: "In 2003, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (a group known for having distinctly American Conservative views[1]) listed Black Athena as one of the worst books of the twentieth century." I hereby nominate this article as one of the worst on the wikipedia...Colin4C (talk) 21:26, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Phoenician civilization is not actually African,

..it's from what we now call the Middle East.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.25.187.228 (talk) 16:58, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

No, but it is Afroasiatic. Afroasiatic refers to a language group which includes (among others) all the semitic languages (including phoenician), egyptian, berber, etc.209.2.229.73 (talk) 15:29, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Phoenicia was located in the eastern Mediterranean in roughly the location of present day Lebanon. There is no means by which it could by any stretch be considered African. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CannotFindAName (talk • contribs) 16:27, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Phoenicia is a location. It used to be a satellite of Ancient Egypt. Phoenician belongs to the Semitic language family, which is most proliferous in East Africa, and is a member of the Afro-Asiatic super language family which is almost exclusively African (almost, except for Semitic). Phoenicia and Palestine border Egypt, which is where the African continent officially begins. Oh and they indirectly received their alphabet from Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. So much for Phoenicia having 'nothing to do' with Africa.MrSativa (talk) 01:51, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Phoenician civilization WAS actually African,

Clearly, our approach to teaching history and geography needs to be completely revamped. Using the post-modern invention "Sub-Saharan" Africa to infer the existence of an isolated, noncontributing culture in the ancient world is tantamount to using "Sub-Alpine" Europe to describe the ancient inhabitants of Greece and Rome. Lest we forget, the so-called "Middle East" is a 20th century invention. Please read the Karl E. Meyerarticle in the New York Times on March 13, 1991. Electromagnolia (talk) 15:30 21 November 2011 (UTC)

--There is nothing "post modern" about the term sub Saharan Africa. There are significant geographical, terrain, cultural, historical, ethnic, and racial differences between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa (the latter fact obviously being unpopular with Afrocentrists). If the Afrocentrists had their way they'd probably want to redefine Africa as beginning at the Alps so they could lay claim to Greece and Rome. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CannotFindAName (talk • contribs) 16:44, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

Bernal was talking about Western Asian and North African history and particularly cultural change across the Eastern Mediterranean. Phoenicia was located in the east Asia, but Phoenician civilization also flourished in Carthage and coastal Algeria (North Africa), western Sicily, Sardinia and southern Spain (Europe), though not sub-Saharan Africa. It is just as wrong to day it was not African as that it was African, if these terms are used to exclude alternatives. Carthage in particular had roots in Phoenicia, but developed in North Africa where most of its population was local, not migrants from east Asia. I am very far from agreeing with a lot of what Bernal said and don't think his arguments are quite as original or convincing as he would like us to believe, but there is some merit in looking at links across the Mediterranean. Shscoulsdon (talk) 15:46, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Mainstream historians have already looked and written extensively about it. It is silly to deny Phoenician colonies as being Phoenician, but that's nationalism for you. Not singling anybody out because they're all pretty much guilty. Carthage was in Africa and Carthage was founded by Phoenicians. Carthage was in Africa. The problem for Afrocentrists is that Africa is a very large continent and North Africa may as well have been (and still is) a separate continent from Sub-Sahara Africa. Afrocentrism is more than a form of nationalism, it considers all of Africa to be black Africa when it was not at all. Ethnic Berbers are not black. Egyptians were and still are not black. Blacks have been there but always as a minority. The horn is a little different, but even the Ethiopians didn't use to be Sub-Saharan. They came from India and Arabia and whatever "black" they were was ethnically different from Sub-Saharan (more like Dravidian and Yemen).

The book title was probably intended to be controversial in order to sell copies. Mainstream historians don't argue about North African, Egyptian, or even Semitic contact with the Greeks. Greek history and mythology clearly indicates ancient ties to the Phoenicians and this is reflected in myths. Also, I'm not aware of many historians argue for a central or western "Aryan" origin of the Greeks other than the Greek dark age migrations and invasions. The myths are related to Hittites and also Indo-European ("Aryans" but from the East)

This is silly, nobody here is even talking about Mycenaean vs Minoan Greece, or even Mycenaean greece vs classical greece. Nobody is talking about babylonian and canaanite influence of phoenicia(some are talking about the hittites). What I see here is plenty of people not even knowing the difference between classical greece and bronze age greece, and theres even one person that doesnt even know the difference between antiquity and the middle ages. It is undeniable that bronze age civilizations had tremendous influence on bronze age greece, but to say that Egypt was black so Phoenicians were black so Athena was black is pure conjuncture. What is up for discussion is how pre-classical greece was ruled and how long Mycenaean and Minoan Greece either coexisted, or when the exact date of the switch occurred. 128.129.49.7 (talk) 18:05, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Citations

The Article is about a book, then why citations? It is implicit that whatever is writen here comes from the book. If it were about the thesis in the book then it should be in more detail and with citations, but again, it's just a book report. loulafg 20:43, 13 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Loulafg (talk • contribs)

Yes! I agree. The citations tag is pointless, at least regarding what are obviously claims derived from the book.131.96.91.191 (talk) 19:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Good

I don't see much wrong with this article. As Niebuhr would have pointed out, it's simply bad history to interpret the past by the standards of the present; and as someone with a classics degree I can appreciate that Bernal did this in bucketsful (another major point which hasn't been mentioned here is that he assumes that "Africa" is one homogeneous cultural unit and "Europe" another, but in fact the indications are that north Africa, including crucially for his argument Egypt, was as culturally independent of sub-saharan Africa as Persia was).

As an academic exercise in originality, Bernal's work is brilliant. As history it's rubbish; and the article here, as it should, quite dispassionately points out the series of informed authorities who have said so.

My own view is that Bernal was working to an agenda set by US guilt over North American slavery (which also finds it convenient to treat all the different African cultures as equivalent). That is an interesting intellectual phenomenon in its own right, and may require its own article. But it doesn't justify being elevated to the status of political correctness and then used to distort our view of what actually happened in the past. Deipnosophista (talk) 10:20, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I don't see how your opinion is helpful. The debate about Bernal's theory is well worked-out. The question seems to be how to get the section of the article describing the book to be longer than the criticism section.131.96.91.191 (talk) 19:50, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

It's not so much that Bernal's core hypothesis is wrong, it's that he is quite apparently completely unqualified to say anything about it. It had been worked out by the actual experts during the 1970s that the influence of the Orient had been underestimated in 19th and early 20th century scholarship. It is difficult to understand how somebody can take it upon themselves to present this as a revelation in 1987. It is sad that the real progress in scholarship goes all but unnoted by the "popular" readership while incompetent and ideologized stunts like this get all the attention. Apparently real scholarship just isn't sexy enough to command any attention or respect. --dab (𒁳) 20:02, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Dab, The only thing that is WRONG is the Eurocentric crap they teach in history class to our younger generation. You use words like incompetent and ideologized stunts. The ideologized stunts are those presented in grade school when young people are force fed lies. Lies that Africans made no real contribution to the world and that Europeans were more advanced than Africans. Lies that colonists only encountered Africans that were primitive subhuman savages. History teachers leave out that there were advanced Sub Saharan African civilizations. The fact that there are pyramids in Nubia. A black African region. Why is that left out? They leave out the Mali Empire, the Ghana empire and countless other African kingdoms. They leave out the great Mansa Musa who was probably the wealthiest man in the world at the time. They leave out Timbuktu that is home to the first university in the world. You have incompetent "qualified" teachers teaching incomplete and inaccurate history. What progress in scholarship is that? When you say real scholarship just isn't sexy enough to command any attention or respect. The fact is most people who went to school in America had to learn very biased history and were forced to regurgitate this wrong information on tests, exams and term papers. This is what is sad. 216.0.117.4 (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

What is sad is the fact that persons like you IP actively promote all that revisionist crap. Your ignorance about the Timbuktu 'university' is hilarious!

The Sahelian kingdoms only went back to the Middle Ages, and they cannot be separated from Islam's influence. The so-called university of Timbuktu was a series of mosques, and it was not founded until the 12th century AD. Mansa Musa was a 14th century ruler who was also a devout Muslim. The Nubian pyramids came long after the Egyptian pyramids, and they pale in comparison. Aside from the Nubians, none of the examples are ancient, and none of the examples are free from foreign influence.76.107.33.178 (talk) 02:11, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

"The Nubian pyramids came long after the Egyptian pyramids, and they pale in comparison." Actually the Nubian pyramids are older than the Egyptian pyramids, there are more of them, and it is in Nubia that you can observe the development of the pyramid, which eventually culminated in the Great Pyramid of Giza.MrSativa (talk) 00:03, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, I agree that it is very sad that much of African and Asian history is left out of grade school teaching, but young people being "force fed lies,"? That is a bit extreme. While there needs to be a more global-centric emphasis in history, the fabrications and manipulations of facts that are presented in Black Athena does not right any wrong, but instead turns people against each other. Africa made huge contributions to the world, and no one is denying that. Yet synthesizing history in order to make up for past brush-offs does not even things out - it simply spreads misinformation. Let's teach the truth, such as how Africa is literally the homeland of all living people and how Europe was not the only place where cool history took place, but not overstretch. Anyway, this wikitalk page really isn't the place for this. 128.135.100.102 (talk) 03:44, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Needs Improvement

I agree with most of the above comments. This article needs a lot of work. First off it's confusing to most people who read it. I have a whole class of college students who think that. Second, there needs to be more references. My suggestion would be to better explain the Black Athena conterversy. Make it easy for someone, who has never heard of the issue, to understand what is being argued and the different perspectives. Also add some perspective of people who agree with Bernal because there really aren't any from that point of view. --LittleDuck17 (talk) 23:36, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. The way wikipedia works is that those who make suggestions have to implement them. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 00:16, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

reversion 10 October 2012‎

(copied from user talk page)
May I ask why you reverted my three edits on the Black Athena article? what did I do wrong? yannako — Preceding unsigned comment added by Yannako (talk • contribs) 13:56, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

I reverted because the article was tolerably well-balanced, and your edits altered that balance to push the anti-Bernal POV. My attention was imediately drawn by two uses of the word "claim" (see WP:WTA) and the purely abusive word "Pseudohistory". The edits introduced no sourced information, just opinion. SamuelTheGhost (talk) 17:12, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

This article is biased.

Simply reading through this article, its obvious that the entire thing is biased against Banal. This is an encyclopaedia. We're not trying to argue in favor or against a particular person! I don't have a copy of this book so I can't fix it myself, but even without reading it I can tell that this article is seriously messed up and should probably be rewritten from scratch. 19:58, 4 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.126.1.150 (talk) 19:56, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Even if Banal was totally wrong, that doesn't mean that it's Wikipedia's policy to tear him a new one! We must maintain a level of decorum and an air of neutrality if the integrity of this foundation is to be maintained. Even if you think that this was an insignificant and entirely wrong publication by someone who was both naïve and delusional, what gives you the right to make that point in an encyclopaedia of all things! The treatment of Black Athena here is prejudicial, unnecessarily derogatory, and frankly insulting Banal, to the readers here, and to the integrity of the wikipedia foundation. 76.126.1.150 (talk) 20:14, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Shameless Promotion Removed

Please stop. Marsh, Herbert (2009). Horae Pelasgicae. BiblioBazaar, LLC. ISBN 978-1-113-07175-0. (Reprint from 1815 edn.) has been removed. It is cluttering. This source is not concerned in anyway with foreign sources of greek, or Pelasgian, for that matter. Further and worst, it hasn't been used in the thesis synopsis(ed) (allow it please). --Connection (talk) 20:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Pseudohistory

Anyone have a problem with removing this article from the category "History books about ancient Greece" and replacing it with "Pseudohistory", since that is the current scholarly consensus?142.105.159.60 (talk) 04:48, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

If you want to make that change, then you need to provide evidence that "pseudohistory" is, in fact, the current scholarly consensus. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 04:49, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Does this count?142.105.159.60 (talk) 14:40, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. It doesn't even mention the word "pseudohistory", still less establishing that this is the consensus. Can't people just accept that his thesis is controversial, and worth critical study? SamuelTheGhost (talk) 18:47, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

What do reliable sources say? Do they back the argument that it belongs in either? How many sources do we need to make pseudo history a suitable navigation aid for those looking for such books? Doug Weller talk 19:51, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

Controversial? He's claiming that ancient Greeks were actually Africans, and his reasoning amounts to little more than "19th century racists didn't want to admit that Ancient Greeks were black".142.105.159.60 (talk) 03:23, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Recent discoveries in genetics have proven him right. Much of the male popularion of the Peloponnese has East African haplogroup E1b1b, just like the Egyptians today. It is thought that E1b1b spread beyond Africa and Egypt through the Natufians and related people. The only question is when E1b1b spread from Egypt to Greece and the rest of the Mediterranean. MrSativa (talk) 15:30, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

This is another false claim made by an ex-scientist just as the pseudohistorical theories of Bernal. So no, even MORE recent discoveries hasve proven him wrong AGAIN. 2.86.4.223 (talk) 15:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

SamuelTheGhost is correct that you need a source actually calling the book "pseudohistory". Otherwise, the category is too controversial. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 03:37, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Didn't you search? I found several easily. Doug Weller talk 06:54, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

No I did not search, as I am only marginally interested in this topic. Good for you if you found sources, however. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 06:59, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

When scholarly presses produce new material re-examining and extending a work, that's an overwhelming sign it's not regarded as pseudohistory by a consensus of scholars.

• Binsbergen, Wim M. J. van (2011). Black Athena comes of age. Berlin; Piscataway, NJ: Lit ; Distribution in North America by Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-3-8258-4808-8.
• Orrells, Daniel; Bhambra, Gurminder K.; Roynon, Tessa (2011-10-27). African Athena: New Agendas. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-959500-6.

A maximally critical statement of the scholarly consensus comes from Mary J. Lefkowitz, who is involved in the controversy as a critic of Bernal:

"most scholars of the ancient world believe that Bernal has vastly overstated the degree of Egyptian influence on Greece and misinterpreted such evidence as there is, especially in the case of his proposed new etymologies." [1]

On the other hand, archaeologist and Egyptologist Richard Lobban writes:

"space only allows me here to conclude that Bernal was an ‘incessant visionary’ steering a useful course away from Eurocentric hegemony despite many details that invite further debate." (Lobban, Richard a. Jr (2015-07). "REVISITING AFRICAN ATHENA. Black Athena Comes of Age: Towards a Constructive Re-Assessment. Edited by Wim M. van Binsbergen. Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2011. Pp. 367. €39·90, paperback (ISBN 978-3-8258-4808-8)". The Journal of African History. 56 (02): 328–329. doi:10.1017/S0021853715000079. ISSN 1469-5138. Retrieved 2016-07-17. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help))

And Classicist Alastair Blanshard writes that African Athena (the book cited above) "revivifies Black Athena for a new audience and lays down a challenge about how 'black classics' should look. (Blanshard, Alastair J.L. (2013-01). "Orrells D., Bhambra G.K. and Roynon T. Eds. African Athena: New Agendas (Classical Presences). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. xiv + 469. £90. 9780199595006.van Binsbergen W. Ed. Black Athena Comes of Age (Afrikanische Studien 44). Berlin: Lit, 2011. Pp. 367, illus. €39.90. 9783825848088". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 133: 323–324. doi:10.1017/S0075426913001481. ISSN 2041-4099. Retrieved 2016-07-17. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |date= (help))

So, controversial and disputed but not pseudohistory.--Carwil (talk) 18:46, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

I’ve just been browsing reviews on JSTOR, and I’m inclined to agree, although it‘s a borderline case. The general theme is that Bernal is mostly wrong but has provoked reëxamination of evidence and useful debate on such questions as migration vs diffusion. “The Greeks were black“ seems to me a caricature of his claims; although his work became something of a ‘poster child‘ for the extreme Afrocentric fringe, no doubt encouraged by his politicized approach and rhetoric, the substance of it appears much less whacky than that. The nearest thing to “pseudohistory“ I came across was M.M. Levine saying that Black Athena Revisited (ed. Lefkowitz & G.M. Rogers, 1998) conveys a sense that Bernal “is well on the way to marginalization into his own specter of a figure of ‘sterile crankiness‘,“ but she considers the book to be unfairly one-sided, exhibiting “intellectual protectionism“. (Levine, Molly Myerowitz (October 1998). "Review Article: The Marginalization of Martin Bernal". Classical Philology. 93 (4): 345–63.) None of the articles I read would go as far as an unqualified dismissal.—Odysseus1479 22:13, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

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Egyptian origin of Greek words

Of course Bernal is a joke. He sees correctly, that there are lots of roots in Greek vocabulary, that cannot be traced back to an Indo-European root. And then Bernal looks into an Egyptian dictionary and finds all these roots. The joke is, this dictionary is Czerny's Coptic dictionary! Coptic is a late stage of the Egyptian language and a mixture of Greek and Egyptian words. So it's just the other way round. All these words found their way from Greek to Egyptian via the Gospel.--183.182.120.170 (talk) 10:35, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Editor bias and censorship

On Sept. 4th 2019 I had added a section on Genetics citing recent genomic research by Lazaridis and colleagues, published in the highly acclaimed journal Nature (Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, 2017). This study directly rejects any significant genetic contribution of Levantine or African settlers to the Aegean populations, thus directly disproving Bernal's wild hypotheses. To my surprise, the addition was instantly censored by "Freeknowledgecreator" with the following excuse: Thank you, but the addition has very little to do with the subject of the article - I looked up at the Nature article; the only connection it has with "Black Athena" is that it cites the book a single time. That makes it undue to include such an addition. If Freeknowledgecreator has really read (and understood) the above paper, I challenge him/her to publicly explain WHY the above article (which directly and unequivocally disproves Bernal's controversial hypotheses with hard genetic data) is, according to the editor, "undue". I must say that such biased and irresponsible censorship is not flattering for Wikipedia.

My removal of your addition was not "censorship". The relevant policy is WP:NPOV, especially the section WP:PROPORTION, which states, "An article should not give undue weight to minor aspects of its subject, but should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject." An article that has no connection with Black Athena except that it cites it a single time is obviously minor in relation to Black Athena. I don't care that you think the article refutes Bernal. It is irrelevant to me whether it does or not, since the article isn't about his book and has almost no connection to it. If you can find an article that is actually about Black Athena, and claims to refute it, then by all means summarize it here, so long as it was published in a reliable source. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 06:04, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Your addition read, "In a 2017 publication in Nature by Iosif Lazaridis and colleagues, genome-wide data from 19 ancient individuals, including Minoans from Crete and Mycenaeans from mainland Greece was successfully analysed. The authors colcluded that there is no measurable Levantine or African influence in the Minoans and Mycenaeans, thus rejecting the hypothesis that the cultures of the Aegean were seeded by Egyptian or Phoenician colonists." Not a word of that is even about Bernal or Black Athena. Why then be surprised that it was removed? Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 06:22, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Bernal's wrong, but we can't use that source. @Freeknowledgecreator:, I think we need to remove the last paragraph at Thor Heyerdahl#Controversy for the same reason, plus the fact that it's a new article, not a reliable source for archaeology. Doug Weller talk 07:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

If you had actually bothered reading the paper, you would have noted that reference 22 cited by Lazarides et al. (2017) directly refers to Bernal's Black Athena and his claims that Greece had been colonised by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists. The absence of any measurable ancestry from these populations in Bronze Age Mycenaeans and Minoans provides hard genetic evidence against such alleged colonisation/s. So your claim that "not a word of that is even about Bernal or Black Athena" is simply false, you obviously have not read the paper and did not check the reference list, or did not understand it, or you are lying. In fact, you are contradicting yourself in the previous message when you admit that Black Athena had been indeed cited by Lazarides et al. (2017). And there is a very specific context in which it was cited: At the very core of Bernal's hypothesis was that Greece had been colonised by Egyptian and Phoenician settlers, who "civilised" the illiterate locals. Lazarides et al. (2017), but also other papers (I can cite them too if you wish), provide hard genetic evidence that such alleged "colonisations" never took place, as they are not detectable in the genetic profile of Bronze Age Aegeans and Greeks. This, therefore, not only refutes but directly debunks Bernal's theoretical claims for which no evidence exists. How exactly is this not relevant?

46.251.117.65 (talk) 14:46, 19 June 2021 (UTC)

Was Black Athena first published by Rutland Local History & Record Society?

I have been having a discussion with User:Freeknowledgecreator on their talk page about the entry in the infobox of this article saying that Black Athena was published by Rutland Local History & Record Society. I have been referred by him to [2] and by User:Ian.thomson to [3]. These both show the publisher as Rutland Local History & Record Society. However, this [4] shows it as published by Rutgers University Press. This [5] also shows the 1987 publisher as Rutgers University Press.

Black Athena does not appear as a publication on the website of Rutland Local History & Record Society. [6] You can see that the publications of this society are related to the local history of Rutland, as you would expect. It is inherently implausible that a controversial book about the racial politics of ancient history written by an academic at an American university should be published by the local history society of a small county in England. If it had been, this would have been newsworthy, and I cannot find any reference to this on the internet. The reference by Amazon to Rutland Local History & Record Society must be a mistake.

Any comments? Sweet6970 (talk) 19:05, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

"Dubious" annotation added by someone

I have noticed a "dubious" annotation has been added to my addition to the overview of this article: "Bernal himself has been accused of pursuing political motives and enlisting Bronze Age Greece in an academic war against Western civilisation".

Regardless whether one might agree or disagree with this statement, this accusation is factual and was made by D. Gress in his review paper "The case against Martin Bernal" (1989), published in The New Criterion 1: 36–43. Gress specifically writes: "Who would have thought it possible to enlist Bronze Age Greece in the current academic war against Western civilization?...Just this is Martin Bernal’s objective in his recent book, Black Athena, subtitled The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization. Bernal, professor of government at Cornell University, a former Sinologist...tells his readers candidly that “the political purpose of Black Athena is, of course, to lessen European cultural arrogance.” Apart from the fact that this charge has become a straw man—the chief problem in the academy today isn’t European cultural arrogance but its opposite— Bernal’s account, and the political circumstances in which it appears, raise some important questions about scholarship and propaganda in the academy and, a fortiori, in what remains of the general culture".

Considering Bernal himself has openly stated in the introduction of his book that "the political purpose of Black Athena is, of course, to lessen European cultural arrogance", Gress has a point. Gress's critique and the relevant citation of his paper are provided in the main text below under "criticism". As far as I understand from other Wikipedia articles, the overview of an article provides no citations but simply a summary of what is included in the main article, is this not the case? If it is necessary, many citations can be directly added in the overview/introduction as well, including the statement stating the obvious, that "Black Athena has been heavily criticised by academics" (to which someone has also added that a citation is needed). I have simply refrained from adding the long list of relevant citations in the overview because these are discussed and cited under "Criticism". In fact, many more review papers and criticism of this book can be added, which has received overwhelmingly negative reviews and has been discredited by academics.

Please clarify whether citations are to be added in the summary as well. Otherwise, the relevant citations are all provided in the main text and do not need to be repeated in the overview in my opinion.

46.251.117.65 (talk) 07:06, 28 June 2021 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is MOS:LEADCITE. Basically, while it is a common practice to remove citations from the lead once there's a stable and well-referenced article in which the lead only contains a summary, there is explicitly no prohibition on adding citations to the lead, and when something is regularly challenged or in some other way controversial it may be a good idea to add a citation to the lead anyway. So I added a citation to the part that was tagged 'dubious', for the time being. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 16:49, 4 March 2022 (UTC)

The criticisms of Bernal are well-represented in this article, both generally and in the lede. It seems unnecessary and non-encyclopedic to include specific criticisms from individual authors in the lede, since they are raised later in the article. It seems more appropriate to include only the summaries in the lede. Therefore, I am going to remove these last two points from the lede: "The book has also been accused that, by "reopening the nineteenth-century discourse on race and origins," it "has become part of the problem of racism rather than the solution that its author had envisioned." Bernal himself has been accused of pursuing political motives and enlisting Bronze Age Greece in an academic war against Western civilisation." Msalt (talk) 16:11, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Unnecessary judgment ("pseudoarchaeological") in the lede

I do not see how it is in any way encyclopedic to insert a highly-negative judgment in the third word of this article, before it even says what the article is about. This seems extremely POV. The second paragraph of the lede covers the controversy in sufficiently critical terms. Please discuss here before simply reverting, TheCopticGuy or whoever else.

I would also argue that "pseudoarchaeological" is not exactly right, in that Bernal was certainly qualified as a historian and a professor of Near Eastern Studies; the topic straddles the line between archaeology and history, and is not directly comparable to, say, "Chariots of the Gods" which is purely concerned with archaeology. That is a distinct issue, but it also weighs against this heavy-handed judgment being included in the absolute beginning of the article.

I will delete the one word for now. Instead of reversion wars, please justify your position if you disagree. Msalt (talk) 01:40, 24 July 2024 (UTC)

Bernal's work is described as pseudoscientific/ pseudoarchaeological/ controversial etc. in an abundance of modern sources with this being, in fact, the modern scientific consensus. This is not some subjective "judgement", but an objective description. According to the main article, Bernal was a "scholar of modern Chinese political history", although his work touched upon topics that are well outside of his own field. Him being "qualified as a historian and a professor of Near Eastern Studies", as claimed above, doesn't change the fact that his work diverges significantly from mainstream historiography, archaeology, linguistics etc. and was poorly received by his peers, remaining largely within the realm of WP:FRINGE. Piccco (talk) 15:16, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Whether or not the supposed consensus of the academic field agrees with a thesis, is not the criteria for pseudoarchaeology, pseudohistory, etc. A qualified professional coming to an alternative conclusion from mainstream consensus is known as HETERODOX, not pseudo-whatever.

WP:FRINGE will of course cover heterdox theses. But nothing in that guideline justifies labeling a RS published academic work by a qualified academic as "pseudo-x" without a citation.

If you can find a RS that explicitly labels Black Athena as "pseudoarchaeology," then you can cite it. And Wikipedia guidelines would not only require the citation but would also require attribution of the text (ie, "Professor So and So described Martin Bernal's Black Athena as an example of pseudoarchaeology in their work titled ABC") 2601:5CF:8000:6B60:35F9:F77E:B444:C663 (talk) 00:13, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

In wikipedia, sources are not needed in the lead when the information is well supported in the body, which in this case it is. Bernal made WP:EXTREME claims about ancient history, linguistics, archaeology and other fields without any historical, archaeological, liguistic etc. evidence which is exactly what constitutes pseudohistory and not a WP:RS. His theories have recently also been disproved by genetic studies as well. Piccco (talk) 22:10, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

In any case, I provided some sources with quotes, so that there wouldn't be any confusion that the statement was some subjective or unsourced label. Piccco (talk) 02:41, 27 October 2024 (UTC)