For instance, Diop suggested that the uses of terminology like "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern", or statistically classifying all who did not meet the "true" Black stereotype as some other race, were all attempts to use race to differentiate among African peoples. Demba Sy, Papa, "L'itinéraire Politique de Cheikh Anta Diop". Home; About; FORUM. All these factors combined, based on the formation of a federated and unified Africa, culturally and otherwise, are surmised to be the only way for Africa to become the power in the world that she should rightfully be. Keita and Kittles (1999) argue that modern DNA analysis points to the need for more emphasis on clinal variation and gradations that are more than adequate to explain differences between peoples rather than pre-conceived racial clusters. 40 talking about this. Afrique de Cheikh Anta Diop. [98], Such tropical elements were thus in place from the earliest beginnings of Egyptian civilization, not isolated somewhere South behind the Saharan barrier. [23], Diop published his technique and methodology for a melanin dosage test in scholarly journals. (1993), "La parenté génétique entre l’egyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines moderns: L’exemple du duala", pp. [79], The 1957 and 1966 editions of Seligman’s “Races of Africa” retained this statement, and many anthropologists accepted the Hamitic hypothesis into the 1960s. [24] His forceful assertions that the original population of the Nile Delta was black and that Egyptians remained black-skinned until Egypt lost its independence, "was criticized by many participants". La conférence de Cheikh Anta Diop à Niamey (partie 4) by Kheperu n Kemet. These connections appear not only in linguistics, (see Languages demonstrating section below) but in cultural areas such as religion. (1993), "La parenté génétique entre l'egyptien pharaonique et des langues négro-africaines moderns: L’exemple du duala", pp. [48] Some modern studies use DNA to define racial classifications, while others condemn this practice as selective filling of pre-defined, stereotypical categories. The reviewers found that some researchers seemed to have shifted their categories and methods to maintain this "special case" outlook. He examined various fields of artistic creation, with a discussion of African languages, which, he said, would be the sources of regeneration in African culture. 97-8. [29] This does not necessarily imply a genetic relationship, however. Keita, "Further studies of crania", op. J. D. Walker, "The Misrepresentation of Diop's Views". (1975). Funding for USA.gov and content contributors is made possible from the U.S. Congress, E-Government Act of 2002. The Niger-Congo Family". Diop also claimed to be "the only Black African of his generation to have received training as an Egyptologist" and "more importantly" he "applied this encyclopedic knowledge to his researches on African history. was dissolved, Diop and other former members reconstituted themselves under a new party, the Front National Sénégalais (FNS) in 1963. Diop also acknowledged that the ancient Egyptians absorbed "foreign" genes at various times in their history (the Hyksos for example) but held that this admixture did not change their essential ethnicity. Diop insisted on a broad interpretation similar to that used in classifying European populations as white. Are you certain this article is inappropriate? For instance, Diop suggested that the uses of terminology like "Mediterranean" or "Middle Eastern", or statistically classifying all who did not meet the "true" Black stereotype as some other race, were all attempts to use race to differentiate among African peoples. "[22], Diop believed that the political struggle for African independence would not succeed without acknowledging the civilizing role of the African, dating from ancient Egypt. This same modern scholarship however in turn challenges aspects of Diop's work, particularly his notions of a worldwide black phenotype. "[16] Diop was highly critical of "the most brilliant pseudo-revolutionary eloquence that ignores the need" for rebuilding the African national consciousness "which must be met if our people are to be reborn culturally and politically. [2][3], Born in Thieytou, Diourbel Region, French Senegal, Diop was born to an aristocratic Muslim Wolof family in Senegal where he was educated in a traditional Islamic school. Before Diop, the general view, following Charles Seligman[51] on the influence of Egypt on Black Africa was that elements of Egyptian religious thought, customs and technology diffused along four trade routes: up the White Nile; along the North African coast past Tunis to West Africa; up the Blue Nile and along the foothills of Abyssinia to the Great Lakes and through Darfur and along the southern edge of the Sahara. Under the "true negro" approach, Diop contended that those peoples who did not meet the stereotypical classification were attributed to mixture with outside peoples, or were split off and assigned to Caucasoid clusters. It found that some European researchers had earlier tried to make Africans seem a special case, somehow different from the rest of the world's population flow and mix. Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival. www.ucad.sn. Sports Teams. (1970–1972), Égyptien ancien et négro-africain, pp. This same modern scholarship however in turn challenges aspects of Diop's work, particularly his notions of a worldwide black phenotype. Diop contributed an article to the journal: "Quand pourra-t-on parler d'une renaissance africaine" (When we will be able to speak of an African Renaissance?). He declined to seek the opinion of other scholars and answer their criticism, although this is the normal procedure in academic debate. Diop supported his arguments with references to ancient authors such as Herodotus and Strabo. [66], Analyses of other scholars (Hiernaux 1975, Keita, 1990 et al.) Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentar... S. O. Y. Keita, "Royal incest and Diffusion in Africa", National Democratic Rally (Senegal) Politicians, WorldHeritage articles needing clarification from August 2015, Articles lacking reliable references from August 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2009, National Democratic Rally (Senegal) politicians. One of Diop's most controversial issues centers on the definition of who is a true Black person. Coon used racial rankings of inferiority and superiority, defined "true Blacks" as only those of cultures south of the Sahara, and grouped some Africans with advanced cultures with Caucasian clusters. Closed Now. Such a vision of inherent unity and continuity, ironically, is also supported in part by modern mainstream Egyptologists such as Frank Yurco: In summary, modern anthropological and DNA scholarship repeats and confirms many of the criticisms made by Diop as regards to arbitrary classifications and splitting of African peoples, and confirms the genetic linkages of Nile Valley peoples with other African groups, including East Africa, the Sahara, and the Sudan. or earlier.[74]. But what counts in reality is the phenotype. "[21], After the B.M.S. [17][18], Diop had since his early days in Paris been politically active in the Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (RDA), an African nationalist organisation led by Félix Houphouët-Boigny. [75] He did not subdivide what he termed the langues négro-africaines into subgroups or suggest a family-tree for them, but implicitly rejected the language relations proposed by earlier linguists from Meinhof to Greenberg, who are not mentioned in his bibliography. However such conceptions are inconsistently applied when it comes to African peoples, where typically, a "true negro" is identified and defined as narrowly as possible, but no similar attempt is made to define a "true white". [46], Scholars such as Bruce Trigger condemned the often shaky scholarship on such northeast African peoples as the Egyptians. As regards Egyptian religion for example, there appear to be more solid connections with the cultures of the Sudan and northeast Africa than Mesopotamia, according to mainstream research:[58], Most anthropologists see commonalities in African culture but only in a very broad, generic sense, intimately linked with economic systems, etc. Ferocious, warlike nature with spirit of survival. University of California, Santa Barbara, and James M. Burns, a professor in history at Clemson University, have both referred to Diop's writings of Ancient Egypt and his theories, characterizing it as "revisionist". [30][31], Some critics have argued that Diop's melanin dosage test technique lacks sufficient evidence. Instead he claims Egypt as an influential part of a "southern cradle" of civilization, an indigenous development based on the Nile Valley. He initially enrolled to study higher mathematics, but then enrolled to study philosophy in the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. As regards Egyptian religion for example, there appear to be more solid connections with the cultures of the Sudan and northeast Africa than Mesopotamia, according to mainstream research:[67], Diop considered that it was politically important to demonstrate the cultural and linguistic unity of Africa, and to base this unity on the Egyptian past. In protest at the refusal of the Senghor administration to release political prisoners, Diop remained largely absent from the political scene from 1966 to 1975. In 1957 he registered his new thesis title "Comparative study of political and social systems of Europe and Africa, from Antiquity to the formation of modern states." View Boubacar’s full profile See who you know in common Get introduced Contact Boubacar directly Join to view full profile People also viewed Tugdual Denis. Seligman's views on direct diffusion from Egypt are not generally supported to-day,[52] but were current when Diop started to write and may explain his wish to show that Egyptian and Black Africa culture had a common source, rather than that Egyptian influence was one way. Symposium on the Peopling of Ancient Egypt and the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script; Proceedings, pp. "Cheikh Anta Diop: Jalons biographiques et bibliographiques. Variation need not be the result of a "mix" from categories such as Negroid or Caucasoid, but may be simply a contiuum of peoples in that region from skin color, to facial features, to hair, to height. Some scholars draw heavily from Diop's groundbreaking work,[7] while others in the Western academic world do not accept his theories. [76] Diop devoted most of his study to the structural resemblances between one modern African language, Wolof, and Ancient Egyptian,[77] adding some references to other modern languages. [4] Cheikh Anta Diop University (formerly known as the University of Dakar), in Dakar, Senegal, is named after him. JD love. Diodorus , Siculus . [87] Diop has endorsed the work of Obenga. Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, Kefi R, Paris F, Gayraud RP, Spadoni JL, El-Chenawi F, Beraud-Colomb E., "Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt". [74] Obenga expressly rejected Greenberg’s division of most African languages into the Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan and Afroasiatic families, treating all African languages except the Khoisan languages and Berber as a single unit, négro-africain. Seligman's Hamitic hypothesis stated that: "... the civilizations of Africa are the civilizations of the Hamites, its history the record of these peoples and of their interaction with the two other African stocks, the Negro and the Bushman, whether this influence was exerted by highly civilized Egyptians or…pastoralists ...The incoming Hamites were pastoral 'Europeans'-arriving wave after wave – better armed as well as quicker witted than the dark agricultural Negroes. Rousseau, Madeleine and Cheikh Anta Diop (1948), "1848 Abolition de l'esclavage - 1948 evidence de la culture nègre". Video of the Month; News. (1975). ... University College of Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts of Sant Pol de Mar, Barcelona. 49-54. Diop, Cheik Anta, translated by Mercer Cook (1974). Danielle Maurice, "Le musée vivant et le centenaire de l’abolition de l’esclavage: pour une reconnaissance des cultures africaines". are typically misrepresented and framed in these stereotypical terms, it is claimed, so as to quickly dismiss his work and avoid engaging it point by point. [4][13] In Paris, Diop studied under André Aymard, professor of History and later Dean of the Faculty of Letters at the University of Paris and he said that he had "gained an understanding of the Greco-Latin world as a student of Gaston Bachelard, Frédéric Joliot-Curie, André Leroi-Gourhan, and others". These concepts are laid out in Diop's Towards the African Renaissance: Essays in Culture and Development, 1946-1960,[54] and The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity,,[55][56] These concepts can be summarized as follows: Diop attempted to demonstrate that the African peoples shared certain commonalities, including language roots and other cultural elements like regicide, circumcision, totems, etc. Schuh (1997), "The use and misuse of language in the study of African history", pp. Paris : Karthala : Centre de recherches africaines, ©1996 (OCoLC)605947659: Named Person: Cheikh Anta Diop; Cheikh Anta Diop; Cheikh Anta Diop; Cheikh Anta Diop; Cheikh Anta Diop; Cheikh Anta Diop: Material Type: Biography, Internet resource: Document Type: Book, Internet Resource: All Authors / Contributors: François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar. APAM had been set up in 1936 by people on the political left wing to bring culture to wider audiences. The Niger-Congo Family". It could seem to tempting to delude the masses engaged in a struggle for national independence by taking liberties with scientific truth, by unveiling a mythical, embellished past. In protest at the refusal of the Senghor administration to release political prisoners, Diop remained largely absent from the political scene from 1966 to 1975. [80] Tourneax notes that Diop accused previous linguists of being unscientific and obscuring the truth. The special edition of the journal was on the occasion of the centenary of the abolition of slavery in the French colonies and aimed to present an overview of issues in contemporary African culture and society. Obenga, Théophile. He did not believe that such a population needed to be arbitrarily split into tribal or racial clusters. [107], The conclusion was that some of the oldest native populations in Egypt can trace part of their genetic ancestral heritage to East Africa. See S.O.Y. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1950), "Studies in African Linguistic Classification: IV. Oliver, Roland, and Brian M. Fagan (1975). Stevanovitch A, Gilles A, Bouzaid E, Kefi R, Paris F, Gayraud RP, Spadoni JL, El-Chenawi F, Beraud-Colomb E., "Mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity in a sedentary population from Egypt". Selectively lumping such peoples into arbitrary Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Caucasoid categories because they do not meet the narrow definition of a "true" type, or selectively defining certain traits like aquiline features as Eurasian or Caucasoid, ignores the complexity of the DNA data on the ground. "[90] This outlook was unlike many of the contemporary white writers he questioned. Diop, inspired by the efforts of Aimé Césaire toward these ends, but not being a literary man himself, took up the call to rebuild the African personality from a strictly scientific, socio-historical perspective. (24) Jean Vercoutter at the 1974 UNESCO conference. [19], Black Africa: the economic and cultural basis for a federated state is the book that best expresses Diop's political aims and objectives. College & University in Dakar, Senegal. 162 check-ins. No places to show. [43] Critics of this study in turn hold that it achieves its results by manipulation of data clusters and analysis categories, casting a wide net to achieve generic, general statistical similarities with populations such as Europeans and Indians. This argument remains a hallmark of Diop's contribution. It found that some European researchers had earlier tried to make Africans seem a special case, somehow different from the rest of the world's population flow and mix. One approach that has bridged the gap between Diop and his critics is the non-racial bio-evolutionary approach. "[96][97], Academic detractors charge Diop with racism, based particularly on his claim that the ancient Egyptians were black. The party, though not officially recognized, continued strong political activity along the same lines as the BMS. Diop insisted on a broad interpretation similar to that used in classifying European populations as white. [106], As regards living peoples, the pattern of complexity repeats itself, calling into question the merging and splitting methods of Jensen, et al. Extremely warlike peoples, for example, the Zulu, appear frequently in the "Southern Cradle". Pape Mor Diop. [98], Diop also appeared to express doubts about the concept of race. Though Diop is sometimes referred to as an Afrocentrist, he predates the concept and thus was not himself an Afrocentric scholar. Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. Sanders, Edith R. (1969), "The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective". [citation needed], The Swiss archaeologist Charles Bonnet's discoveries at the site of Kerma shed some light on the theories of Diop. [103] Toyin Falola has mentioned how Diop's work has been "passionate, combative, and revisionist". Diop, inspired by the efforts of Aimé Césaire toward these ends, but not being a literary man himself, took up the call to rebuild the African personality from a strictly scientific, socio-historical perspective. Tourneax (2010), "L'argument linguistique chez Cheikh Anta Diop et ses disciples", pp. A series of books on ancient Egypt, published in 2004, found that there is little basis for positing a close connection between Dynastic Egypt and the African interior. Seligman's views on direct diffusion from Egypt are not generally supported to-day,[61] but were current when Diop started to write and may explain his wish to show that Egyptian and Black Africa culture had a common source, rather than that Egyptian influence was one way. Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. February 07, 1986. edit data. By 1962 Diop's party working on the ideas enumerated in Black Africa: the economic and cultural basis for a federated state became a serious threat to the regime of then President Léopold Senghor. About See All. that when the data are looked at in toto, without the clustering manipulation and selective exclusions above, then a more accurate and realistic picture emerges of African diversity. [36], Diop's first work translated into English, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality, was published in 1974. [37] A 2004 review of DNA research in African Archaeological Review supports some of Diop's criticisms. Critique of previous scholarship on Africa, Physical variability of the African people, Cultural unity of African peoples as part of a southern cradle, Diop's thought and criticism of modern racial clustering, Diop and the arbitrary sorting of categories, Diop and criticism of the Saharan barrier thesis, Diop and criticism of true Negro classification schemes, Diop and criticism of mixed-race theories. [75] Ngom[76] and Obenga[77] both eliminated the Asian Semitic and African Berber members of Greenberg’s Afroasiatic family from the négro-africain family: Ngom added that the Bantu languages have more in common with Ancient Egyptian than do the Semitic ones. [59] He rejected early 20th century theories that confused race and language, such as those advanced by the linguist Carl Meinhof and the anthropologist Charles Gabriel Seligman. All through his life, Cheikh Anta DIOP led a political struggle for the liberation of Africa, its revival, its development and the construction of an Africa-wide Federal State able to cope with the challenges of the modern world. ( 2002 ) Cheikh Anta Diop et L ' Afrique dans L ' histoire du Monde , Paris : Sankore . This article will be permanently flagged as inappropriate and made unaccessible to everyone. As Egyptologist Frank Yurco notes: Diop held that scholarship in his era isolated extreme stereotypes as regards African populations, while ignoring or downplaying data on the ground showing the complex linkages between such populations. [49], Diop's presentation of his concepts at the Cairo UNESCO symposium on "The peopling of ancient Egypt and the deciphering of the Meroitic script", in 1974, argued that there were inconsistencies and contradictions in the way African data was handled. [30] He suggests that the peoples of the Nile Valley were one regionalized population, sharing a number of genetic and cultural traits.[31]. Mame Yassine Sarr. These methods it is held, downplay normal geographic variation and genetic diversity found in many human populations and have distorted a true picture of African peoples.[111]. Instead he views the Greeks as forming part of a "northern cradle", distinctively growing out of certain climatic and cultural conditions. Greenberg, Joseph H. (1949), "Studies in African Linguistic Classification: I. [42] Modern physical anthropologists also question splitting of peoples into racial zones. "[45] Trigger's conclusions were supported by Egyptologist Frank Yurco, who viewed the Egyptians, Nubians, Ethiopians, Somalians, etc. Keita and Rick A. Kittles, "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence". [46] Diop always maintained that Somalians, Nubians, Ethiopians and Egyptians were all part of a related range of African peoples in the Nilotic zone that also included peoples of the Sudan and parts of the Sahara. [88] Diop by contrast in his African Origin of Civilization,[89] argues against the European stereotypical conception. Gentle, idealistic, peaceful nature with a spirit of justice. It is a hazard of the evolution. Diop said that he "acquired proficiency in such diverse disciplines as rationalism, dialectics, modern scientific techniques, prehistoric archeology and so on." Cheikh Anta Diop was born on December 29, 1923 in Diourbel, Senegal. Portrait de Cheikh Anta Diop - Duration: 2 ... Droit Libre TV 122,668 views. Jamono Fk-Sine. [43], Diop held that despite the Sahara, the genetic, physical and cultural elements of indigenous African peoples were both in place and always flowed in and out of Egypt, noting transmission routes via Nubia and the Sudan, and the earlier fertility of the Sahara. Indeed, he eschewed racial chauvinism, arguing: "We apologise for returning to notions of race, cultural heritage, linguistic relationship, historical connections between peoples, and so on. 89–90. He was general secretary of the RDA students in Paris from 1950 to 1953. Mainstream Egyptologists such as F. Yurco note that among peoples outside Egypt, the Nubians were closest ethnically to the Egyptians, shared the same culture in the predynastic period, and used the same pharaonoic political structure. or. He ultimately translated parts of Einstein's Theory of Relativity into his native Wolof. Diop, Cheik Anta, translated by Mercer Cook (1974). John G. Jackson and Runoko Rashidi, Introduction To African Civilizations (Citadel: 2001). [40] As regards the key Badarian group, a 2005 study by anthropologist S. O. Y. Keita of Badarian crania in predynastic upper Egypt found that the predynastic Badarian series clusters much closer with the tropical African series than European samples. Crowd sourced content that is contributed to World Heritage Encyclopedia is peer reviewed and edited by our editorial staff to ensure quality scholarly research articles. comment. In it he argues that only a united and federated African state will be able to overcome underdevelopment. The entire region shows a basic unity based on both the Nile and Sahara, and cannot be arbitrarily diced up into pre-assigned racial zones. Tourneax, Henri (2010), "L'argument linguistique chez Cheikh Anta Diop et ses disciples", pp. Senegalese. Keita and Kittles (1997); Keita (2005); Keita, "Further studies of crania"; Hiernaux J. Reviews … What if an African ethnologist were to persist in recognizing as white-only the blond, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and systematically refused membership to the remaining Europeans, and Mediterraneans in particular—the French, Italians, Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese? He died on February 7, 1986 in Dakar, Senegal. He also stated that opponents were hypocritical in stating that the race of Egyptians was not important to define, but they did not hesitate to introduce race under new guises. are typically misrepresented and framed in these stereotypical terms, so as to quickly dismiss his work and avoid engaging it point by point. Diop, Cheik Anta (1973), in Preface (pp.