Maria nagy ivan van sertima biography

"We have come to reclaim the house of history."

With those few words, Dr Ivan Sertima, a linguist, literary critic and anthropologist, fired a major salvo at the myths that surround the role of people of African descent in human civilisation.

Often portrayed as mere spectators, but certainly not major contributors to global development and human history, Africans, the scholar often argued, gave the world a lot more than people care to acknowledge.

The Guyanese was right and to prove it he set out - through scholarship, intellectual inquiry and numerous books, articles, lectures and other published works - to correct the falsehoods.

"We are dedicated to the revision of the role of the African in the world's great civilisations, the contribution of Africa to the achievement of man in the arts and sciences," he once said.

"We shall emphasise what Africa has given to the world, not what it has lost."

And he did that, for instance, in his landmark 1976 book, They Came Before Colum