The Oldest Civilization On Earth — Dr. Anthony Browder

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[00:00:00]for the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee from last week. We submitted a petition, got a >> [music] [music] >> Uh first of all, uh Brother uh Browder, what what would you prefer? Uh Professor Browder, Dr. Browder, Brother Browder? Tony.

[00:00:42]Tony? Tony School. All right, good morning, Tony. How are you? I'm fine.

[00:00:46]It's [clears throat] a pleasure to be here. Uh in your home, it is so beautiful, so comfortable that doing this interview is a sheer pleasure.

[00:00:54]I'm I'm glad to be here. Thank you. As you know, we're doing this piece on the history of the Black Studies Department.

[00:01:01]Why and how it came about. What was the need for Black Studies in the beginning, anyway?

[00:01:08]So, I'd like to open up with you giving us uh your insight in terms of why the Black Studies Departments came about in the beginning. What was the need for them?

[00:01:20]Sure. Well, um speaking from my personal experiences uh growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and then coming to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University in uh the 1970s.

[00:01:36]Um I never took any Black Studies classes, none whatsoever.

[00:01:41]And as a result, after I graduated from Howard I felt that there was a tremendous void in my understanding of who I was as a person of African ancestry.

[00:01:52]So, after college, my real education began. I began to pursue an interest in Black Studies.

[00:01:58]And it began first with uh my going to hear Dr. Ivan Van Sertima when he was in town to promote his new book, They Came Before Columbus.

[00:02:08]And shortly after uh meeting Van Sertima I uh heard of Dr. Ben for the first time. So, meeting those two brothers uh within 6 months of each other made me aware that there was a wealth of information that had been excluded from my education as a person of African ancestry, even though I had attended predominantly Black schools all of my life.

[00:02:30]And that prompted me to begin my investigation of who I was as a person of African ancestry. And as I began to gain more knowledge of self and and met scholars who were in the forefront of that movement, I became aware of uh uh Dr. John Henrik Clarke and others who were instrumental in the uh Black Studies uh movement. And their purposes for initiating that movement were essentially the same of my interest in uh self-study. And that is the educational institutions that we pay our taxes to uh have consistently uh minimized our presence in world history, African history, and American history. So, there has been a need uh for us to learn more about ourselves, and that need has basically come uh through the work of independent uh brothers and sisters who saw a void who understood the power of of knowledge of African and African American history and culture and and saw to it that information was available uh at various levels so that it could fuel uh not just African children, but but all children with a greater awareness and appreciation for the contributions of African people to to world history and culture uh not just African history or American history and culture. So, the movement that um Dr. Clarke played a pivotal role in spearheading is one that has uh favorably influenced the thinking of millions of people over the last um almost 50 years now. Uh 40 years now.

[00:04:10]And and and so, uh while I was uh on the outside of that movement, knew very little about it uh in my early years, I've I've been a beneficiary of the movement uh because of my involvement with uh many many of the scholars who were involved, as well as interacting now with um uh young adults who have been the beneficiary of of attending HBCUs and even even high schools that had courses in Black Studies. And as a consequence, they now uh have a greater understanding of their history and culture at an earlier age than many of us did, and they're beginning to to take this mantle uh uh uh uh uh or this this mantle of responsibility of African history and culture even further because of the transformative power of introduction to knowledge of self at an early age how that influenced them and they are seeing to it that others are also exposed to this information.

[00:05:10]And it's it's it's my it's my goal that um that this effort continues uh and it has to continue because, as we know from um the effects of the African Senate movement in the late '80s and early '90s, uh there's been a concerted effort on the part of many in this country uh to diminish Black Studies and African Studies. Um and right now, as we speak in 2010 uh we see that the state of Texas is um initiating efforts to write certain aspects of African history out of the history books. Uh Mississippi is about to do the same thing. So, as we move into this age of our what post-racial America, we'll find that racists uh reasserting their right to tell our story. Uh and as a consequence, as that is happening, we are being erased from the respectable commentary of human history, as Dr. Clarke often said. So, this battle is far from over and we have to continue to fight for the basic right to tell our story and to teach our story to to all children in the classroom so that we can assume our rightful place in world history.

[00:06:24]Tony, >> [clears throat] >> why is this um uh why is the creators of Nile Valley civilization uh African or Egypt Egyptian uh uh history, why is that such a uh uh so contested? Why is this war so hot [snorts] over who are the creators of Nile Valley civilization? Sure. Uh well, as Dr. Jeffries said um many years ago and it has repeated on numerous occasions whoever controls the Nile Valley stands at the head of human accomplishments. Uh Nile Valley civilization uh we now know beyond a shadow of a doubt is the oldest documented civilization uh on this planet. There has been uh um there have been others who who contested whether or not Nile Valley civilization came first or Mesopotamian civilization came first, and that debate is going back and forth over the last uh century or so. But essentially, what I found is that this attempt to assert Mesopotamia ahead of Kemet was an effort that was made to minimize uh the significance of Nile Valley culture and civilization.

[00:07:35]But in reality, we know that Mesopotamian culture and civilization was not a true culture in the in the literal sense of the word. Uh they had cuneiform writing, which is just hash marks that uh really is not a a a language, is not a sentence structure uh as Medu Neter is. Um there has been uh a a great deal of excavation in Mesopotamia. But none of those excavations have yielded the quality or the quantity of artifacts that Nile Valley civilization has. So, I think the issue can be settled once for all that um uh Nile Valley civilization is the oldest documented civilization and has the greatest wealth of of of of evidence to validate it as the beginning of culture and civilization. As a matter of fact, um in recent years, there has been uh research done uh in um the in in upper upper Kemet uh in Ta-Seti is the oldest documented city known to man. And as more uh archaeologists are doing research, we're finding more and more documents uh to to indicate that uh the development of culture probably began south of Kemet uh in what is now modern-day Sudan uh and preceded the development of Kemet by hundreds and maybe even thousands of years. So, I'm quite certain that as more scholars begin to do excavations uh south of Kemet, they'll find more evidence to substantiate uh the southern origins of Kemetic culture and civilization. And so, uh it's another reason why we need to have more culturally grounded scholars who are introduced to this information at an early age so that they can begin to advance the research, become the next generations of of Obengas and Diops and and Jokannans and and Clarkes. And and I'm very hopeful that within the next 50 years our understanding of Nile Valley culture and civilization will change dramatically as a result of new excavations uh that will be undertaken.

[00:09:52]When we say Nile Valley civilization uh what geographical land area are we talking about and who are we talking about?

[00:10:03]Well, when we talk about Nile Valley civilization, we're talking about um, the Nile River is the longest river in the world, flows from south to north, has its origins in uh, central East Africa, uh, from uh, the tributaries of the White Nile, which comes out at the foot of uh, uh, Mount Kilimanjaro and um, the Blue Nile comes out of the uh, Rwenzori Mountains in Ethiopia. So, we're we're talking about uh, a a region in Africa that extends over 4,000 miles. Um, and that uh, we know that early man used rivers as a means of uh, navigation. It was the most convenient means of transportation, moving from one part of the land to to the other. And since the river flows from south to north, then that uh, migration pattern was from uh, southeastern Africa, here Uganda and and and Kenya, down north uh, through Sudan into Kemet and also out of Ethiopia into Sudan and into Kemet and then continued uh, all the way through Kemet or Egypt into the Mediterranean Sea. So, it was a natural uh, cultural highways, Dr. Clark used to say. And these, we're talking about indigenous African people uh, who were the first human beings to to walk on this planet and uh, recently they have discovered the skeletal remains of a an African woman found in East Africa, uh, skeletal remains that have been dated to, I believe, 4.1 million years old. So, uh, the oldest skeletal remains that paleontologists are discovering have only been found in Africa and it seems that each decade or so they're finding new skeletal remains that pushes back the beginning of humanity by hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years. And so, we can expect uh, within our lifetime over the course of the next uh, two to to five decades, we can expect to find um, new archaeological finds that will push the beginning of humanity further back and we'll find that those humans, early humans, have only been found in Africa and I'm of the mindset that we will also find evidence of earlier civilizations, uh, probably still in this Nile Valley region, but earlier civilizations which predate uh, Ta-Seti and Kemet. So, I'm very I'm very hopeful that our perception of world history and culture will change dramatically uh, again as more people of African ancestry begin to receive the education that gives them the skills uh, to be able to do the research and hopefully they'll be in a better position to receive funds from from African Americans who will help to finance that research, which will guarantee that it will be published.

[00:13:03]What >> [clears throat] >> would you know, we're talking about Nile Valley civilization, which uh, spans uh, a distance of at least 4,000 miles, but when we look at what is now Israel and what they're calling the Northeast, uh, Mesopotamia and that whole area, would not that have been at uh, in ancient times African people as well? Oh, sure.

[00:13:28]We can we can say for a fact that prior to the creation of the uh, Suez Canal in the 19th century that uh, what is now the uh, so-called Middle East and the uh, Saudi Arabia Peninsula was once a part of the continent of Africa. It still is Africa.

[00:13:49]Uh, despite the uh, creation of the term Middle East, which I understand was created by a British uh, reporter in the early 20th century. It was a geopolitical term that was used to to separate uh, specifically the inhabitants of Northeast Africa, who we now call Egyptians, uh, from the continent of Africa. So, those people have been relegated to this nebulous place called the Middle East. And every time I hear that term, uh, it it it angers me because uh, there is no such place as the Middle West, the Middle North, the Middle South. So, it was a term that was conveniently created in order to separate African people from uh, that specific uh, landmass and the history and politics of that landmass.

[00:14:32]So, we can say without a doubt that the area now known as is Palestine and and Israel and Jerusalem and and uh, going further northeast into uh, what is now known as um, it is Iraq, uh, those lands were uh, Turkey as well, yes, those lands were inhabited by people who we would classify today as Africans. Uh, but because of uh, uh, geopolitics, uh, African people have been written out of their own history wherever they have been. Uh, it's interesting in that um, in the seven years that this country has been involved in the um, uh, war in Iraq, uh, I've read numerous articles about Africans who live in Iraq, Africans who live in Baghdad.

[00:15:23]Uh, although many of them uh, were brought there um, to be the servants of of Arabs, were enslaved, uh, there is also a great deal of evidence which indicates that um, Africans lived in that region of Iraq before the arrival of so-called Arab-speaking people. And and again, uh, this history is is in museums, it is in libraries, it is a history that is not commonly shared because of uh, the desire to to minimize and to localize uh, the presence and the contributions of African people to a