There has been a great deal of movement over the last decade or so to stop celebrating Columbus Day. Most of the argument has to do with what happened to the Native Americans subsequent to Columbus “discovering” America. Between pox-ridden blankets, one-sided treaties (that were then later broken anyway), and out and out extermination, there’s plenty to argue that Columbus’ “discovery” is nothing to celebrate.

The better reason is that it’s all a lie.

Much has been made of the fact that Vikings ventured to North America prior to Columbus. There has been evidence of Viking incursions and settlements in Newfoundland and elsewhere along the Atlantic coast. However, they weren’t the only ones to have contact with “The New World” prior to Columbus.

As I watched the Weather Channel over the past few weeks, something nagged at me. Every time they showed the maps of tropical systems coming off the coast of Africa, it seemed that portions of South America were awfully close to the west coast of Africa. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know. I don’t recall having any history of Africa prior to colonialism taught in school, other than Egypt. It’s almost like it was sitting there, just waiting to be exploited by Europeans.

I decided to start digging. And yes, there’s plenty of evidence that Africans sailed across the ocean to the Americas long before Columbus.

_{^{The strongest evidence of African presence in America before Columbus comes from the pen of Columbus himself. In 1920, a renowned American historian and linguist, Leo Weiner of Harvard University, in his book, Africa and the discovery of America, explained how Columbus noted in his journal that Native Americans had confirmed that “black skinned people had come from the south-east in boats, trading in gold-tipped spears.”}}

^{_{One of the first documented instances of Africans sailing and settling in the Americas were black Egyptians led by King Ramses III, during the 19th dynasty in 1292 BC. In fact, in 445 BC, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of the Ancient Egyptian pharaohs’ great seafaring and navigational skills. Further concrete evidence, noted by Dr. Imhotep and largely ignored by Euro-centric archaeologists, includes “Egyptian artifacts found across North America from the Algonquin writings on the East Coast to the artifacts and Egyptian place names in the Grand Canyon.”}}

_{^{In 1311 AD, another major wave of African exploration to the New World was led by King Abubakari II, the ruler of the fourteenth century Mali Empire, which was larger than the Holy Roman Empire. The king sent out 200 ships of men, and 200 ships of trade material, crops, animals, cloth and crucially African knowledge of astronomy, religion and the arts.}}

Then, from this document, we have 10 pieces of evidence that reinforce this theory:

• American Narcotics Discovered in Egyptian Mummies
• Egyptian Artifacts in North America
• Ancient Pyramids in Mexico
• Ancient African Skeletons Discovered in the New World
• A Clear Link in Religion
• The Accounts of Other European Explorers
• Africans Were Master Shipbuilders
• Gigantic Stone Heads in Central Mexico
• A Long History of Trade by Sea

Columbus Day was declared a Federal Holiday after lobbying by the Knights of Columbus and Italian-American leaders in 1934. It had been a source of Italian pride at a time when they were being discriminated against by other white Americans. However, the narrative was false on all accounts except for the fact that Christopher Columbus did set sail from Spain in 1492, with the backing of the Spanish King and Queen, determined to find another route to India. He ended up in the Caribbean.

However, he was far from the first contact the civilization of the East had with the West.