Ivan Van Sertima
Ivan Van Sertima | |
|---|---|
Van Sertima in 1995 | |
| Born | 26 January 1935 Kitty Village, British Guiana |
| Died | 25 May 2009 (aged 74) Highland Park, New Jersey, United States |
| Nationality | Guyanese |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Alma mater | SOAS University of London; Rutgers University |
| Known for | Theory of pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas |
| Spouses |
Jacqueline L. Patten
(m. 1984) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Africana Studies |
| Institutions | Rutgers University |
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (26 January 1935 – 25 May 2009) was a Guyanese-born British associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States.
He was best known for his Olmec alternative origin speculations, a brand of pre-Columbian contact theory, which he proposed in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). While his Olmec theory has "spread widely in African American community, both lay and scholarly", it was mostly ignored in Mesoamericanist scholarship, and has been called Afrocentric pseudoarchaeology and pseudohistory to the effect of "robbing native American cultures".