In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the Senegalese genius Cheikh Anta Diop, scientist, linguist and historian, proposed the very important thesis that Afrika was not only the cradle of humanity but also the cradle of civilisation. He was not the first to make such a suggestion, but he was the first Afrikan scholar to defend the thesis in several provocative books, including “The African Origin of Civilisation” and the major anthropological work “Civilisation or Barbarism”.

Diop’s work had challenged the very heart of the doctrines of racism and the negative arguments that had been made against Afrika by many European and American authors. It was Diop’s contention in his doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne in France not only that Afrika was the home of humanity and civilisation but that Europe had “stolen” or “distorted” much of the Afrikan record.

This charge created a wave of intellectual resistance that would follow Diop for most of his life because he challenged the idea of European superiority. Diop’s arguements gained in respectability as the wall of ignorance established by decades of racist science came tumbling down. Indeed, a host of other scientists in fields as dissimilar as archeology and linguistics wrote books and articles that illuminated the findings of Cheikh Anta Diop.

Authors such as Martin Bernal, Theophile Obenga and Basil Davidson have shown the truth of Diop’s initial thesis. Indeed Afrika is the home of all living humans. Furthermore, it is the source of many of the technological innivations that laid the foundation for modern industrial and informational societies.