Cheikh Anta Diop

Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science.

Cheikh Anta Diop (29 December 1923 – 7 February 1986) was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture.

Quotes

• The negation of the history and intellectual accomplishments of Black Africans was cultural, mental murder, which preceded and paved the way for their genocide here and there in the world.
  • Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology

The African Origin of Civilization : Myth or Reality

Antériorité des civilisations nègres: mythe ou vérité historique? (1967) and Nations nègres et culture (1954), as translated from the French by Mercer Cook (1974)

• Ancient Egypt was a Negro civilization.
  • p. xiv

• The ancient Egyptians were Negroes. The moral fruit of their civilization is to be counted among the assets of the Black world.
  • p. xiv

• Instead of presenting itself to history as an insolvent debtor, that Black world is the very initiator of the "western" civilization flaunted before our eyes today.
  • p. xiv

• Pythagorean mathematics, the theory of the four elements of Thales of Miletus, Epicurean materialism, Platonic idealism, Judaism, Islam, and modern science are rooted in Egyptian cosmogony and science.
  • p. xiv

• Contrary to the legend, the Negro king was not, and had never been, a despot with unlimited powers. ... His mission was to serve the people wisely and his authority depended on his respect for the established constitution.
  • p. 23

• Already during the Middle Ages, the memory of a Negro Egypt that had civilized the world had been blurred by ignorance of the antique tradition hidden in libraries or buried under ruins. It would become even more obscure during those four centuries of slavery.
  • p. 24

• The Europeans looked down on the Black world and condescended to touch nothing but its riches.
  • p. 24

Quotes about

• The most daring book yet written by a Negro and one which will without question play an important part in the awakening of Africa.
  • Aimé Césaire, regarding Nations nègres et culture (Negro Nations and Culture) (1954).