Africans and Native Americans Book

This book left no leaves un-turned relative to the etymology of racial terms like mulatto, black, colored, loro, blackamoor, etc. He also shows us that the transatlantic slave trade began by capturing Americans who were taken as slaves to Europe (particularly the Iberian peninsula), North Africa and West Africa. One's first instinct is to think that they were selling Americans to Africans but the Europeans had taken over portions of countries in Africa and the islands off the West coast of Africa. They were using Americans as slaves to build ports, cities, and forts.

I read it mostly for the history of race relations but found it to be more. It is certainly a history book but so much more in that it can also be used for social ethics/sciences, etc. There is one conclusion of his that I take issue with. In referring to the Olmec colossal heads found in Mexico, he stated that the scholarship is necessary to show that if they were carved by Africans that there needs to be evidence of Africans carving the same colossal heads on the continent. I disagree in that all one needs to do is show that Africans indeed traveled to the Americas between the period 800-300 BC. We do have records of such a trip taking place from the Sene-Gambia/Mali area in 800 BC as recorded by Sertima in his book They Came Before Columbus.

He also shows us that Americans had discovered Europe millennia before the Columbian era. He confirmed a hypothesis of mine that Americans were traded from one area to the next by showing how Americans were emptied from islands to fulfill labor demands on others. Overall an excellent book one must have in the library if interested at all in the formation of the current phenotype(s), folk-lore, and traditions of the so-called African-American and Indian of today.