Perhaps around the same time, natives elsewhere in Mexico created small
ceramic and stone sculptures of what seem to be Caucasoid and Negroid faces.
As Alexander von Wuthenau, who collected many such terra-cotta statues, put
it, “It is contradictory to elementary logic and to all artistic experience that an
Indian could depict in a masterly way the head of a Negro or of a white person
without missing a single racial characteristic, unless he had seen such a
person.”^27 Some scholars have dismissed the Caucasoid images as “stylized”
Indian heads and question their antiquity, since most were purchased, rather
than found by archaeologists who could date them from their surroundings.
Mayan specialists claim that the “Negroid faces” may represent jaguars or
human babies. Some point out that natives found near the sites today have
broad noses and thick lips, but of course, if Africans had come to the area, in
antiquity or as part of the slave trade after 1492, that would hardly be
surprising.^28 Van Sertima and others have adduced additional bits of evidence,
including similarities in looms and other cultural elements, and information in
Arab historical sources about extensive ocean navigation by Africans and
Phoenicians in the eighth century BC.^29
What is the importance today of these possible African and Phoenician
predecessors of Columbus? Like the Vikings, they provide a fascinating story,
one that can hold high school students on the edge of their seats. We might also
realize another kind of importance by contemplating the particular meaning of
Columbus Day. Italian Americans infer something positive about their
“national character” from the exploits of their ethnic ancestors. The American
sociologist George Homans once quipped, explaining why he had written on
his own ancestors in East Anglia, rather than on some larger group elsewhere:
“They may be humans, but not Homans!” Similarly, Scandinavians and
Scandinavian Americans have always believed the Norse sagas about the
Vikings, even when most historians did not, and finally confirmed them by
conducting archaeological research in Newfoundland.
If Columbus is especially relevant to western Europeans and the Vikings to
Scandinavians, what is the meaning to African Americans of the pre-
Columbian voyagers from Africa? After visiting the von Wuthenau museum in
Mexico City, the Afro-Carib scholar Tiho Narva wrote, “With his unique
collection surrounding me, I had an eerie feeling that veils obscuring the past
had been torn asunder.... Somehow, upon leaving the museum I suddenly felt
that I could walk taller for the rest of my days.”^30 Van Sertima’s book has been