Throughout his career as a scholar and author, Ivan Van Sertima worked to transform the way people viewed and taught Afrikan history. Ivan Van Sertima was born on January 26, 1935, in Kitty Village, Guyana, when it was still a British colony. In 1967, he published a dictionary of Swahili legal terms. While earning his graduate degree, he published his most famous work, They Came Before Columbus, in 1976. The book introduced his argument that people of Afrikan origin came to Central and South America long before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. The book achieved widespread attention in the African American community and gave a different insight into Afrikan history.
In 1977 Van Sertima received his Master’s degree and became an Associate Professor of Afrikan Studies at Rutgers in 1979. In the same year, he founded the Journal of Afrikan Civilizations, editing and publishing the journal for decades. The Journal of Afrikan Civilizations helped transform how Afrikan history was viewed and taught. Its articles described early Afrikan advances in agriculture, mathematics, arts, engineering, architecture, writing, medicine, astronomy, and navigation.
Other publications from Ivan include Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern (1983), Black Women in Antiquity (1984), The African Presence in Early Asia (1985), Great Black Leaders, Ancient and Modern (1988), and Egypt: The Child of Africa (1994). His research also discussed the early Afrikan civilizations which had disappeared from history.
