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Africa & Ancient Ireland: Africa To Iberia

Feature Article Africa  Ancient Ireland: Africa To Iberia
JAN 21, 2018 LISTEN

As per the norms of many of my papers, international comparisons will loom large here and a start is made with Amerinds of the Olmec Culture. They appear to attest early sea-trips on Atlantic coasts at dates Before Common Era (= BCE [as opposed to Common Era = CE]). Apparently, these Amerinds (= American Indians = Native Americans) are also to be seen as far north as the coast of Georgia in the U.S. Southeast. They demonstrate sailing on the oceans in this introductory section that will be followed by ones based on tracing some religio/cultic traits then certain statuary across the world.

Philip Arnold (Mesoamerican Voices 2005) gives the alternative of Uixtototin for the Amerinds called the Olmecs. Uixtotin translates as “People of the Salt-water” or sailors. Further would be claimed Olmec artifacts to as far north as the coast of Georgia in the U.S. Southeast. So too do myths of a variously styled ancestor-god. He is severally named Kukulkan (= the Nahua/Aztec Quetzacoatl); Hunab Ku (Creator-god); Itzamna (Supreme God); Zamana (variant spelling of Itzamna?); God D (of the Dresden Codex).

The cult of Kukulkan seems to have been important from the Amerinds (= American Indians = Native Americans) to the Mayas. His coming across the sea from the “land of the sunrise” (= the east) fits with the African look of some of the Olmec Great Heads, as does the fact that Guinea-to-Iberia matches some of the shorter routes across the Atlantic. There are numerous denials of this but the Great Heads are not the only evidence of this

After all Pre-Conquest black giants are shown in folklore of Mexican Amerinds cited in works of Ivan Van Sertima, “Esotericism in the Popol Vuh” by Raphael Girard (online), etc. Andrej Weircinski (as Van Sertima & others) studied Olmec skeletons that showed ca. 15% Africans (Proto/Early Olmec) to ca. 5% (Later Olmec). They are added to the figurines studied in “Unexpected Faces in Ancient America” by Alexander Von Wuthenau (1981).

From the opposite side of the Americas is folklore drawn on by Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus 1976) plus Alfred Barton (A History of the African-Olmecs 1998). Thus Amerind folklore from Peru to attest Pre-Conquest black traders coming overland to Peru and of blacks hefting large stones about there. Other long-distance contacts seem shown by Old-World drugs in Peruvian mummies and New-World drugs in Egyptian mummies.

For “American Indians in the Pacific”, Thor Heyerdahl (1952) may be wrong about the Amerind sources for the Polynesians but he and others call attention to reports of blacks in the Pacific. Heyerdahl (ib.) says these Pacific blacks were called the Manehune/Menehene by their Polynesian successors. Manehune were those responsible for the handling of large blocks according to the traditions of the Polynesians. They were also known as “paddlers of canoes”.

More blacks are those of what has been regarded as the eastern end of what has been called variously Out-of-Africa (= OOA), Strandloopers, Oceanic Negroes, Beachcombers, Ichthyophagi, routes. The OOA-trail is particularly marked all along by genomorphic mutations with lots of intermixing of such groups. However, this may be so for the genomorph of the OOA-trail, whereas the phenomorph remained that of the Oceanic Negro. The latter point has been well shown by such as New Guinea, Melanesia, Blackfellas, etc, so presumably relate to the other “paddlers of canoes” already shown on more Pacific islands.

The OOA-trail ending in south China has also been associated with such groups as the Li-Min, East Yi, Nan Yi, Man Yi, Kunlun, Li, etc. According to “Negroids in The Pacific” (online), the word of Yi is so closely associated with the sea that a Chinese term for the sea is yi. The same article says they built lou-chan (= tower-boats). The Chinese deity named Wat-Yune has a Negro aspect according to William Gillespie (The Land of Sinim 1854). Gillespie (ib.) says he is closely associated with dragon-boat racing.

Sites dealing with Indian affairs frequently complain of blacks wanting to claim everything under the sun. Oddly, there is little said about Indians doing the same about Africa (esp. Eg.). My own opinion has long been that our ancestors were in contact by sea rather more than usually accepted but my emphasis is on Africa. In this line is my article with the surely self-explanatory title of “Ancient India, West Africa & the Sea”. More blacks here are those on the Indian Ocean are those of named by the Indian term of kolandiaphunta taking us straight back to the Chinese word already seen as Kunlun and who built the ships called kunlun-po that is generally translated as “Ships of the Blacks”.

More Non-African traditions of sea-going Africans are provided by Fijian tradition. There are Maori tales of Polynesians coming to New Zealand. Despite the very obvious mythical elements of Polynesians as Proto-Maoris coming to New Zealand in large canoes, this is generally regarded as genuine. Therefore, it seems there should be little difficulty in accepting the equally non-African tradition from Fiji of yet more large canoes but this time from east Africa to Fiji according to the Balson Holdings site (online).

Undoubtedly, the leading accounts of voyages from any part of east Africa has surely to be those from Punt to Egypt. From works by messrs. Huntngford (Man 1937), Landstrom (Ships of the Pharoahs 1971), Wicker (Egypt & the Mountains of the Moon 1991), etc, it emerges that the Afro-Asiatics/Afrasians of east Africa had virtually every single feature adopted by the Egyptians for their shipbuilding.

This includes the Afrasian banners that appear to have been in the role of proto-sails. Not for nothing does early tradition of the Hellenic Greeks attribute the earliest use of sails to Africo/Egyptian sources. Nor is it really any great surprise that Ezra Marcus (Egypt & Levant 2007) could interpret an inscription from Mit Rahina (neat Thebes, Egypt) as detailing Egyptian voyages around the east Mediterranean. This included the Late Bronze Age Greece of the Mycenaean Greeks. Martin Bernal (Black Athena Vol. III 1991) went further when identifying Mit Rahina as the Egyptian equivalent of the Greek accounts of Egyptian military actions in areas mainly adjacent to the east Mediterranean. These Greek authors include Herodotus (5th c. BCE), Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BCE), etc.

The circa (= ca.) 900 miles between on the Red Sea between Egypt and Punt(= Somalia/Djibouti/Eritrea?) and the ca. 600 miles in the east Mediterranean between Egypt and Crete would clearly indicate concerns for the sea in that part of Africa called Egypt. As would Gregory Gilbert (Ancient Egyptian Sea-Power & the Rise of Maritime Forces 2008).

Among further names that are relevant in taking this forward are William Winning (Manual of Comparative (1838); Winifred Brunson (Great Ones 1929); Ivan Van Sertima (in African Presence in Early Europe ed. Van Sertima 1985 & 2000); Peggy Brooks-Bartram (in Egypt: Child of Africa ed. Van Sertima 2002); Henry Aubin (The Rescue of Jerusalem 2002).

Bernal (ib.) arguing for Mit Rahina and Herodotus detailing the same actions in the Balkans (inc. Greece) brings us to the matter of the African troops in Egyptian employ described by Herodotus. According Herodotus, some decided to stay in Colchis. The Alis (ib.) noticed that Colchis, Iberia, etc, were among the ancient names for approximately what today is the modern nation of Georgia. They especially connect Colchis/Iberia/Georgia with the Africans that chose to stay there.

There is some opinion that Africans in places dotted around the Mediterranean probably represent slaves. This would be curious in the extreme, as the ancient slave-trade of the Mediterranean did not only involve Africans yet this theory involves us in believing that the slave-traders went round setting colonies of blacks. This is made even more unlikely when we read of Africans settled anciently the Mediterranean islands of Cyprus, Crete, are depicted in the Cyclades in the Theran frescoes and are referred to in such online articles as Remapping the Mediterranean: The Argo Adventure, Apollonius & Callimachus”, “Welcome to Ulcun/Ulcinj”, etc.

The latter article is also one of the sources touching on the matter of African as slaves when dealing with a shipwreck from which Africans were rescued by Ulcinj citizens. Both these articles refer to yet more islands right up to the head of the Adriatic as settled by Colchians. This is the context of Winning (ib.) plus the Alis (ib.) linking the Colchian Africans to not just the Adriatic islands but also the blacks that Polybius (2nd c. BCE Greek) settled on the banks of the Eridanis identified by Peter Beresford Ellis (The Druids 1994) with the River Po in north Italy.

This in turn slots in alongside the Alis connecting the Colchian Africans and the name of Iberia with the better known name of Iberia being applied to the peninsula in southwest Europe that is otherwise Spain and Portugal. Also with Winning (ib.) saying that not only that Taharquo of Kush was also known as Tarchon as the leader of the Etruscans in Italy and that he named Tarragona (Spain).

Andrew Fear (Rome & Baetica 1996) interpreted a passage by Appian (2nd c. CE) as saying that Carthage sent 30,000 Africans to settle in Spain. There are certainly some very considerable doubts as to just how Semitic the Carthaginians were by the date being noted by Appian, Fear (ib.) plus others.

Serge Plaza et al (Joining the Pillars of Hercules: MtDNA shows multidirectional flow in the western Mediterranean online) is a major element in attesting the already noted routes from the Gulf of Guinea that are further discussed in “Africa, West Europe & Prehistory” (online). This is from that part of the Atlantic Ocean that is the Gulf of Guinea and added to those to the Iberian Peninsula via the Magreb (= nth. Africa west of Africa) are others. They state that Group-l genes may have gone directly from Guinea, bypassing the Magreb/Morocco directly to Iberia.

AFRICA TO BRITAIN
This means West Africans from Guinea are again seen as sailors on the Atlantic. The shortest routes across the Atlantic compare directly with those from Guinea to south Iberia bypassing west Magreb. The evidence linking these Guinean Africans to the Americas was seen to be best explained by the Great Heads of the Olmec Culture. Here it seems there is good evidence for the close association of music plus dance with religion shown in early cultures across the world.

Brian Smith (online) felt able to connect the Veracruz-to-Yucatan heartland of most the Afric-looking Olmec Great Heads with present-day black populations of Veracruz and Costa Chica plus “African Influence in the Music of Mexico’s Costa Chica”. He reports on the marimba/marimbola (= finger-piano), tambor de friccion (= friction-drum), etc. There is some dispute as to the Pre-Columbian status of the earliest Amerind marimbas plus the friction-drums.

However, it seems the marimba takes name from an African goddess that originated in the Niger/Congo (N/C) languages according to Karin Norgard (Marimba: A Symbol of Guatemalan Culture online). Much the same applies to the friction-drum. This instrument is widespread in Africa but is very scarce in the Americas according to John Donahue (Applying Experimental Archaeology to Ethnomusicology: Recreating an Ancient Maya Friction Drum through Various lines of Evidence online). It was apparently part of “a dance with… instruments”

This close connection of such music and religion in early cultures brings us back to the ancestor-gods variously named as Itzamna or Kukulcan plus the African magicians and arrival. Clyde Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2005 & elsewhere) regards this as connected with the scene depicted on Stele No. 5 at Izapa (Mexico) that would appear to illustrate religio/cultic activities. Winters (ib.) holds that the main figures on this stele of the Post-Olmec Izapan Culture as west African priests from Mali in Central America. More of these black-skinned priests there are painted on the walls of the Temple of the Warriors of the equally Post-Olmec Mayas. Here they are demonstrated as those doing the sacrifices.

Reference has been made to a number of Amerind structures of megalithic blocks in South America. Some were apparently originally religious in nature but others were not. It may be that Heyerdahl (ib.) has been proven to be wrong about the South American ancestry of the Pacific islanders called the Polynesians but his connecting of these South American monuments and those of the Polynesian islands still seems a sound one, this is regardless of whether this went east/west or west/east.

Equally to the point is that the Pre-Polynesian blacks that Heyerdahl (ib.) were called Manehune/Menehune by the Polynesians were again undertaking the sacrifices no less than the black-skinned priests noted above at Chichen Itza (Mexico). They in turn must surely relate to the African-like phenomorphs also mentioned above in the islands of the west Pacific.

They are close to those generally called Island Southeast Asia (= ISEA). Here the African element in this seems proved. This is shown surely by Guinean parts of Africa echoed as the New Guinea; Fiji as part of what has been called Melanesia (= Islands of Blacks); Blackfellas used as a Victorian term for not just the Aborigines of Australia but of Australoids in general. Dance plus associated music are an integral feature of the earliest religions and African dances are recognised to as far east as such islands of west Pacific as Samoa, Fiji, etc.

Thus the west African bataku still to be seen as a vestigial remnant in the Cape Verde Islands is echoed as far away as Samoa plus Tahiti according to Peter Marsh (Lapita Pottery & Polynesians online). Further is that Xhosa/Zulu warrior dancing compares to that of Fijian warriors also in the west Pacific according to Dennis Montgomery (Seashore Man & Aquatic Eve 2005).

A point en route may be shown by figurines of the Harapan Culture (of Pakistan & India). One of them is the famous “Dancing-girl” with its cruder relative in opposite pose with their African traits fitting alongside those of many early Buddhas. Nor is this the only indication of African dance in Indo/Pakistan. Shihan Jayasuriya (African Migrants as cultural brokers in South Asia online) points up Swahili ngoma (= dance and/or drum) as goma in later Gujerat (west India). She also shows more African instruments in western India. Bernard Sergent (Dravidians & Melano-Indians) noted even more African-type instruments of somewhat different form(s) in India.

This fits with Indian deities that in the forms of goddesses are attested by such as Nidra seen in yellow and blue dress, twin sister of Vishnu and as black-skinned. Even more famously black-skinned is the goddess named Kali, as is to be expected when she has a name translating into English as black. So too does Krishna also meaning black in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit. Various aspects of Krishna also have relevance here. Thus Shyama (= Great Black One). Geoffrey Parrinder (Traditional African Religion 1952) showed Murungu/Mulungu/Murugan as the chief deity of ca. 25 peoples across east Africa. Susheela Uppadayha (Dravidian & Negro-African online) identified him with the Krishna aspect of Murukan/Murugan.

Also from east Africa is the story of an Ethiopian general known as Ganges and his conquests in India up to the river of that name. This presumably links with the Ethiopian paraphrasis of the Old Testament that is the earlier part of the Kebra Negast (= The Glory of Kings) telling of the family of Queen Makeda (= “Sheba”?) and the spread of its influence across the Indian Ocean. The ancient Egyptian text of “The Letter of Se-Osiris” is cited by Anne Christie (Magic of the Pharoahs 2007) as showing Ethiopian influence on Egyptian magic. Flora Lugard (A Tropical Dependency 1906) says the Islamic source of Tarikh es-Sudan (= Chronicle of Sudan) shows west African influence on Egyptian magic.

Egypt also looked south to probably the north Somalia/Djibouti/Eretria section of the east African coast facing the Red Sea for what apparently is variously called Punt and/or Ta-Neter (= Land/Home of the Gods.). Clyde Winters (Proto Saharan Religion online) is one of those feeing there is a strong Saharan/Magrebi component acting on Egypt. Winters (ib.) mentions the trans-Saharan deity called and traces Maa to far as away as India (as Manu [= the Indian Noah), south Iraq (as the Sumerian Mahgari [= God’s Exalted Children), Mande (a major ethnia of w/Af.), etc. Among possible additions are the Maasai/Masai of east Africa plus Mande married with the Wa Ngara/Wangara (= Children of Gara) of the Sahara to give Garamande/mante.

The Greeks also looked away to Africa south of the Sahara. This comes via such Greek authors as Hesiod plus Homer that on Bernal’s (ib.) dating are not just the oldest known writers of the Hellenic Greeks but belong to the 10th c. BCE. Of the supposed Hellenic trinity, Homer’s Odyssey has Zeus attending a feast of the Aethiopians/Ethiopians and his Iliad says the same of Poseidon. This treating of guests with feasts continued to certainly the days of ibn Battuta (13th/14th c. Magrebi) who describes just this of both west and east Africa. East Africans (?) reported as trustworthy by Homer and west Africans being described from Herodotus (ca. 5th c. BCE re. the silent trade) to ibn Battuta as being the same probably does something to tell us what has been lost due to the Islamic and Atlantic slave-trades.

Feasting as part of funerary rites is worldwide but not nearly widespread is what Graham Campbell-Dunn (The African Origin of Civilisation 2005) has described as African modes turned into stone. This is of round structures on stone footings to deter termites in with perishable materials above this completing the building they became rather more of pise or mudbrick when attested in the Natufian Culture of the Levant (=Palestine/Israel/Syria). Other traits of these Natufian houses is the addition of an emphasised passage/entry giving a ground-plan akin to an old-fashioned keyhole that have tended to be called tholoi plus burials in the house-earth so that ancestors could continue participating in family matters.

Tholoi appear have many later forms. Notable here are those of the Halafian Culture of mainly north Iraq in one direction and Khirokitia of the island of Cyprus in another taking us towards the Mediterranean. Tholos was first used of structures on the Mesara Plain of Crete but here they have drystone walls and mainly for burial, whereas to the west are the trulli mostly Apulia in south Italy retain the purely house for the living function.

The round/tholos-plan, domed/beehive roof, etc, are still neatly retained even further west in the false-corbelled chambers of the megalithic structures to as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. However, as the megaliths (from the Greek terms of megas = large & lithos = stone, giving us megalith) increase in use, the regular round/tholos-plan become rather more irregular en route to becoming polygonal, square, rectangular, etc, chambers. Sometimes the passage goes but in the most famous of these megalithic structures, the passage is retained and named Passage-graves. The Iberian Passage-graves are also to be regarded as man-made types of the caves that in their natural state often also have one or more burials in the earth that are otherwise for the living.

Also given an African origin are those that are archaeologists label as enclosures interrupted by ditches plus banks by archaeologists. Ruth Whitehouse (The Origins of Europe ed. Desmond Collins 1975) is one of those looking for the sources in African cattle enclosures for these ditch-&-bank structures exampled in the west Balkans at Smilcik (Croatia) and in Italy by the trincerati (= trenched villages). The pottery of the variously called Impressed or Cardial Ware combine with C14-dates to attest that these Croatian and Italian enclosures on either side of the Adriatic means they are satisfactorily earlier than similar structures of central Europe.

The enclosures also reached Iberia, where at El Garcel it would be of the Early Neolithic on the basis of Impressed/Cardial Ware. It should be noted that it seems out of the earliest African pottery came that having motifs decorated by impressions leading to the term of Impressed Ware then as it spread via the islands plus coasts of the mid to west Mediterranean the impressions were done with Cardial shells and thus became Cardial also known as Cave Ware in Iberia. As mostly Iberian Cave-wares became plainer, so it seems there emerged the plain Western Neolithic ceramics and at a later stage, the Maritime type of Beaker.

The reference to African feasting brings us to the conclusions of a large number of prehistorians. They reference the evidence for a body of evidence telling for feasting at the end of what for the Levant, Helladic to Mycenaean in Greece, the Minoan in Crete is more or less the Bronze Age at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea (very approximately 2500/1000 BCE) and this is linked to beer-making and Beaker pottery in Iberia proven by Manuel Rojo-Guerra et al (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 2006). Important here is to recall Jane Went (World Archaeology 2003) showing just how widespread beer-making was/is in Africa and this is put alongside the claimed African Epi-Cardial Ware (esp. that with roseate slip) sources for the Maritime form of Beakers.

More of what are also called Impressed Ware stretches along the Atlantic-west parts of Europe from west Iberia up to northwest France. Also along these same coasts of west-facing Europe are what have been called Atlantic Passage-graves because of their distribution. The beehive roof, circular chamber, drywalling, etc, already seen do occur but the term of megalith has truly arrived when we look here. Interestingly, the spread of Passage-graves to Britain is almost entirely confined to the west and north.

In Iberia, it seems there is an amount of painting on the surfaces of rocks sharing some of its motifs with Iberian megaliths. However, when they are shared with painted rock-art does appear in the megalithic Passage-graves seen along the coasts of Atlantic-west Europe bearing these motifs, it seems there is an increasing tendency towards carving rather than painting. As the carving increases, something more and more geometric rather than the rock-art realism occurs.

Passage-graves carrying decoration on their stones are scarce relative to the total but where they do appear in the British Isles, this is almost entirely confined to western parts. It is not immediately obvious that the inhabitants of west Britain are solely from that same direction. However, we can be very sure that not a few did arrive from parts south. One marker for that area of Britain (= Eng., Wales & Scot.) that is Cornwall/Devon comes from a rather surprising source.

In “Out of His Skin: The John Barnes Factor”, Dave Hill (2001) has looked at racism in British football and has used the figure of the black English footballer called John Barnes in the title of his book. However, it is Mike Trebilcock that is the immediate point of interest. During his time as a player at the Liverpool club called Everton, Trebilcock was described as the “best nigger player in the country” according to Hill (ib.). It seems that we have something already touched on when showing the rather international background of what is being argued for here.

This is of the genomorph saying one thing but the phenomorph telling us something else with that phenomorph attesting the African connection. Trebilcock is a characteristic name in that part of Britain that is southwest England that otherwise is Cornwall. Given the close connection of Cornwall and Wales, not only does description feed into that of dubh (= a Celtic word for black), so would give a possible Dubh-noni (= Black/Dark People). The name has also been surmised to relate to that of a Celtic goddess called Domnu.

It will become clear that Domnu fits a maritime pattern established for Dumnonia (= Cornwall/Devon & which over time evolved into Devon). As one interpretation of the name has Domnu meaning “Goddess of the Depths [of the Sea?]” and that Dumnoni as the “People of Domnu” has versions that are spread widely around the Irish Sea but even more widespread are names are based on silla/sila.

Messrs Bates (An Essay on the Eastern Libyans 1914), Reynolds/Marniche (in Golden Age of the Moor ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1992), Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2005), etc, have all noted this. Thus between them, they have discussed silla, zel/sel, Seli, Psylli, Silvani, Massyli, Mussulini, Silcadenit, etc.

Clyde Winters (ib.) shows silla as meaning road/route in northern Sub-Saharan Africa plus Saharan Africa and Silla (Mali) again marks a route but this time that of traders also between northern Sub-Sahara and the Sahara. Silla occurs as the name of a leading clan of the Soninke in west Africa according to Moustafa Gadalla ((Exiled Egyptians 1999). Herodotus and other Greco/Latin writers refer to Psylli, Massaesylli, Massasylli, Mussulini, Sylvani, Seli, etc. Oric Bates (ib.), Dana Marniche (ib.) plus others related these latter names to the Berber/Tuareg words of sel/zel/sil (= clan) and still more regard it as having gone across the Straits of Gibraltar to Iberia.

Sil again occurs in the Iberian Peninsula (= Spain & Portugal) as Mons Silurus that evidently was originally recorded as part of the now-lost Periplus of Himilco (ca. 600 BCE?) but now known only via the form garbled for the purposes of Latin poetry by Rufus Avienus (4th c. CE). The Mons Silurus is now called the Sierrra Nevada roughly translating as jagged mountains. Here again is an ancient trade-route according to “Walking in the Sierra Nevada” (online) and this same page says this connects coastal east Iberia/Spain to the Gran Corrido (= Long Journey) apparently covering most of Europe facing the Mediterranean.

Yet more commerce associates with another sil but this time with islands off Cornwall in southwest Britain/England. This is mostly identified with what are now called the Scilly Islands and is based on claimed tin being taken from the Cassiterides (= Tin Islands). The problem is that the Scilly do not have tin but this does not stop it a depot from which tin was collected by foreign traders. Peter Marshall (Celtic Gold: A Voyage Around Ireland 1992) is one of those linking the name of Scilly with the root of the Celtic word of sceilig that repeats a linkage with things jagged by meaning pinnacle.

Another of the connections is with islands lying to the southwest of Britain as the Scillies and the southwest of Ireland as the Skelligs. The earliest mentions of the Scillies are by no means agreed on the spelling. Also those early sources refer to insula Siluram (= island of S[c]illy) but by the time of the Orkneyinga saga (12th c. Norse), there is the report of a raid on Syllingar (= Isles of Scilly).

Insula Siluram has also been applied to islands in the Bristol Channel between part of England and south Wales. Here there is a Sully Island. This takes us close to the Cornish pronunciation of S[c]illy but Sully Island apparently owes its name to a local family. Messrs. Rivet & Smith (The Place-names Roman Britain 1979) point to the name as possibly applied to other islands of the Bristol Channel such as Flatholm, Steepholm, Lundy, etc, but they remain as possibilities only and Scilly remains the most probable location of Insula Siluram.

Yet Cornwall and south Wales are tied by archaeology, written descriptions, etc, especially as the Castro Culture (west Iberia) and Chun-group forts shared several traits. Thus castros (hill-forts) and Chun forts sited near tin-sources; their apparently guarding that valuable tin; defences of multivallate/multiple bank form; this multivallation being of wide-spaced banks; circular layouts; houses of equally round-plan; they also being of polygonal masonry, centre-stones/posts as roof-supports; pottery with “ducks” stylised into s-motifs. According to Eric Leeds (Archaeologia 1927) plus others, pebbles of cassiterite (= raw tin) appear at sites of both the Castro Culture and the Chun group. As do Sabroso-type (west Iberia) fibulae.

The written description given above of the above-cited typical Cornishman might almost gloss what was written by Tacitus (1st c. CE Roman) about yet more Celts. According to Ahmed and Ibrahim Ali (The Black Celts 1994) plus many others, this it is time the Silures of what is now south Wales that are being described.

Tacitus gave two much-seen descriptions of inhabitants from totally different parts of Britain. They were the Caledoni giving what is now Scotland its poetic name of Caledonia and the Silures just seen to be of south Wales. Tacitus described the Caledoni as red-haired, of large size and Germanic. This is never really challenged, so when Tacitus describes the Silures as dark and curly-haired to recall the people of south Dumnonia/Cornwall, there is absolutely no valid reason to oppose this either. The more so given that to Silura-based names shown above in Iberia, Cornwall plus south Wales, is added the remarks by such as the Alis that the blood-groups of these three regions are nearly identical.

This is alongside what is said about serological studies cited by the Alis (ib.) about ABO blood-groups in west Africa, northwest Africa, Iberia, north Wales northwest England. Also the phenomorphs noted by Tacitus about the Silures that are again of Wales seemingly parallel what is to be said about a British tribe placed by Ptolemy (2nd c. CE Egypto/Greek) in that part of west Britain called Cumbria.

That British people were the Setantae having a name akin to the Setanta pre-warrior name of Cuchulain having the starring role in the Tain Bo Cualgne (= The Tain = The Cattle-raid of Cooley), itself the main story of the Irish tale-cycle called the Ulster Cycle. The Alis (ib.) state this probably means he was British not Irish. The descriptions the Cornish and Welsh groups as small and dark continues with that of the Brito/Irish Setantae of Cumbria in northwest England described as small and dark in the Tain.

What is said by Ptolemy (1st c. CE Roman) about other north English Celts by such as Pliny (1st c. CE Roman) and Claudius Claudianus (3rd c. CE Egypto-Greek) might also belong here. Their reference to black Celts is taken at face value by some but as painted bodies by others. Here the case is helped not so much by phenomorphs but by genomorphs, as emerges from the research into the Revis family also of northern England but this time, the northeast.

The story about the Revis family was carried in the online version of the British newspaper titled the Daily Mail is Mail Online (January 2007) and elsewhere. It reported this story and connected it with slaves brought to Britain by the Romans. Roy Stockdill (African Yorkshireman – the name is out online) is a Yorkshire historian inserting a note of caution as to this date. This African-specific gene has apparently been attributed to the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman period, the Anglo-Saxons, the slave-trade from the 16th-18th cs.

What may be another strand in the evidence for an Africo/Iberian component in prehistoric Britain is possibly be the “thin dark man” mentioned by John Campbell (Popular Tales of the West Highlands 1862-4) as possibly indicating the “king of Spain”, to maintain the Iberian connection for Cornwall, Wales plus Cumbria. African genetics are seemingly further shown by what is shown by Brian Sykes (Blood of the Isles 2006) as what he described as puzzling genetic evidence but this is taken over in to the next section.

AFRICA TO IRELAND
On our way
Africans in Olmec-era Mexico and Pre-Dynastic Egypt and the responses to any form of Africa-centred/Afrocentricism should prepare us for something similar applied to that of any part of Europe. So far as is known to this writer, the kind of vitriol led by Dr. de Montellano et al against that of Mexico and by Mary Lefkowitz against that of Egypt has not been applied to that of any part of Europe to anything like the same degree.

Among explanations forwarded for the look of statuary of the Olmec Culture are (a) errors; (b) fortuitous coincidence; (c) representation of deities; (d) portrayal of were-felines (shamans turning into jaguars); (e) depiction of congenital diseases; (f) depiction of genetic throwbacks; (g) the stone of the basalt spheres was too hard to carve into the shape of human heads; (h) the basalt had to carved in a certain way to avoid fractures; (i) showing of helmet-wearing players of the ball-game of the Olmec-to-Maya sequence of Mesoamerica.

More gigantic heads that when part of statues of the Buddha can be particularly massive. Among the suggestions for the appearance of especially the earliest Buddhas are that the hair of the heads represent fortuitous coincidence, chakras (= life-force), snails on the head of the Buddha to cool him down, tufts left behind because hair has been pulled out at the roots, hair slicked down with ghee (= clarified butter), etc.

Another of what have been called here Great Heads is carved on a rock close to Medina (Saudi Arabia) according to Runoko Rashidi’s “Africans in Early African Civilisations: An Historical Overview” (in African Presence in Early Asia edd. messrs. Van Sertima & Rashidi 1995). In another photograph of it in the same book is in Wayne Chandler’s “Ebony & Bronze: Race & Ethnicity in Early Arabia & the Islamic World”, this piece of rock-art is labelled “Ishmael”. Rock-art is notoriously difficult to date.

A somewhat smaller head is that of an individual as one of three figures depicted on a stele found at Zinjirli (Turkey) and is claimed to portray an African from what was ancient Kush in the north of what today is the modern state of Sudan. However, Peggy Brooks-Bartram (in Egypt: Child of Africa ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1994) calls our attention to several eminent authorities from both Europe plus North America telling us that this is simply a mistake.

Other heads depict Memnon who is noted by Homer (of the 10th c. BCE for Bernal). Memnon’s was severally named as Aurora (= Daybreak), Cissia, Eos (= Dawn), etc. Cissia, Susia, Susa, Sushan, etc, are all spellings of the capital of of Elam (now s/west Iran). Diodorus Siculus (1st c. BCE Greek) calls it the Memnonium and Bernal (ib.) mentions Ataxerxes (King of Persia/Iran) Persian rule adopting Memnon as part of legitimising Persian rule over the former Elam that had become part of the Persian Empire.

On the other hand, George Goosens is cited by Martin Bernal (Volume III of Black Athena 1991) as stating there are sculptures of Memnon representing him as a white Caucasian from Thrace. This gives Memnon a European ancestry in the Balkan Peninsula that would tell very strongly against the Asiatic antecedents put forward some very prominent authors from ancient Greece. Equally as strong would be arguments against the suggested African ancestry.

The Iberian Peninsula in the southwest of Europe is in the opposite corner of south-facing Europe from the Balkan Peninsula in the southeast of Europe. A crucial factor for denying any claimed African influence outside the continent of Africa is a general belief that Africans outside Africa can only have been there as slaves. A more specific matter is the apparent lack of what has been called here a Great-Heads tradition in Iberia (= Spain & Portugal).

The Brittany/Normandy region of ex-Gaul (now mainly France) forms the northern end of the Atlantic Seaways. These seaways of Atlantic-west Europe extend from western parts of Andalusia (most of southern Iberia/Spain) in the south up to the just-noted Brittany/Normandy (= northwest France). Just how many Africo/Iberian traits came via these coats of Atlantic-facing Europe has long been a matter of considerable debate.

Matters may not be greatly aided by the early compilations of the oldest Insular (= British & Irish) traditions are generally dismissed as no more than a collection of myths and folktales leavened by plagiaristic gleanings from Classical texts plus fertile imaginations. Notable instances are “Historia Regum Brittaniae” (= History of the Kings of Britain) by Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th c. Welsh); Duan Oisean (= Poems of Ossian) by James MacPherson (18th c. Scot); Lebor Gabala Erenn (= LGE = Book of the Conquest[s]of Ireland). Geoffrey’s work mainly pertains to Britain south of Hadrian’s Wall (mainly Eng. & Wales), MacPherson’s to Britain north of the Wall (now mostly Scotland) and LGE clearly pertains to Ireland.

This criticism has not yet reached the vitriolic levelled by the de Montellano and Lefkowitz schools about prehistoric Mexico and prehistoric Egypt respectively. It is unfortunate that both sides of this discussion head us towards more heat than light. What is particularly noticeable just how quickly Establishment academics can move when faced with arguments that it finds unpalatable.

Suddenly, rules change and goalposts move and lo and behold, race and colour is no longer relevant. It is a pity this did not surface somewhat earlier. After all, the “one drop of black blood makes you black” rule was not invented by blacks. It is also the case that anyone with a black-looking phenomorph was in trouble if trying to use Whites-only beaches in Apartheid South Africa. Likewise, such an individual would not have been able to sit on seats in the Whites-only sections of buses in Pre-60s U.S. Deep South.

Africans as Olmecs tend to run into the further objection that the African-looking Great Heads are a single feature. Why this single-trait argument does not equally apply to such as the so-called “Iberia not Siberia” of the Solutrian to Pre-Clovis arguments or Polynesian contacts with West-coast Americas is usually left unsaid. Moreover, the umpteen reasons put forward why the Olmec Great Heads were given their appearance are surely the clearest testimony that the experts arguing these points are really very uncertain despite the vehement certainty they often express.

This is despite some very forceful opinions, that remain just that; opinions. In any case, it was seen the Great Heads do not stand alone. Similar forms as wall-art mean the type does not result from the special needs of carving free-standing statues. Such accurate portrayals need the live models proven by the material studied by Andrej Weircinski (as Van Sertima 1976; Winters 2005, etc)

In addition to the Weircinski research of Olmec skeletons are the terracotta figurines of various Mexican collections most famously known as those of Von Wuthenau and Stevenhagen. Some have been described by anti-Afrocentrics as fakes. What is not said is that Alexander Von Wuthenau paid for thermo-luminescence (T/L) dates. If he was a German idiot soon parted from his cash, there are others This is because another German collector of ancient Mexicana was Kurt Stevenhagen. He also paid for T/L-tests and bought from Von Wuthenau. Equally to the point is that the Stevenhagen material is now part of a national Collection in Mexico.

An individual of some significance here is Matthew Stirling. The results of the work of messrs. Stirling and van der Hoop are cited on the same page of “American Indians in the Pacific” by Thor Heyerdahl (1952). Van der Hoop plus Stirling were doing fieldwork in Island Southeast Asia (= ISEA) in the late 1920s/early 1930s. Stirling later went on to make some of the earliest rediscovery of Olmec Great Heads in Mexico. Stirling’s conclusions about the Sumatran and Mexican Great Heads were that they represent Negroes/Negroids. The only unity shown here is that under no circumstances is this African/Negro connection to be allowed.

Reasons why Buddhas cannot have had African/Africoid connections are evidently not as numerous as those the Olmec Great Heads but again, the list is not intended to be exhaustive. One critic referred to this as la-la-land fantasy and this from someone clearly believing in the supernatural. We can observe that “fortuitous coincidence” rears its head again. The tearing out of hair is conceivable given the lengths that believers of particular faiths will go to but that of snails volunteering to cool the brow of sweaty holy man sounds like a joke.

If so, it is a joke that loses appeal when it is realised what it is being aimed at. It is something of a surprise to recognise this as attached to Buddhism and would appear to be more at home as part of black-skins at the bottom of the pile in Hinduism. In any case, emphasis on the Buddha’s hair does not explain the thick lips plus snub noses of early Buddhas. The more so given that these are standard conventions for depicting Negroes/Negroids worldwide. For why the Olmec Great Heads are seen as showing African traits the reader should see the sources cited in “West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity”, “Africa & Great Heads across the World”, etc.

Nor does what is said on this point stand alone. William Gillespie (Land of Sinim 1854), Alexander Hislop (The Two Babylons 1858), etc, are among those noting the Africoid traits of the local version of Buddha in south China called Wat-Yune. In the Africa-to-Iberia section dealing with mainly maritime influences, it was shown south China had strong African maritime traits. Likewise, for the African traits for facets of other Indian but non-Buddhist religions that includes what is said above. This was cited above in the Africa-to-Britain section attributed to the spread of African religious influences to outside Africa by Indian writers.

The number of times that the word of errors is used to describe African traits outside Africa is nicely exemplified by the figures carved on the Zinjirli stele. Once again, it is difficult to understand how such prominent authorities miss what seems blindingly obvious. In this case, those same authorities have identified other such figures as the one carved at Zinjirli that they consider as a mistake as those of Kushite Africans. Simply put, this third individual is also a son of the Kushite king named Taharquo. In any case, given that Zinjirli was an important Assyrian propaganda piece, mistakes just would not be tolerated.

Not to be forgotten is that Assyrian kings were hardly democrats in any sense, as Egyptians were to find out. This was as part of the campaigns that was to replace Kushite rule in Egypt with that of another set of conquerors, this time from Assyria. This means that scribes from areas close to the east Mediterranean had good reason to know just where Kush was. Even if some Greeks wanted the Kushites to be from some region well to the east, Assyrian plus Hebrew scribes consistently placed Kush to the south of Egypt.

This becomes relevant for where Memnon came from. His mother’s name of Cissia brings to the several expressions as a name across Africa. A possible variant spelling is to be seen in Sese as the name of the god of Lake Victoria in east Africa plus that islands in the same lake where Ugandan kings moored their canoe-fleet. Gadalla (ib.) says sisse means noble in Egyptian. Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origin of Civilisation 1974) wrote Cisse is a common surname in west Africa where Gadalla (ib) says Sisse was also the name of the ruling clan of Soninke kings of the Wagadu (= Old-Ghana) Empire.

This strong African connection is directly relevant for those of Memnon. It may well be that Goosens could describe representations of Memnon as a white European but Bernal (ib.) says this is very ambiguous. In any case, they are very few indeed. Easily the bulk attest Memnon with the curly hair, snub, noses, thick lips, black skin, etc, that have already been said above to be standard conventions for depicting the physical form of most Africans. Whether portraying Olmec Great Heads, Buddhas, the Zinjirli Kushite or Memnon, for accuracy, actual humans need to be physically seen. The very occasional non-black examples of Memnon fade into even greater insignificance when written descriptions are added.

Another prominent Kushite was the individual with a name severally spelt as Taharka, Taharquo, Tirhaka, Tarraco, etc. He is seen as the real saviour of the Hebrews from the Assyrians by Henry Aubin (The Rescue of Jerusalem 2002). Other writers were cited above as saying that Taharquo was known across the Magreb and Mediterranean as far west as the Iberian Peninsula. Aubin (ib.) says this all puts Taharquo in very select company.

Nor would the Taharquo-led Kushite blacks have been the only ones reaching Iberia according to more sources cited above. The argued-for case of Africans sent as colonists by Carthage was also shown. Whatever the ultimate ancestry of the Phoenicians, by the time of their founding cities at such as Carthage (Latinised as Puni, hence Punic = Carthaginian) and Gdr/Gadir (= Lat. as Gades = Cadiz, Spain), they were thoroughly Semiticised.

However, by the time of Phoenicia vanishing as a separate entity and Carthage emerging as the great power in the mid/west Mediterranean, it remains to wonder just how Semitic or even how Phoenician Carthage actually was. Elsewhere in my works, mention has been made to African handlers of elephants. If what is shown in a series of coins circulating during Hannibal’s campaigns in Italy showing the mahouts stands as typical of the then population of Carthage, they are clearly African. Diop (ib.) cited the surprise of French excavators of the main cemetery at Carthage itself on finding that the skeleton of the high priestess of Tanith was that of a Negress.

Worship of the goddess called Tanith was also taken to Andalusia (= most of south Iberia/Spain) and to the just-seen and obvious African influence on her cult can be added a theory of Lewis Spence (The Magical Arts in Britain 1928). He thought African influences coming via the Magreb lay behind the turning of the artificial caves that were houses for the living gradually turned into houses of the dead that were seen above as becoming ever-more megalithic. To be recalled here is the part of the word of megalith involving stones so large that they were ascribed to giants

More graves were erected by giants according to Kenyan tradition. Another east African myth attaches to the small mountain at Jebel Barkal (Sudan). A natural monolith of rock was identified as a gigantic version named Amun himself having a name that has Africa-wide versions. Amun is better-known as a god in Egypt where more giants in stone are the enormous statues typifying Pharoahs of especially the New Kingdom. Here large heads are attested by that of the Ramesseum giving Belzoni (19th c. Italian) so much trouble; those of the Tanis reliefs that include those of a Kushite plus Negro types; that of the Sphinx compared with that of Negroes from various parts of Africa that includes west Africa according to Joseph Olumide Lucas (The Religion of the Yorubas 1949).

Other signs of giants as stone in west Africa attach to the figure of Umlindi Wemingizimu (= Watcher of the South). The name is purely Bantu and is the Bantu name for Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town (Sth. Af.) plus Table Bay where Bantu fishing in Table Bay apparently still invoke him as a tutelary guardian. The legend has it that Umlindi was turned into rock by a goddess so that he could protect the southwest of Africa. It seems that this protective role is what lies behind the story put forward in the Portuguese Lusiads but with the label of the giant of Titan type called Adamastor attached to it.

At Zuma Rock (near Abuja, [Nigeria]) is what is held to be the head of a giant and another is at Blo Degbo (Paynesville, nr. Monrovia, [Liberia]. We may also note Emma Ross (Benin Oba & Queen Mother online) saying that Great Head was among the titles of the Oba (= King) of the Benin Empire. At the opposite end of Africa from Umlindi was Atlas. Like Umlindi, Atlas was turned into rock because of a female that in his case meant having looked at the head of the Gorgon named Medusa cut off by Perseus. It still retained the power to turn individuals to stone.

That the Atlas/Perseus clash could have occurred in either Morocco or Spain is equally possible given the vague Greek knowledge of the Atlantic-west. This much is shown by notions of a combined Niger/Nile as flowing across northern Sub-Sahara or the Danube rising in the Pyrenees and flowing across Europe to the Black Sea that had a tributary called the Atlas according to Bernal (ib.). Something of the same occurs with the Geryon/Hercules clash set variously in the Balearics or “Atlantic” islands according to the Theoi Project (online). The last presumably tells for anywhere from the Cape Verde Islands to those in Vigo Bay.

However, the scene of the giant named Geryon fighting Hercules is generally seen as occurring in an island off that part of west Andalusia once called Tartessos (= s/west Iberia). This was Gadiera (= later Gades = Cadiz). Here Herakles/Hercules killed Geryon and decapitated him. The head of Geryon was then buried under the Torre de Hercule close to Corunna. This Torre or Tower was a lighthouse marking a part of the Galician section of the northwest Iberian coast. This faced the Bay of Biscay held to be so treacherous that much later Dutch, French and British Governments offered to defray Spanish costs of maintaining the continuing lighthouse there according to William Wilde (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1844).

Brittany/Normandy in the northwest of what was Gaul (= now mainly France) is another peninsular area facing a dangerous stretch of sea. Having seen that peninsulas at either end of Atlantic-facing Iberia face dangerous seas, Brittany demonstrates this at the opposite end of Atlantic-west Europe. Here the Spanish Giant fought and was killed by “King” Arthur of Britain. Whatever the significance of the Giant being from Iberia/Spain, Arthur then cut off the head of the fallen Giant according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (12th c. British).

Cornwall in southwest Britain/ England is also closely associated with Arthur. Giants abound in Cornish folklore and include Beler/Boler. This name is also seen in Belerion/Bolerion (in Greek) and Belerium/Bolerium (in Latin) for the Land’s End of the Penwith district of Cornwall. Charles Thomas (National Trust Studies 1979) showing Land’s End was once known as Vestaeum and was opposite Scilly as Anti-Vestaeum, also reports dangerous seas off Cornwall were marked by signal-fires. Cornish giants are not reported to have had their heads cut of but a well- known Penwith inhabitant was Jack the Giant-killer who was a noted beheader of giants.

Another giant was of what Irish tradition says were Africans called Fomhoire according to the Alis (ib). This was Tethba seen as King of Mag Mor (= Great Plain = Iberia). The Iberian war-god Net and he seems known as Neit in Ireland. His grandson was another of the Fomoire giants who was also a king but this time of Ireland, named Balar/Balor. Following a battle at Moytirra (Sligo, Ire.), Balar was beheaded by Lugh of the victorious Tuatha De Danann. Balar was buried in the west of the province of ancient Ireland called Munster. This west Munster burial was at Carn Ui Neid (= Cairn of the Grandson of Neit) otherwise known as Mizen Head (west Cork). The dangers of Mizen Head and the nearby Fastnet Rock are well proven by more than 80 wrecks locally and are well known to modern yachtsmen.

This maritime connection helps with the authenticity of early Celtic texts that have long been under intense debate (esp. that of Ireland). In fact, the very concept of a Celtic ethnia has come under severe attack. This rests on Celtic being a linguist not an ethnic term, as seen in the several writers cited in “Celts, Britons & Gaels: Names, Peoples & Identities” by John Koch (Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorian 2003). Nor are genetics much of an aid, as the evidence does not really attest much connection with the Urnfield/Hallstat/La Tene phases marking the archaeological phases of the ancestral Continental Celts of Austria and Bavaria.

However, we read Julius Caesar saying “Those we call Gauls in our language call themselves Celts in theirs”, so clearly shows Celt and Gaul used of the same people and in an ethic sense. When then among the umpteen variants, we find such as Galatae (= Celts settled in Anatolia [most of modern Turkey]), Celtae, Keltoi, Gael (used of settlers in Ire.), we can especially note Gaul and Gael. Of those thinking this is important, Koch (ib.) not only wrote that did Greeks not call themselves Greeks or Germans call themselves Germans but also “in short, so what?”.

It is also surprising just how frequently uncritically the Classical sources are accepted but that those of the Celts (esp. those of Ire.) are constantly the subject of the above-seen criticism. It should be said that Old-Irish literature is the third oldest in Europe, the oldest vernacular corpus in west Europe and in the British Isles. It is also the most complete and least tainted of all the Celtic literatures. In line with this is the recent study of LGE by Monica Vasquez (Ritual & Myth between Ire. & Galicia 2011) coming to hand as this was being rewritten. She shows that that authentic Celtic tradition is the main basis of LGE but that it links Iberia and Ireland not mid-Europe and Ireland.

The indicated maritime connection shown for the Belerion/Land’s End seen to incorporate the name of a giant called Beler fits with that of Mizen Head seen to incorporate that of a Fomoire giant named Balar. This aspect of Belerion is well brought out in the Thomas (ib.) article cited above bearing the title of “The Lord of Goonhilly” and the Alis (ib.) constantly refer to the Fomhoire as seafaring African giants, This accords with the description of Fomoraig Afraicc (= F. from Africa) plus Fomorach and its umpteen variants meaning from the sea but usually translated as demon-like “from under the sea”.

The reliability and authenticity of the myths about Beler are brought out by Dathi O hOgain (The Lore of Ire.: An Ency. of Myth, Legend & Romance 1991; The Lore of Ireland 2006). He points to the differences of Beler(ion) as treated by the Greek writers (esp. by Diodorus) and Balar in various Irish sources. Also that Diodorus discussing this indicates what hOgain (ib) terms a southern tradition is much older than those in Ireland telling for northern settings in Lochlann (= Lakeland? = Scandinavia?; Scotland?). Comments by Thomas O’Rahilly (Early Irish History & Mythology 1946) have it that of the two battles of Cath Mag Tuireadh (= Battle of Tuireadh/Moytirra), what the Irish saw as Moytirra II is actually the earlier one.

We’re Here
It has long been the opinion of this writer that our ancestors were rather more on sea-borne contact than is generally accepted in academic circles. It is this the African component that has been stressed in my articles but to be borne in mind that no path only goes one way. After all, as has been written somewhere else by someone else, if a road runs from Chicago to New York, it is as sure as hell that it also runs from New York to Chicago.

Returning to the African emphasis of this two-way traffic, certain things emerge from the international comparisons made already. It surely can be no coincidence that somewhat separate cultural traditions across the world look to Africa for such as the Great Heads. The sea-route attested in the case of Guinea direct to Iberia shown by Serge Plaza et al (Joining the Pillars of Mediterranean … online) would equal the shorter routes across the Atlantic. There is a tendency to equate the Magrebi word of Moor with the Irish (Fo)mhoire but this comes from the Englishing of this word. Peter Beresford Ellis (The Druids) shows the Manx language retained many traits now lost in its Irish parent and this includes the Irish mh that in Manx gives us Fomhoire pronounced as Fowoar.

This is not to dismiss a Magrebi connection for Iberia then Ireland, especially given the comparisons of Moors of the Magreb/Sahara and Irish made by Carleton Coon cited by the Alis (ib.). However, Guinea links west Africa with elsewhere. This include those going thousands of miles across the Sahara and the Atlantic as “magicians” according to messrs. Lugard (A Tropical Dependency 1906 citing the Tarikh es-Soudan) and Peterson (Prehistoric Mexico (1961) respectively.

Another African religio/magical presence was that shown above at Carthage and there have long been doubts about how Semitic were the Phoenicians settled at Carthage called Punics by the Romans. Thus it can be expected any African component abroad might incorporate the occasional Phoenico/Punic. This would be further shown by messrs. Van Sertima (1976; 1992; etc) among Olmec carvings of Mexico and Davies ( ) in west Ireland. Ivan Van Sertima (ib.) especially meant the “Sea-Captain” and Oliver Davies the “Sailor”.

This Phoenico/Punic connection may also be the context of spread of child sacrifice. It was ancient and still exists in parts of Africa, as shown by the story of the sacrifice of the Egyptian first-born and the Moses story; in east Africa that especially means Uganda; the reports about the body in the Thames of a Nigerian boy found in 2001; finds of skeletons of children in contexts strongly suggestive of sacrifice at Carthage. Paul Alfred Barton (A History of the African-Olmecs 2001) connects this with the passage of west Africans across the Atlantic where child sacrifice apparently occurred on certain occasions according to Peterson (ib.). The Alis (ib.) cite the Irish story of Fomhoire demanding half of the children born as part of the tribute that defeated Nemedians had to pay and to this can be added the story of first-born being sacrificed to the Irish god named Crom Cruach (= Black Crom).

Barton (ib.) also calls attention to saurian (= mainly crocodile family) cults including that of the Sepik of New Guinea holding the crocodile as sacred. The mount of Varuna (the Hindu sea-god) was a crocodile in many accounts. The name is close to the sacred crocodile personalised as Sobak/Sibak in turn also the ancient Egyptian for the sacred barge of Pharoah. From the Olmec-to-Maya sequence of Mexico is a much-seen crocodile-as-canoe in flint suggested on the Ancient American Art site (online) to belong with other instances of canoes heading towards the gods of the Otherworld. Given that the last Ice Age apparently led to relatively few reptilians in Ireland it is somewhat unexpected that we read of Roderick O’Flaherty (A Description of West Connaught 1684) referring to the doyarchu in west of Ireland as the Irish crocodile and which is repeated on several sites online.

Just how closely cult/ritual marries with music and/or dance was touched on already. From the many works by Roger Blench plus others, it emerges African instruments were part of the exchanges between east Africa and ISEA. It is also the case with certain types instruments of type common in Africa from east to west and seen above to be scarce in Mexico. Giants from Africa brought large stones or menhirs to Ireland and when raised as a stone circle prompted the tag of Chorea Gigantum according to Geoffrey of Monmouth.

Having seen that what tradition regards as yet more African giants were the Fomhoire shown to have had a king in Iberia where Graham Campbell-Dunn (ib. shows African-derived masks of giants and great heads were shown. Here too are Basque myths of giants as Mauriaks (= Africans) and Gentiliaks (= Gentiles = Outsiders). Another of these giants was that member of the Fomhoire we saw as Balar. He is described as being almost only a head also seen as having been cut off.

This giant head brings us to the figure of Crom Cruach. He is described as a Fomhoire giant by such as Jim FitzPatrick (The Silver Arm 1970), A Little Glossary of Mythology (online). Crom links with Rothana Chruimm Dubh (= Ring/Wheel of Black Crom) otherwise known as the Grange Stone Circle (Limerick). The wheel also symbolised Mog Ruith (= Slave/Servant of the Wheel) also known as the Chief Druid of Munster.

Another stone ring is Cenn Cruach (= Head of [Crom] Cruach) or the Killycluggin Stone Circle (Cavan). To here came the people of Ireland to worship the degree that when Christianisation of Ireland began, the early Church had to invoke no less than St. Patrick in the destruction of his cult. Another god of all the tribes of Ireland was An Dagda (= The Good God) who was also the god of Irish Druidism.

Africans are said by Geoffrey of Monmouth to have brought the stones to Ireland and then that they were raised as the stone circle on Salisbury Plain (Wilts., Eng.) otherwise called Stonehenge. Yet more Africans coming via Ireland bring us to the Hebridean or Western Isles off the west coast of Scotland. Brian Sykes (Blood of the Isles 200 ) shows how closely folklore can marry with genetic analysis. Instances include the Austronesian ancestry of the Polynesians, the Mongol ancestry of the White Huns of north India, the Iberian ancestry of the Irish Gaels, etc. Hebridean folklore has it that has it that Africans came to the island of Lewis and built the stone circle of Callanish that Philip Coppens (Callanish: the Hyperborean temple online) says is across the bay from the town of Stornaway (Lewis) where Sykes (ib.) says he found an African strand that he could not explain.

It can be expected the African connection lessens the further north it occurs, whereas that with Ireland for the Hebrides is well attested. This includes the stone circle on the island of North Uist at Pobull Fhinn (= People of Finn). This involves the old belief of giants turned to stone, itself seen to be an African trait. Callanish on the island can also be said to attest the Finn/Fenian link as it seems that Sir John Sinclair (A Dissertation on the Poems of Ossian 1806) seemed to think Lewis was the point of dissemination of Irish Fenian tales told by Ossian to Scotland. The feathered garb of the African builders of Callanish matches of the Irish Druidic shaman we saw as Mogh Ruith. Coppens (ib.) points to the stones on the western side of some Irish stone rings having westernmost menhirs ca. 25% larger than their eastern counterparts. He says this is matched at Callanish.

Time and time again, the Alis (ib.) refer to the African Fomhoire as seamen and that they associate closely with islands off the west coast of named the Hebrides. Separately, Coppens, Stuart McHardy (Strange Secrets of Ancient Scotland online), etc, wrote of Lewis folklore telling us that Africans came to construct Callanish sometime called the Scottish Stonehenge. John Toland (17th c. Irish) described Callanish as a ship which received criticism but the same is also said of Stonehenge plus Ely Cathedral. None are actually ships but all are religious monuments of their day and the analogy is with a superstructure of a ship looming up out of the mist.

Other religious structures and their religio/cultic rites closely tied to music have been touched on above. African instruments were seen as part of the exchanges between east Africa and ISEA. Instruments common right across Africa but very scarce in Pre-Spanish Mesoamerica were also seen to appear in areas of Mesoamerica held to have been occupied by blacks since Olmec times. A prominent African instrument is the side-blown horn/early trumpet made from elephant tusks that Karl Geiringer (Musical Instruments: Their History from the Stone Age to the Present Day 1943) traced to Irish side-blown horns. Another wind instrument was the Iberian gaita that at Gastor (Cadiz Province: El Gastor online) is said to be a cow-horn with a reed-mouthpiece but more usually is seen as a bagpipe and Irish end horns are bronze but cowhorn-shaped and also had reeds as mouthpieces.

The Irish Late Bronze Age (=LBA) horns have been studied by Eoin MacWhite (Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ire. = JRSAI 1945) and John Coles (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society = PPS 1963). These bronze horns, shields with V-shaped or U-shaped notches, bronze cauldrons, etc, are hallmarks of the Irish LBA.

Cauldrons of what have been called the Atlantic/A-type from their main distribution stretch from Huelva in southwest Iberia up to Brittany in northwest France. They appear mainly as fragments but are alongside Irish-type spearheads at Huelva where rich Phoenico/Punic graves have been excavated. These Atlanto/Irish cauldrons are skilfully made and help to confirm the Africo/Atlantic linkage of the Irish LBA horns by some of the conical rivets of the cauldrons shared with the horns.

Some of the writers cited by Ivan Van Sertima (in African Presence in Early Europe ib.) to attest Africans in Iberia are much the same ones having “References in Spanish history to migrations from Spain into Ire.) for Richard Madden (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1861-4). Alongside these Iberian links for Ireland is what is said by messrs. Graslund (Acta Archaeologia 1967), Coles (PPS1962), etc.

Bo Graslund (ib.) shows that a mix of shields with V-notches and U-notches that appear as carvings on the stelae of Iberia. According to a map by Terence Powell (in To Illustrate The Monuments ed. Vincent Megaw 1976), those of Iberia are as much of inland southern parts as castros with abattis are of inland northern parts. The Brozas (Iberia) carving has a number of traits that John Coles (ib.) regards as identical to those on an actual shield from Clonbrin (Ire.). He further says that this is obvious evidence of actual movement of people along the Atlantic seaways.

The castros with the structures of upright stones variously called chevaux-de-frise or abattis in north Iberia by those of Class II of the Irish hillfort classification Barry Raftery (in The Iron Age in the Irish Sea Province sd. Charles Thomas 1972). The Class II are entirely coastal and in the west of Ireland. As was what Etienne Rynne (North Munster Archaeological Journal = NMAJ 1979) felt was an Iberian type of spearhead found at Limerick. To this can be added the goldwork studied by messrs. Raftery (North Munster Studies 1967) and Powell (NMAJ 1973). Of these items, the gorgets are probably best known. Africo/Berber personal adornment is oft-seen as akin to what is shown by Joseph Raftery (ib.). Powell (ib.) held the gorgets evolved from the Iberian mix of floral ornament.

Rather more everyday are items discussed by Seamus Caulfield (Proceedings of the Society of the Antiquaries of Scotland = PSAS 1976/7; JRSAI 1977; Irish Antiquity ed. Donnchadh Corrain 1981). The Rynne article already cited makes the distinction between a La Tene-derived culture coming via Britain to northeast Ireland and that of non-La Tene Celts coming via Ibero/Atlantic coasts. Rynne (ib.) further says this is further reflected by mapping showing Classical knowledge of Ireland divides into northeastern and southwestern sources.

Caulfield (1981) looked at the Iberians known severally known as Q-Celts; Sons of Mil; Milesians; Goidels; Gaels; Connachta, etc. He says the hostility shown in the Irish sagas between the Q-Celts/Connachta of south and west of Ireland and the Ulaid naming Ulster in the northeast echoes reality. Another contrast is in the everyday. Raftery (ib.) revised the ca. 800 C. E date for a Class II fort at Cahercommaun (Clare) and put it back to 1st millennium BCE.

Caulfield (1981) also researched the material from Cahercommaun. This underlines the division between southern and northern parts of Ireland already shown. He says the disc-quern, 2-link iron horsebit, iron pennanular brooch, etc, are known in west Iberia and at Cahercommaun in southwest Ireland. The contrast is with the beehive-shaped quern, 3-link horsebit in bronze, bronze fibulae, etc, of the apparently Brit.-derived culture of Celts in Ulster parts of northeast Ireland.

Raftery (ib.) went on to compare the above-seen Chun (Cornwall) and the Class II forts of mainly west Munster in the southwest of Ireland. He says Chun-group and Class II forts share multivallation that usually means two banks. More specific is the comparison of Chun and the Class II site at Ballykinvarga (Clare).He points to circular plans; near-identical diameters; identical arrangement of huts around the inner wall.

Also linking Cornwall in southwest Britain and west Cork/Kerry parts of the southernmost province of ancient Ireland called Munster are the giants named Beler/Balar. Given what is being aimed at here, it has to be important that they are described as African, can be linked to Iberia, came via coasts of Atlantic-west Europe and hallmark Land’s End in Cornwall and Mizen Head in west Cork. This underlines the maritime emphasis of Africans in these pages when we realise that Land’s End and Mizen Head are the most southwesterly points of Britain and Ireland respectively.

Harry Bourne (mainly rewritten 2011).

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