The Pale Blue Dot

On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives…
The aggregate of our joy and suffering…
Thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines…
Every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant…
Every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader…
Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there….
On a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. – Carl Sagan

The Pale Blue Dot speech by Carl Sagan was one of the most terrifyingly astute observations of the human condition that I had ever heard. All of us live on that mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam pictured above. It was taken by Voyager over one billion miles away. As I was thinking about what he said, my mind drifted back to antiquity and to the first civilizations of humankind. When humans first came out of the jungles of Africa and spread to the far corners of the earth. One of the first great civilizations was that of Egypt. Now you would think that if the all of humankind originated in Africa, and then they left Africa, well then the first civilization was created by humans coming out of Africa.?? Okay you might say, “That sounds reasonable,” sounds reasonable to me too.. Now in my article I mentioned Egypt as being one of the first great civilizations… and with that being said according to my proposition black people created that civilization. However you have some who disagree with that. They point to the current ethnicity of the people living there now as their proof.

What I wanted to do was show them this picture on the top left and call it a day but naw… I will explain my position. That’s right, you don’t see a lot of television coverage of what the majority of Egyptians look like, but we will let that sit there for a moment… cause believe me I ain’t finished with it. So first we have to go back about 2 million years, when the “Handyman” aka Homo Habilis walked the earth. That’s him there on the top right.. Ima call him “HH” for short. Now although HH was the first modern human, they were not the ones that created any civilizations. For example the average brain size of HH was 610 cubic centimeters, while modern human’s average brain size is 1400 cubic centimeters. Another thing is that the picture of HH I have displayed may make you think that he was a pretty big fellow, when in fact the average sized HH was only 4 feet, a little bit bigger than a chimpanzee. I don’t know about you but if I ever saw a chimp with a face like that then I might have to pull it out and cock it. Anywho, this example obviously shows the direction humanity chose to begin the population of the Earth. So as black men evolved.. I mean humans evolved… another step on the ladder of evolution stopped at Homo Ergaster or HE.

HE (bottom left) lived up until about 600,000 years ago and fossil records show he was here as far back as 1.4 million years ago. They are the last line of what scientist call archaic humans or those that preceded modern humans. Now I want you to pay close attention to what I am about to show you. Somehow when the first modern humans were being depicted, they had straight hair and were lighter…. that’s a Neanderthal pictured on the bottom right. I don’t wanna say he got cornrows… but… If you believe them… then by the time Cro Magnon and Homo Sapiens left Africa well…

Mamma said if you don’t got nuttin nice to say, den don’t say nuttin..

That’s A Fact Jack

Earlier I said I’d come back to how Egyptians are portrayed on television. First of all I don’t want to single out Egyptians, indeed although it is estimated that our white brothers and sisters only make up about 8% of the world’s populations, they outright control north of 90% of television and print communication on this planet. So it is not surprising that images of people representing their ethnicity permeate our daily lives. Still it is only so many ways you can hide the fact that you represent a minority. One of the ways you manipulate the fact is that you show only the lightest variations of human beings. You show them on TV, in advertising, you show them in newspapers, put them in books, and cram them everywhere you can. Most of our hero’s are white or light skinned and the ones that are not… learned their lesson. Mayor: “Yeah and that boy helped a lot of people fighting for freedom… and that’s why we are dedicating this street to him… I present to you… “Tall Gallows Road” Dedicated on the site he lost his life fighting for the principals of America.” As an aside there is a Gallows Road in Fairfax, Va. One of the explanations for the name of the location is that it was named because prisoners were marched down it during the Civil War and hung. There are other explanations as to why the street was named Gallows.. and most of them have to do something with hanging somebody. Now I am confused because the state motto is “Virginia is for lovers.” I guess they loved hanging people cause they got a street named after it…. but anywho, as I have often quoted before.. “History is written by the victors- Winston Churchill.” So it does not come as a complete surprise that some believe that people with straight hair and cornrows settled one of the earliest and greatest civilizations in the history of man.

What You Talkin About Willis?

According to some references a lot of mainstream scholars believe that Egypt was neither black or white. Now I am not a scholar, but I’d put my money on the fact that not a lot of white people came out of Africa in the dawn of civilization… I don’t care how many Tarzan movies you watched… but that’s just my two cents. Further they say that  Ancient Egypt was racially homogeneous instead, skin color varied between the peoples of Lower Egypt, Upper Egypt, and Nubia. Now I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but if black men came from Africa and settled Egypt, then they move south toward the equator into lower Egypt and Sudan which are all in Africa, then the black people became “darker black people” as they migrated towards the equator… am I right? Not now a one turned into a Caucasian.. right? Okay so I’m shooting holes in their theory without giving them their say. Let’s look at their supposition. It all started in the 1800’s, when Constantine de Volney, an abolitionist said that the Egyptians were negro’s. “The Copts are the proper representatives of the Ancient Egyptians” due to their “jaundiced and fumed skin, which is neither Greek, Negro nor Arab, their full faces, their puffy eyes, their crushed noses, and their thick lips…the ancient Egyptians were true negroes of the same type as all native born Africans”. The name “Copts”, is not a racial designation, but rather a religious one. Most ethnic Copts are Coptic Orthodox Christians. They have inhabited Northern Africa since antiquity. They converted to Christianity in 42 AD during the reign of Roman Emperor Claudius. Though there is no written proof, historians believe it was Claudius that orchestrated the assassination of Caligula. Caligula was one of the greatest despots in Roman history. Historians give credence to a story that because he had no more prisoners to throw to the hungry animals in the arena, during intermission he had his guards throw an entire section of spectators into the arena to be eaten because he was bored. Of course that kinda stuff ain’t gonna stand long. In the end somebody shanked him. He was hated by the Romans and after his death most statues and pictures of him were destroyed… Anywhoooo, after Volney said there was watermelon in the Nile, the “ish” hit the fan. Further inflaming the controversy is the fact that some respected scholars and Diop, a  a Senegalese historian, and anthropologist, say Tutankhamun was black. King Tutankhamun or KIng Tut is primarily remember because his tomb was found intact. He ascended the throne when he was nine and ruled for nine years. His cause of death is officially unknown. Now Diop saying he was black put a heavy hitter behind the theory that ancient Egyptians were black. I mean you can’t ignore a man who has a university named after him. Chancellor Williams, an African American sociologist and historian said not only was King Tut black, but his parents and grandparents were black too! Williams was found dead shortly afterward from four gunshot wounds in the back.. Alabama police ruled it a suicide… Okay… I’m kidding.. Williams passed away of respiratory failure in 1992 at Providence Hospital in Washington, DC. He was 98 years old. Diop died in 1968 at Dakar Senegal. He was 62.

I Nose Anthropology!

Well the controversy got so heated they sent international teams to examine KIng Tut’s body. “Biological anthropologist Susan Anton, the leader of the American team, said the race of the skull was “hard to call”. She stated that the shape of the cranial cavity indicated an African, while the nose opening suggested narrow nostrils, which is usually considered to be a European characteristic. Other experts have argued that neither skull shapes nor nasal openings are a reliable indication of race.” Susan’s determination was further deemed bias after her cousin Karen called the police on the Egyptian curator when he refused to show her his identification. Although technically we can determine a mummy’s bone structure, we cannot tell anyone the color of their skin or eye color. When a bust was made of King Tut face, the clay they used was the color of the average present day Egyptian. When pressed on the issue, the Secretary General of the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass stated “Tutankhamun was not black.” Now I have to put my two cents right here because I find it strange that an African would tell the American delegation that an African King was not black. Anywhoooo… it didn’t stop there. In 2011  iGENEA launched a Tutankhamun DNA project based on genetic markers. Now I know I joke a lot, but I’m not making this up what I am about to tell you. They said that King Tut was European!! The scientist that extracted the DNA from King Tut told the company they wish that they would have talked to them before making that statement and that they found the companies methodology unscientific and “simply impossible.” I don’t know how to tell him this… but 3rd millennium Europeans were living in caves and eating hind leg of forest rat with with pine needle soup and drinking muddy creek water… that’s if the saber tooth tigers let them… The controversy did not stop with Tutankhamun… it went on to Cleopatra. Now first thing I would like to get out of the way is they bought up Cleopatra’s heritage because two well known black scholars said she was black. I mean very well known!! They said she described herself as black in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. I have not been able to find any reference to Cleopatra describing herself as black in the New Testament. What is fact is that the first historical Cleopatra was of Greek and Persian ancestry and she was married to Alexander The Great. Cleopatra VII which we are all familiar with because of the movie starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor was of Greek ancestry. In other words.. she was white… and yes there were several Cleopatra’s in between that Cleopatra. So is there any room for a black Cleopatra? Short answer… absolutely! You see the period of time when the first Cleopatra married Alexander The Great was around 325 BC. The first pyramids were built around 2700 BC. When Ptolemy, the first Cleopatra’s father named her Cleopatra… you don’t think he just pulled that name out of his “ask me no questions” do you? Neither do I. There were Cleopatra’s before her and there were Cleopatra’s before the Greeks… probably thousands of years before the Greeks.. Can I prove it? No. But I can’t prove that there is life in our universe other than us either. It’s just the odds of either being untrue is.. well astronomical.

The Writing On The Wall

“A picture is a poem without words” – Horace

You know the Egyptian tombs have thousands of pictures and hieroglyphics showing themselves and daily life. As a matter of fact these items themselves have become a matter of contention. Experts point out that the painting they have seen show Egyptians depicting themselves as copper in color while depicting Nubians as dark brown. They show example after example of Egyptian art where they say there is a definite distinction between Egyptians and other ethnicities. Author Barbara Metz says, “The concept of race would have been totally alien to them [Ancient Egyptians…The skin color that painters usually used for men is a reddish brown. Women were depicted as lighter in complexion, perhaps because they didn’t spend so much time out of doors. Some individuals are shown with black skins. I cannot recall a single example of the words “black,” “brown,” or “white” being used in an Egyptian text to describe a person.” In her surmise she puts forth the idea that the skin color that was depicted in Egyptian art was dependant on skin shade due to how long an individual stayed out in the sun. That they were all the same ethnicity but some were just darker than others. I can’t agree with her because there are paintings depicting very dark individuals known as Nubians. Howeva… most of the paintings are from a relatively late period in Egyptian history… circa 2500 BC or later. Look at the picture above.. it is from 4000 BC. Does that look like a present day Egyptian to you? My point is that the Egyptian civilization that scholars are talking about started when Egyptians were exposed to the Greeks. They are not talking about the two to three thousands years before the Greeks arrived. Not many artifact are still around from that period. The one above is only one of maybe a few hundred pieces from that time period. When I was a young man there was an uproar about the men in charge of the Egyptian Antiquities. They said that art depicting black Egyptians was not being shown to the public. I tried my hardest to find that article but I couldn’t. I will keep looking for it.. Anywho, I’m going to wrap this up with a saying that has endured in our communities for decades…

Do you believe them or your lying eyes…
(Statue of Queen Tiye; Grandmother of Pharaoh Tutankhamun)

Thanks for reading Hill1News.