Ivan Van Sertima
| Ivan Van Sertima | |
|---|---|
Van Sertima (1995)
|
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| Born |
26 January 1935 Kitty Village, British Guiana |
| Died | 25 May 2009 (aged 74) Highland Park, New Jersey, United States |
| Residence | Highland Park, New Jersey, United States |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Nationality | Guyanese |
| Fields | Africana Studies |
| Institutions | Rutgers University |
| Alma mater | University of London, Rutgers University |
| Known for | pre-Columbian contact between Africa and the Americas |
| Spouse | Maria Nagy; Jacqueline L. Patten |
Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (26 January 1935 – 25 May 2009) was a Guyanese-born associate professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States.
He was best known for his Olmec alternative origin speculations, a brand of pre-Columbian contact theory, which he proposed in his book They Came Before Columbus (1976). While his Olmec theory has "spread widely in African American community, both lay and scholarly", it was mostly ignored in Mesoamericanist scholarship, or else dismissed as Afrocentric pseudohistory to the effect of "robbing native American cultures".
Van Sertima was born in Kitty Village, near Georgetown, Guyana, when Guyana was still a British colony; he retained his British citizenship throughout his life. He completed primary and secondary school in Guyana, and started writing poetry. He attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London from 1959. In addition to his creative writing, Van Sertima completed his undergraduate studies in African languages and literature at SOAS in 1969, where he graduated with honours.
From 1957 to 1959, worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer in the Guyana Information Services. During the 1960s, he worked for several years in Great Britain as a journalist, doing weekly broadcasts to the Caribbean and Africa. Van Sertima married Maria Nagy in 1964; they adopted two sons, Larry and Michael.
In doing field work in Africa, he compiled a dictionary of Swahili legal terms in 1967.
In 1970 Van Sertima immigrated to the United States, where he entered Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, for graduate work.
After divorcing his first wife, Sertima remarried in 1984, to Jacqueline L. Patten, who had two daughters.
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