56 replies to this topic

[YuenKamSiu]

http://www.youtube.c...I...ted&search=

[Kenneth]

There is already a lot of discussion on CHF about this unconventional theory.
I assume it is more about the introduction of culture into China from the West, mis-using the Tarim mummies.

How about a summary of points from Youtube instead of just posting a link?
I might watch the series later out of curiousity but you could save us a lot of time since the title itself is garbage,

edit; I took a look at the documetary at home. Note the documentary says nothing about introduction of civilisation by the Tocharins. It is quite credible, it is only the Youtube title that is the 'revision'.
Apart from discussing the area inhabited by these 'Europeans' it actually comments on the technology of the Chinese and the desirable goods that influenced the trade and warfare with steppes people north of both. Only via the steppes was there a connection. It dated the arrival of Chinese to well after the period of the ancient mummies, and encounters with later Tocharins, who may be decendants, around Tang IIRC.
The documentary can't really be faulted.
Just the agenda of the people that misunderstood it.


BTW There are also Afro-centric psuedo-histories that claim the Shang were black, and black races started all the original world civilisations.
These theories are so lacking in substance they do not require taking seriously, or worth devoting much time to.
People that need to 'own' other cultures ancient achievements really are pitiful.

All the earliest defining characteristics of 'civilisation' and more importantly Chinese cultural patterns, are in place by the Shang dynasty. The earliest Tarim mummies date from this time and are still geographically remote from contact.
The ingredients of the first completely secure Chinese dynasty (the Shang) arose independently and in different fashions to foreign forms (bronze working, royal authority/cities, functional Chinese script etc.). Evidence for contact with the Xinjiang area occurs much later than this, meaning the region would not have influenced China even if they did have anything to influnce China with...nor was there anything tangible that can be seen as a connection or transmition of ideas/technolgies.
Asian populations in the region mingled with earlier peoples, and these date to the Late East Zhou by other accounts.
There is good evidence iron working may have entered China 'via' Xinjiang in the Zhou period (based on dated artefacts) but 'civilisation' didn't since China was already distinctly 'Chinese' (here in the narrow sense Zhong-guo-ren) by the Eastern Zhou fuedal period.


PS; Mods
This thread should probably be merged, and new members should be making searches of the forum made before 'new' topics started.

This is old news...but bigots and fringe groups should not be considered influential on anything beyond their websites.
Even the guy commenting on there about Celtic sites in NZ....'white people here first'....they are just regarded as new-agers. His supposed Celtic sites are nonsense. These people are thoroughly ignorant of either Celtic or Maori archaeology.
Note the guy who posted the documentary used 'Aryan' in his ID. 'Aryancrusader'.
The word itself is tied up in mythical white supremacy psuedo-histories, being popularised largely by Nazism.

Edited by Kenneth, 15 June 2007 - 06:13 AM.

[ren]

BTW There are also Afro-centric psuedo-histories that claim the Shang were black, and black races started all the original world civilisations.
These theories are so lacking in substance they do not require taking seriously, or worth devoting much time to.
People that need to 'own' other cultures ancient achievements really are pitiful.

That may be a person pet peeve of yours but hardly the issue here. Futhermore, Euro-based appropriationists based in academia (check out Mair and his cohorts in Sino-Platonic papers for example) are a far greater nuissance, since they mislead people from academia. A University of Massachussetts (US State) professor actually teaches that the Shang elite were Indo-Europeans. What makes it sad is that this guy is a Sino-phile, with great interest and admiration of Chinese culture, so much so he married a Japanese wife and thinks Chinese culture was invented by Indo-Europeans.

There is good evidence iron working may have entered China 'via' Xinjiang in the Zhou period (based on dated artefacts) but 'civilisation' didn't since China was already distinctly 'Chinese' (here in the narrow sense Zhong-guo-ren) by the Eastern Zhou fuedal period.

I thought I read somewhere that iron was earlier in China than the West. Anyway, bronze seems to have seeped in from further west, and with the introduction of bronze, we had increase warfare and the formation of states in the central plains, so the west indirectly did lead to civilization in China.

[Intranetusa]

First of all, the Nova documentary is NOT called "Tocharians - Civilization Bearers to the Chinese"
That is the title given by the poster, "AryanCrusader148" - obviously as a Neo-Nazi. Nova has never
made that ridiculous assumption.

Their belief that Indo-European nomads who wandered into western China was responsible for Chinese civilization is more ridiculous than the Afro-Centrists who thinks Egpytians were black.

Edited by Intranetusa, 16 June 2007 - 08:18 PM.

[DaMo]

Haha! This is just some PBS historical documentary. Nothing about civilization transfer here.

[Jake Holman]

The original program is quite interesting.

Edited by Jake Holman, 25 June 2007 - 08:19 PM.

[ren]

If you think Afrocentrism isn't a force in American academia, you haven't been exposed to the American academic scene much. It is more of a force than "European appropriationalism", now that "eurocentrism" and "orientalism" have become dirty words which many academics use to tar those whose views they disagree with.

I'm very aware of the American academic scene. Complaints about PCness and Afrocentrism are basically by fear-mongers who would be angry anyway (at something else). What is the Afrocentric equivalent of Ph.D. Brooks at the University of Massachussetts Warring States Project, who claims the Shang elite were Indo-European or Mair at University of Pennsyvania who claims the Dao De Jing's essence is derived from ultimately, I quote him, "Europoids"?

[Kenneth]

I see you have your own pet peeves too, since you labour the point about these 2 individuals.

Since you even need to ask what are the Phd. equivalents in Afrocentrism I can assume your idea that confronting them is about 'fear-mongers' is equally based on woeful ignorance.
Students are taughts that Plato was black, Cleopatra was black, all the original great civilisations were black. There is a body of literature behind it (Black Athena springs to mind) and it is taught to students in academic institutions;
For a list of ''notable academics'' (see some of the titles) i.e
Molefi Kete Asante, professor, author: Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change; The Afrocentric Idea; The Egyptian Philosophers: Ancient African Voices from Imhotep to Akhenaten
Ishakamusa Barashango, college professor and lecturer; founder, Temple of the Black Messiah, School of History and Religion; co-founder and creative director, Fourth Dynasty Publishing Company, Silver Spring, Maryland
Hakim Bey, leader of the Moorish Science Temple, author of the "Journal of the Moorish Paradigm"
Jacob Carruthers, Egyptologist; founding director of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilization; founder and director of the Kemetic Institute, Chicago
Cheikh Anta Diop [4],[5], author: The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality; Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology; Precolonial Black Africa; The Cultural Unity of Black Africa: The Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity; The Peopling of Ancient Egypt & the Deciphering of the Meroitic Script
H.B. ("Barry") Fell, Harvard professor, linguist, author: Saga America, 1980 [6]
Drusilla Dunjee Houston, lecturer, syndicated columnist, author: Wonderful Ethiopians of the Ancient Cushite Empire, 1926.
Yosef Ben-Jochannan, author: African Origins of Major "Western Religions"; Black Man of the Nile and His Family; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; New Dimensions in African History; The Myth of Exodus and Genesis and the Exclusion of Their African Origins; Africa: Mother of Western Civilization; Abu Simbel to Ghizeh: A Guide Book and Manual
Runoko Rashidi [7], author: Introduction to African Civilizations; The global African community: The African presence in Asia, Australia, and the South Pacific
J.A. Rogers, author: Sex and Race: negroid-Caucasian Mixing in All Ages and All Lands : The Old World; Nature Knows No Color Line; Sex and Race: A History of White, negroid, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas : The New World; 100 Amazing Facts About the negroid With Complete Proof: A Short Cut to the World History of the negroid
Ivan van Sertima, author: They Came before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America, African Presence in Early Europe; Blacks in Science Ancient and Modern; African Presence in Early Asia; African Presence in Early America; Early America Revisited; Egypt Revisited: Journal of African Civilizations; Nile Valley Civilizations; Egypt: Child of Africa (Journal of African Civilizations, V. 12); The Golden Age of the Moor (Journal of African Civilizations, Vol. 11, Fall 1991); Great Black Leaders: Ancient and Modern; Great African Thinkers: Cheikh Anta Diop[8]
Chancellor Williams, author: The Destruction of Black Civilization: Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D.
Théophile Obenga, author: Ancient Egypt and Black Africa : a student's handbook for the study of Ancient Egypt in philosophy, linguistics, and gender relations
Asa Hilliard, III, author: SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind; The Teachings of Ptahhotep .


There is a sub-genre of history based on Afro-centrism. It isn't just a pair of people like your focus. It is at institutional level and academics who confront the publications and personalities behind it risk a backlash.
You should see how one person I confronted over this on CHF was calling Mary Lefkowitz (author of How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History) a 'Jewess' and made incredible claims about the undeveloped frontal lobe of Neandertals (i.e Europeans in his view) and he had masses of literature and links to supporting articles.
Why do Afro-centrists like this fellow hate her? Because she wrote things in response to them like;

In the fall of 1991 I was asked to write a review-article for The New Republic about Martin Bernal's Black Athena and its relation to the Afrocentrist movement. The assignment literally changed my life. Once I began to work on the article I realized that here was a subject that needed all the attention, and more, that I could give to it. Although I had been completely unaware of it, there was in existence a whole literature that denied that the ancient Greeks were the inventors of democracy, philosophy, and science. There were books in circulation that claimed that Socrates and Cleopatra were of African descent, and that Greek philosophy had actually been stolen from Egypt. Not only were these books being read and widely distributed; some of these ideas were being taught in schools and even in universities.

If you think that confronting it is based on 'fear' instead of 'responsible history' then I wonder just why you have fixated on just one psuedo-history and then dismiss concerns about another.

Actually you have to have a bit of nerve to stand up to these people, as she wrote also;

.....I could raise my questions in a more public context. That opportunity came in February 1993, when Dr. Yosef A. A. ben-Jochannan was invited to give Wellesley's Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial lecture. Posters described Dr. ben-Jochannan as a "distinguished Egyptologist," and indeed that is how he was introduced by the then President of Wellesley College. But I knew from my research in Afrocentric literature that he was not what scholars would ordinarily describe as an Egyptologist, that is a scholar of Egyptian language and civilization. Rather, he was an extreme Afrocentrist, author of many books describing how Greek civilization was stolen from Africa, how Aristotle robbed the library of Alexandria, and how the true Jews are Africans like himself.

After Dr. ben-Jochannan made these same assertions once again in his lecture, I asked him during the question period why he said that Aristotle had come to Egypt with Alexander, and had stolen his philosophy from the Library at Alexandria, when that Library had only been built after his death. Dr. ben-Jochannan was unable to answer the question, and said that he resented the tone of the inquiry. Several students came up to me after the lecture and accused me of racism, suggesting that I had been brainwashed by white historians.

http://www.historypl...iew/not-out.htm

A lecture at which serious questions could not be asked, and in fact were greeted with hostility -- the occasion seemed more like a political rally than an academic event. As if that were not disturbing enough in itself, there was also the strange silence on the part of many of my faculty colleagues. Several of these were well aware that what Dr. ben-Jochannan was saying was factually wrong. One of them said later that she found the lecture so "hopeless" that she decided to say nothing. Were they afraid of being called racists? If so, their behavior was understandable, but not entirely responsible. Didn't we as educators owe it to our students, all our students, to see that they got the best education they could possibly get? And that clearly was what they were not getting in a lecture where they were being told myths disguised as history, and where discussion and analysis had apparently been forbidden.

Perhaps before dismissing concerns about Afrocentrism (just the same as Nazism myth of the white-Aryan) as fear mongers you should consider that the basis if concern is the same.
It seems to me you say black psuedo-history is no concern, but white psuedo-history is very serious indeed.
I fail to see any basis for this.

-------------------------------------

BTW
Iron was not used earlier in China. Far from it. You may be thinking of steel of which the refining achieved a very high standard in the Han period but was still novel and new in the Spring & Autumn period. Meteoric iron was the only source before the ability to extract iron from ore, i.e 'Iron age'. Meteoric iron is not considered iron age in either Chinese or Western academia.
The carbon dating and the types of artefacts of the earliest iron in China (i.e 8th century BC) have suggested an introduction from the 'West' and the earliest iron being bloomery wrought. The more recent discoveries have overturned a thesis from the ealy 1990's that iron working began in the south of China, and was based on cast iron (pig iron).
Still, the datings are not even close to the use of the earliest iron elsewhere, i.e the Hittites, so I hope you will look into the matter beyond "I thought I read somewhere..".
Bronze, contrary to your points also, is more often (this being the one subject I have looked into out of personal interest) thought to be an entirely Chinese invention, independent more specifically since both the bronze and iron ages in China are later than other regions. I have only unconvincing heard a non-commital 'maybe' about Western introduction but in all the literature I have seen I saw no evidence for this and more clearly a statement of independent invention.
The use of cast bronze and copper implements in the late Stone Age and the unique multiple sectional casting, egg shell thin, copying neolithic ceramic forms, as well as a lack of more typically 'Western' methods such as work hardening and hammering has shown that Chinese bronze technology is both unique & independently invented.

About this 'Indo-European' idea of the Shang. I am sure there are eccentrics in academia but this is not a view that holds much water.
The Shang for instance show clear connection to the Chinese Longshan culture, due to scapulmancy (including marks on the bone) the form of material artefacts (such as 'goats teat' vessels), jades adopted (bi & tsong), adoption of forms of stone weapons, (yue & ge) into bronze that suggest a much stronger link than the more cosmetic connection to the steppes in the form of 'steppes' style knives. These after all existed alongside uniquely Shang weapons...even the use of socketed halberds, in an 'indo-European style' is not commonly 'Shang' but only limited to a geographical area in the north.
All this means that unless there is linguistic, material, or functional ways of proving the Shang were a different race that these ideas are just the fancies of individuals.

Again the Afro-centric view of the Shang as 'black' and the later Zhou as 'Asian' are heard even more in my experience.
You might think one is irrelevant (Afro-centrism), and the other critical concern (Indo-European claims), but it is all 'much a muchness' me.
Just the eccentricties and fancies of a few people in historical discussions.
If this guy really is a historian though why don't you ask him to demonstrate the validity of his theory (I assume you know him from personal experience), challenge him on his statements for real proof to an approprate standard since the comments are contentious and potentially unfair.
Bear in mind you are preaching to the choir here. Best to take indignation to the people who promote psuedo-histories.
It is not too intimidating, they have the burden of proof if they make these comments.
Don't let them mistake silence for acceptance. When I encounter them I leave them in no doubt.

Edited by Kenneth, 17 June 2007 - 07:33 PM.

[DaMo]

Of course Afrocentric revisionism is as bad as Eurocentric revisionism. In fact, the former tend to be more ridiculous than the latter a lot of the times.

[ren]

I see you have your own pet peeves too, since you labour the point about these 2 individuals.

No, far from it. I've been just discussing/debating in topics where these people come up so I've repeated their names as a tie-in.

It seems to me you say black psuedo-history is no concern, but white psuedo-history is very serious indeed.
I fail to see any basis for this.

I'm going to underline my basic point. It's not about "black" or "white", it's about mainstream "experts" with very biased views and Afrocentrists who are not taken seriously by anyone, even most blacks, if you've ever met one.

Since you even need to ask what are the Phd. equivalents in Afrocentrism I can assume your idea that confronting them is about 'fear-mongers' is equally based on woeful ignorance.

You fail to note the difference between Euro-centric mainstream academics and Afrocentrists, who are regarded as a fringe group. Mainstream academia does not take them seriously. The equivalent of Afrocentrists are the Nordicist scholars. This whole set are people with no real threat to anyone and I'd rather look upon it as entertainment.

The academics I've been critical of in my recent discussions are a different matter. They are mainstream.
Victor Mair is a professor at University of Pennsyvania, an Ivy League school. His assertion that the Dao De Jing is Indian in origin has been taken by Griggs in his book to be truth, thus setting up a chain of transforming personal sentiments into publicly-accepted truths. How is this different from some sensationalist author(s) in the 19th century spreading the notion that Chinese eat dogs like the way Americans eat beef, for example? Most Americans think or even ask if we Chinese eat dog as a regular diet. (I hope you knowthat most Chinese have never even tried dog once. I've asked.)

Bruce Brooks heads the Warring States Project at University of Massachussetts, which is linked/pinned on this forum. Thus, his ideas about many things, that the Shang elite was Indo-European, is more influential than Afrocentric claims, which are not linked on this forum.

Pimpaneau, who fcharton (Francois) cited in another about the Zhou being "Central Asian" nomads is mainstream.

I think it was Pulleyblank, for better or worse, (could be wrong) who attributes Chinese bronze to Western introduction, which led to the formation of Chinese civilization.

Students are taughts that Plato was black, Cleopatra was black, all the original great civilisations were black.

Where? I'm pretty familiar with U.S. colleges and universities, and they don't teach Plato was "black".

There is a body of literature behind it (Black Athena springs to mind) and it is taught to students in academic institutions;

In what academic insitutions? Prove, please.

For a list of ''notable academics'' (see some of the titles) i.e

"Academics" does not mean mainstream nor real academics. Besides, some of these people are probably legit. The fact is that the majority of "Afrocentrists" hold very mainstream ideas. They just tend to emphasize Africa. Greece did have African influences, through Egypt, was was indeed culturally and even racially substantially sub-Saharan.

There is a sub-genre of history based on Afro-centrism. It isn't just a pair of people like your focus.

Yes, the difference between Eurocentric mainstream experts and Afrocentrists and Nordicists and whatnot is that the later people are a "sub-genre" who are not taken seriously by anyone besides fear-mongers. It's like bringing up the Nation of Islam as an "Islamic" threat.

It is at institutional level and academics who confront the publications and personalities behind it risk a backlash.

Your assertion is far-fetched. Academics are not persecuted for denying that Plato is a negroid.
Prove instead of this fear-mongering.

You should see how one person I confronted over this on CHF was calling Mary Lefkowitz (author of How Afrocentrism Became an Excuse to Teach Myth as History) a 'Jewess' and made incredible claims about the undeveloped frontal lobe of Neandertals (i.e Europeans in his view) and he had masses of literature and links to supporting articles.

This amounts to persecution of anti-Afrocentric academics?

BTW
Iron was not used earlier in China. Far from it. You may be thinking of steel of which the refining achieved a very high standard in the Han period but was still novel and new in the Spring & Autumn period.

Steel. Yes. My mistake.

Bronze, contrary to your points also, is more often (this being the one subject I have looked into out of personal interest) thought to be an entirely Chinese invention, independent more specifically since both the bronze and iron ages in China are later than other regions. I have only unconvincing heard a non-commital 'maybe' about Western introduction but in all the literature I have seen I saw no evidence for this and more clearly a statement of independent invention.
The use of cast bronze and copper implements in the late Stone Age and the unique multiple sectional casting, egg shell thin, copying neolithic ceramic forms, as well as a lack of more typically 'Western' methods such as work hardening and hammering has shown that Chinese bronze technology is both unique & independently invented.

I've always thought Chinese bronze is Indo-European after second-hand info from a "mainstream" (or as you would like to call it: a white source) book.

[DaMo]

His assertion that the Dao De Jing is Indian in origin has been taken by Griggs in his book to be truth, thus setting up a chain of transforming personal sentiments into publicly-accepted truths.

I thought he asserted that the DDJ and the Gita have a common origin.

This chain you mention is actually one of the major annoyances in the way conjectures are turned into truth. I also have a term for it: hypothesis layering - piling one hypothesis upon another without substantiating any of them.

[ren]

I thought he asserted that the DDJ and the Gita have a common origin.

This chain you mention is actually one of the major annoyances in the way conjectures are turned into truth. I also have a term for it: hypothesis layering - piling one hypothesis upon another without substantiating any of them.

Well, he is sort of dodgy, saying something suggestive here, something similar but not exactly there, yes but in the end he seems to discard the whole Indian business altogether (as if it was a cover) to sum it up by suggesting the Tocharians introduced "Taoism", basically, to China.

[fcharton]

The academics I've been critical of in my recent discussions are a different matter. They are mainstream.
Victor Mair is a professor at University of Pennsyvania, an Ivy League school. His assertion that the Dao De Jing is Indian in origin has been taken by Griggs in his book to be truth, thus setting up a chain of transforming personal sentiments into publicly-accepted truths. How is this different from some sensationalist author(s) in the 19th century spreading the notion that Chinese eat dogs like the way Americans eat beef, for example? Most Americans think or even ask if we Chinese eat dog as a regular diet. (I hope you knowthat most Chinese have never even tried dog once. I've asked.)

Bruce Brooks heads the Warring States Project at University of Massachussetts, which is linked/pinned on this forum. Thus, his ideas about many things, that the Shang elite was Indo-European, is more influential than Afrocentric claims, which are not linked on this forum.

Pimpaneau, who fcharton (Francois) cited in another about the Zhou being "Central Asian" nomads is mainstream.

I think it was Pulleyblank, for better or worse, (could be wrong) who attributes Chinese bronze to Western introduction, which led to the formation of Chinese civilization.

I think those academics are not mainstream because of these claims, and the agenda you see in them, but because they published papers and books, which, through peer review, were deemed good by a number of recognised specialists. That's the way academia works.

As for the bold and unsubstantiated claims, this is called research. Specialists offer new conjectures (ie unproven ideas), often bold, and even shocking, which get discussed, and sometimes end up being proven right, and sometimes wrong... It is not specific to history, btw (do you think relativity, or quantum physics, were anything but bold conjectures when they were first proposed?)

Right now, the fashion is on foreign influences, you see an agenda, perhaps... But note that for years, the fad was to doubt the authenticity of classics. Lots of crazy unsubstantiated theories were offered. Ever heard of Liu Fenglu, who thought that the Zuozhuan, was a Han forgery, or at least had been edited to a point that it amounted to a forgery? His ideas became quite mainstream among Qing scholars, and were used a lot by people like Kang Youwei (who did have an agenda!). Modern scholars have abandonned them, although they never were proven wrong. And what about Liang Qicheng, and Gu Jiegang, and Guo Moruo, who suggested that Sun Wu didn't write the Art of War (would have been Sun Bin, or someone of his time) and maybe even didn't exist historically (!), until archaeological discoveries in the 70s and 80s proved they were wrong (which it the best proof that their claims were unsubstantiated)... Wasn't this habit of doubting the authenticity of everything ancient, a common attitude throughout the Qing and the Republican era, among mainstream chinese historians (similar controversies appeared for almost all preQin, Qin and Han texts), a clear sign of an agenda to belittle ancient Chinese history?

Yet, Gu Jiegang, Guo Moruo, and the others, are regarded as great (mainstream) scholars by most modern historians... because even though some of their conjectures were proven wrong, their arguments, the methods they used, bore fruit, and shed more light on the classics than generations of people who just repeated traditional arguments (Sun Wu as the author of the Art of War, reading it to King Helu, as Sima Qian said, or Zuo Qiuming writing the Zuozhan, as a commentary on the Chunqiu, as edited by Confucius, and Laozi writing his Daodejing at the border post before leaving the country).

I would suggest that many of the claims on foreign influence are similar. They are not akin to the stories about chinese eating dog meat, because apart from a few specialists, no one knows about them (heck, most foreigners, even those interested in China, haven't heard of the Shang dynasty, or the Tocharians...). I'm pretty certain most of them will eventually be debunked, this is the fate of most conjectures, but it is also quite likely that, just as all the questioning of the authenticity of the classics, they will prove fruitful, by shading new light on cultural influences in ancient times. Dismissing these scholars as biased because you think one of their conjectures is wrong seems unfair to me.

Of course, there is a difference between the two controversies (intentional, of course...): all the authors you quote are westerners, and all those I quoted are Chinese, but you don't want to go this way, do you?

Francois

[Kenneth]

I've always thought Chinese bronze is Indo-European after second-hand info from a "mainstream" (or as you would like to call it: a white source) book.

Well think again champ because there is more than one book on the subject, and don't assume I would call a book 'white' or 'yellow' or 'green'. You clearly have grabbed the proverbial 'wrong end of the stick'. It seems odd you would accept this and then be annoyed that somebody said the earliest bronze cultures were Indo-European too.

Perhaps you could stop being a dickhead by now suggesting that I am fearmongering too.
I am against any group that want to unfairly claims the achievements of another race for their own, whether they are any colour. It seems for you some cases are a non-issue while others are an outrage.
I bought Afrocentrism in as an example of the other side doing equally silly things as this Aryancrusader.
Since I have had detailed discussions on CHF with a member who was asserting the Shang were black, and the Zhou asian, it smacks of arrogance to deny another persons experiences (you are claiming Afrocentrism is 'fringe' and Eurocentrism is 'mainstream' in comparison) when I say calling the Shang white or black is equally wrong. In response you seem to say, calling them black is OK since it is fringe....but Eurocentrism is bad bad bad!
You asked for Phd. equivalents and I gave a list of published authors who say Blacks started Western civilisation, and people who lectue at universities.
Why can you dismiss this as unimportant but then exclaim greater anger that people suggest the Shang were Indo-European.
That's hypocritical.
When it comes to academic negativity for addressing psuedo-history I gave Lefkowitz as an example in response to your apparent ignorance, and you somehow just ask for proof it evr occurs? When you ask for institutions that teach afrocentrism, becuase you claim that you are very familiar with US institutions, I expect you didn't follow the link I gave about Wellesley College hosting and promoting one author. I have seen televised classes in US educational facilities where students were being told to visualise Cleopatra as black eyc.. Somehow you have deduced it is only 'fringe'. The concerns raised & the dialogue I have seen about it suggest it needs a little bit more than just ignoring.
Since you can make the statement "Greece did have African influences, through Egypt, was was indeed culturally and even racially substantially sub-Saharan." I think this speaks volumes since Egytians were not 'sub-Saharan' and even depicted themselves as visually distinct from Kushite, Numidians, Hittites etc. Greece may have had links to Egypt just as Rome had links to Persia but I think you are being a little bit coy about the claims Greek philosphy came from Eygpt.
Lefkowitz's colleagues being intimidated into silence, and those that speak up being called racists....perhaps if you aren't European you don't understand the stigma of being called a racist when you are a public figure.
Perhaps one example isn't enough for you....you need a dozen testimonials.
I suggest you stop belittling such a moderate concept as mine (that psuedo-history needs confronting and all racial appropriation of anothers legacy is inherently negative) and perhaps go back and read my comments against psuedo-history.
It beats me why you hold up one alone as an example of irresponsible history and then scoff at other group doing the same thing.
I can only assume you have some sort of huge chip or your shoulder, and it prevents you from seeing a broader view.