The African Athena controversy

African Athena

Everyone who has gone to school has heard the term "Western Civilization;" but what exactly is it and from where did it originate. Western Civilization is the culture that has arisen in the territory known as Europe, as well as many of the regions of the world where Europeans either conquered or colonized, such as North America or Australia. And for the last hundred years or so, mainstream scholars have believed that it originated in Greece. But the question has arisen as to exactly how Ancient Greek civilization developed, specifically in the third and second millennia B.C.. Did Greek civilization arise independently in Greece, by Indo-Europeans (sometimes called Aryans) who migrated from the north, or did it develop as an offshoot of older civilizations like Egypt and Phoenicia. The origin of Greek civilization is at the enter of a controversy that leads to the heart of the definition of Western Civilization and exactly where it originated. This controversy is demonstrated by the differences of opinions between Martin Bernal, a scholar who believes that Greek civilization arose from Egyptian and Phoenician origins, and Mary Lefkowitz, who maintains that Greek civilization originated from Indo-Europeans who migrated from the north. To back up his position, Martin Bernal asserts that because the events under discussion lie so far in the past, it is virtually impossible to know exactly what happened. Therefore, instead of hard evidence which could definitively decide the matter, Bernal proposes what he refers to as "competitive plausibility," or the idea that there should be scholarly competition between different, but plausible hypotheses. In the case of the origins of Greek civilization, Bernal asserts that it is more plausible that Greek civilization developed from Egyptian and Phoenician sources than from the migration of Indo-Europeans from the north.

The discovery in the early 1800's of linguistic evidence linking ancient Greek with the Indo-European family of languages, seemed to give credence to the "Aryan" model which supported a northern origin for Greek civilization. And this idea has been generally accepted by modern scholars, that is until recently when scholars have called into question this view of the origins of Greek civilization, and by extension, the origins of Western Civilization. One of these scholars is Martin Bernal, and in his book Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, Bernal proposes that the "Aryan" model of migration from the north of basically "white" people was based on an 19th century racist view of the world held by most Western scholars. These scholars ignored what Bernal holds up as evidence from the ancient world which indicates that the origins of Greek civilization can be found in the South and Southwest; specifically Egypt and Phoenicia (called the "Ancient" model). And they did it because the "Ancient" model proposed a "non-white" origin for European culture, something which Bernal asserts offended their racially biased point-of-view.

Instead, Bernal believes the writers of the Late Bronze Age, such as the playwrights "Aeschylus and Euripides, the historian Heroditus and Diodorus Siculus, the orator Isocrates, the guidebook writer Pausanias, and the Mythographers Apollodorus, Palaiphatos, and Konon," who all made references to the Egyptian and Phoenician origins of their culture. (Bernal "Introduction: Black Athena Writes Back") Bernal asserts that because it was commonly believed in the Ancient World that Greek civilization had its origins in Egyptian and Phoenician cultures, the modern world should accept the wisdom of those who lived at the time. He maintains that the commonality of this belief among the Ancients lends credibility to the idea; or that we should believe it because they did. And one of the main tenets of this belief is that Greece, or at least "certain regions, notably Boiotia and the Eastern Peloponnese, had then been settled by Egyptian and Phoenicians who built cities and civilized the natives." (Bernal "Introduction: Black Athena Writes Back") Bernal even goes so far as to claim that the name "Athena," which according to linguists does not have an Indo-European origin, actually comes from the Egyptian word "Ht Nt, [or] 'house of Neit'." (Lefkowitz "Ancient History, Modern Myths")

According to Bernal, Western scholarship accepted the Egyptian and Phoenician origins of Greek civilization until the beginning of the 19th century, when the discovery that ancient Greek was actually a member of the Indo-European family of languages spurred the racially charged hypothesis that Greek culture was the result of "white" Indo-Europeans migrating from the north. Bernal even presents a very good argument as to the veracity of his claims about 19th century racism, as well as proposes a "revised Ancient" model which accepts the linguistic evidence of Indo-European invaders from the north, but still maintains that the central basis of Greek culture was assimilated from Egyptian and Phoenician colonies on the Greek mainland. However, because of the lack of any solid, concrete evidence of Egyptian and Phoenician colonies, as well as their influence on Greek culture, Bernal is forced to maintain that his theory, the "revised Ancient" model, is competitively plausible in light of the linguistic evidence of the "Aryan" model. In other words, because he has no real evidence, he asks that scholars consider the plausibility of the "revised Ancient" model in comparison to the plausibility of the "Aryan" model.

One of the weaknesses of Bernal's argument on the competitive plausibility of the "revised Ancient" model is the absolute lack of any physical evidence. If Egyptians built permanent colonies on the Greek mainland then where are the remains of pyramids, sphinxes, and obelisks? There is currently no physical evidence that the Egyptians built any permanent structures in Greece, and there surely should be some evidence of Egyptian buildings; after all, they still exist throughout Egypt. Bernal's theory also has another problem: that of language. While he accepts that the core of the Greek language is that of an Indo-European language, he claims that more than 60% "cannot be explained in terms of other Indo-European languages." (Bernal "Introduction: Black Athena Writes Back") From this he then makes the conclusion that because he has discovered common etymologies between Greek and Egyptian, the 60% of the language that is not Indo-European must come from Egyptian and Phoenician sources. But as Mary Lefkowitz points out, many different languages share words that sound alike, and some even share, or borrow words from one another, but "…linguistic proof of origins requires more than a similarity in names and nouns. " (Lefkowitz "Ancient History, Modern Myths")

However, proof is something that Bernal's "competitive plausibility" theory does not require, in fact, it is based on the idea that there can be no absolute proof and therefore is based on rhetorical arguments. Jacques Berlinerblau, in Heresy in the University: The Black Athena Controversy and the Responsibilities of American Intellectuals, claims that Bernal's "competitive plausibility is the solvent of academic orthodoxy- a perfect vehicle for his takeover of the status quo." (Berlinerblau) in other words, the fact that Bernal does not need physical evidence but relies on the rhetorical arguments that support his theory is a way to destroy the ingrained view of scholars and open up the discussion to new ideas. But as they say, "if it's not broken, don't fix it," and while Bernal makes a convincing argument that the linguistic evidence discovered in the early 1800's did in fact give rise to the seemingly racist "Aryan" model, he provides no evidence of his own to refute the linguistic evidence itself. And the fact that many have taken this linguistic evidence and created racist views of history from it, does not take away any of the evidence's credibility: the core of the ancient Greek language is Indo-European. Bernal eventually accepts this evidence as credible, but then focuses his attention only on the parts of the language that are not Indo-European. And after finding a few etiological commonalities, only a fraction of a percentage of the commonalities that exist among the Indo-European family of languages, Bernal makes the leap that ancient Greek actually originated from Egyptian and Phoenician influences.

There is a reason the belief that Greek civilization originated from the influence of Indo-Europeans who migrated into Greece from the north is still an academic orthodoxy, and it has nothing to do with the racist past. The real reason it remains is because, despite Bernal's assertion that there cannot be definitive evidence of something that happened so long ago, modern scholarship relies on evidence, not arguments. There is definitive evidence that ancient Greek was a member of the Indo-European family of languages, and this indicates that there is a high percentage of probability that those who migrated into Greece, bringing their language with them, were indeed, Indo-Europeans. On the other hand, Bernal asks the modern scholar to accept the beliefs of ancient writers that Greece was founded by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists. But Bernal is asking modern scholars, who use the scientific method to determine the veracity of scientific claims, to accept the beliefs of people who did not. Ancient writers did not view history as the accurate recording of events, as modern scholars do, instead they had a view of history that was based on beliefs and arguments, not facts. Therefore, the beliefs of ancient writers cannot be taken as evidence in the same way as the finding of archaeological evidence can. If Egyptians or Phoenicians had permanently colonized Greece, it is likely that someone would have found the remnants of Egyptian or Phoenician buildings, as well as Egyptian writing, tombs, and other physical evidence of their colonization activities. One would expect that if there was an Egyptian influence in the origins of Greek civilization, the Greeks may have built in the Egyptian style, instead of creating a completely unique style of architecture. There has been no evidence discovered that would indicate a large scale, permanent Egyptian or Phoenician colonization.