AFRICA'S FORGOTTEN SCIENTIFIC HISTORY

Ivan Gladstone Van Sertima (1935-2009) was a Guyana-born professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University in the United States.

He was best known for the pre-Columbian contact theory he presented in his 1976 book, They Came Before Columbus. While popular among Africans in the United States, the predominantly white academia dismissed the theory as 'Afrocentric.'

In this clip, he discusses ancient Africans' scientific contributions and the consequences of the great library of Alexandria burning down more than two millennia ago.