Did the ancient Greeks get their ideas from the Africans?

Another explanation for editing out the Kemites' contribution to history is much more sinister. While Europe and the rest of the West readily credit ancient Greece as its foundation, this credit isn't extended to Africa. "During the 19th century, many European writers, limited by ethnocentrism and racism, decided that black Africa could have had nothing to do with Europe's rise to greatness," writes Gloria Dickenson, professor of African-American Studies at The College of New Jersey.

At a time when Western society was building itself on the labor of black African slaves, white Europeans were hardly in a position to credit their slaves' ancestors with providing the foundation of that very same society.

Despite proof of their sophistication, the Kemites' contributions to world culture are still perceived to be less than those of the Greeks. In an online biography of Thales, the Greek scholar's travel to Kemet to study is mentioned, although marginalized. "Thales had traveled to Egypt to study the science of geometry. Somehow he must have refined the Egyptian methods, because when he came back to Miletus [Greece] he surprised his contemporaries with his unusual mathematical abilities" [source: The Big View].

Since the Kemites have been all but excluded from history, one can't help but wonder if another culture has been kept even more in the dark. A tantalizing question emerges: Did the Kemites, like the Greeks, draw their knowledge from another source as well?

For more information on ancient Kemet and other related topics, visit the next pages.

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