by Cheikh Anta Diop

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Editor - Ivan Van Sertima Co-Editor: Larry Obadele Williams

This book, the first in a series of work on Africans, whose life and thought have left a major impact on the world, is devoted to the Senegalese physicist, historian and linguist, Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop, who was born in Diourbel, Senegal on December 29, 1923, and died in Dakar on February 7, 1986. No figure in the field of African civilization studies has been more highly regarded in the French and English-speaking world than Diop. In 1966 the First World Festival of Arts and Culture attributed jointly to the late W.E.B. DuBois and Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop its "Award of the Scholar who had exerted the greatest influence on Negro thought in the 20th century." The book has nearly a hundred illustrations.

Great African Thinkers--Vol. 1., Chiekh Anta Diop features impressions of the man--"Conversations with Diop and Tsegaye" by Jan Carey; critiques of his major works "The Cultural Unity of Africa: the Domains of Patriarchy and of Matriarchy in Classical Antiquity" by Asa Hillard III, "The Changing Perception of Cheikh Anta Diop and his work" by James G. Spady, "Cheikh Anta Diop and the New concept of African History" by John Henrik Clarke; "The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality"--Review by A.J. Williams-Meyers; "Civilization or Barbarianism: the Legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop" by Leonard Jeffries, Jr. and "Diop on Asia: Highlights and Insights" by Runoko Rashidi; interviews "Africa's Political Unity," "Emancipation and Unity," "Negritude and the African personality" and "Ethnicity and National Consciousness" by Carlos Moore; "Dr. Chiekh Anta Diop" by Shawna Moore, "Meeting the Pharaoh" and "Further Conversation with the Pharaoh" by Charles S. Finch; the first authorized English translation of the introduction and two opening chapters from his last major work "Civilization or Barbarism: An Authentic Anthropology" by Edward G. Taylor; a selection of essays by Diop--"Origin of the Ancient Egyptians;" "Iron Metallurgy in the Ancient Egyptian Empire" a translation by Darryl Prevost; "Africa's contribution to the Exact Sciences" and a selection of lectures made during his first and only visit to the United States.