For 2,000 years the Greeks openly credited Africa as the source of their knowledge. Then between 1780 and 1820 a group of European academics decided that was unacceptable.
https://x.com/_africanhistory/status/2027020326060851373
For 2,000 years the Greeks openly credited Africa as the source of their knowledge.
Then between 1780 and 1820 a group of European academics decided that was unacceptable.
Here's exactly who rewrote history and how:
These men racialised history and severed Greece from Africa.
1780–1820: EARLY FOUNDATIONS
• Christoph Meiners (1747–1810)
First to argue Greeks were "white" and Egyptians were not African. Introduced racial hierarchy into classical studies. This is where the lie was born.
• Johann Blumenbach (1752–1840)
Created the five-race model. Placed Greeks at the top of the "Caucasian" ideal. Gave the lie a scientific name.
• Christian Gottlob Heyne (1729–1812)
Reframed Greece as the origin of Europe. Egypt and Africa were removed from the picture.
• Friedrich August Wolf (1759–1824)
Founded modern philology. Insisted Greek texts be studied with no Near Eastern context. Built the methodology that made the erasure look academic.
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
Not a classicist. But his racial hierarchy set the intellectual temperature for everything that followed.
• G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831)
Declared Africa "ahistorical." Claimed world history begins with Greece. Wrote an entire continent out of human civilisation in one lecture.
1820–1870 - SYSTEMATIZERS
These scholars formalised the Aryan narrative and gave it institutional weight.
• Franz Bopp (1791–1867)
Founded Indo-European linguistics. Linked Greek to Sanskrit and Germanic languages. Gave the Aryan story its linguistic backbone.
• Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835)
Elevated Indo-European as the "noble" language family. Built the academic prestige around it.
• Karl Otfried Müller (1797–1840)
Argued Greek culture came from northern Dorian migrations. Egypt's colonisation of Greece was deleted.
• Max Müller (1823–1900)
Popularised the Aryan vs Semitic racial dichotomy. Greeks were Aryan.
• Ernest Renan (1823–1892)
Elevated Greeks as the rational "Aryan" race. Put the hierarchy into print for mass consumption.
• Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882)
Wrote Essay on the Inequality of Human Races. Claimed only Aryans create civilisation. This book was read in every European university.
1840–1900: THE HAMITIC HYPOTHESIS
But Egypt was too impressive to ignore. So they reclassified it.
• Samuel George Morton (1799–1851)
Measured skulls and declared Egyptians "Caucasian." This is what passed for science.
• James Cowles Prichard (1786–1848)
Claimed Egyptians were Caucasian migrants into Africa. Africa didn't build Egypt. Egypt just happened to be in Africa.
• Karl Richard Lepsius (1810–1884)
Egyptologist who promoted the Hamitic racial category professionally. Gave the reclassification academic credibility.
• James Henry Breasted (1865–1935)
America's most famous Egyptologist. Admired Egypt enormously. Still insisted Egyptians were "Hamites" — not African.
1880–1930: EUGENICS AND THE POLITICAL HARDENING
By this point the lie had an army.
• Francis Galton (1822–1911)
Darwin's cousin. Founded the eugenics movement. Applied racial hierarchy to human populations and gave it the language of science.
• Karl Pearson (1857–1936)
Galton's disciple. Used statistics to "prove" Aryan superiority. Made racism look like mathematics.
• Madison Grant (1865–1937)
Wrote The Passing of the Great Race. Claimed the original Greeks were Nordic. This book was openly praised by Adolf Hitler.
• Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927)
Wrote Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. Claimed Aryans created all civilisation. Became required reading across Europe.
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Every Egyptologist was trained inside this system specifically to override the most obvious conclusion the evidence was pointing to:
That Africans built the first great civilisation on earth.
That Greeks were their students.
That what Europe calls the foundation of Western thought was African knowledge.
posted by Satish Sharma at
02:03
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