African presence in ancient and medieval Europe

June 15, 2001
By Corey Gilkes

I wish to correct an oversight that appeared in the 10th June's edition of the Trinidad Newsday. The story, reprinted from Sport's Illustrated, was discussing the possible African lineage of US baseball legend George Herman 'Babe' Ruth. Whether he did or didn't have some 'black blood' in his veins will not be discussed here. What is important is the fact that this article unwittingly brought to light the history of the profound African presence in ancient and medieval Europe that is still ignored and underplayed in the history books and in the media.

Now many researchers of European history are for one reason or the other Eurocentric in their outlook to the point where they only see people of a particular phenotype inhabiting Europe in ancient times. In that article there is a paragraph that reads: "No one disputes that Ruth's maternal grandparents were German immigrants and thus unlikely to have had any black ancestry". The implication here is that since we are dealing with Germany, we can safely dismiss any notion of any non-white presence there.

Very few societies, if any, remained homogenous for any lengthy period of time. There is always some physical and cultural intercourse with neighboring societies. Expansions, invasions and miscegenation were just some of things that made these societies so diverse and the place now known as Germany was by no means an exception. There have been settlements of African peoples in that region from as far back as the Old Stone Age. The Grimaldis -- an Africoid people -- predated the Cro-Magnon or Caucasoid type.

Black legions invaded Germany with Julius Caesar. The skull of one, said to be that of a Christian martyr, was found at Cologne. The famous Hun, Attila, was described by 6th century writer Jordanes as having a "flat nose and a swarthy complexion showing evidence of his origin" [it is known that the Mongolian Huns had blacks in their tribes]. British archaeologist David MacRitchie stated that certain Danish tribes in northwestern Germany were "like the Moors, black". Not bad coming from a scholar who was definitely a product of his very racist times. Let us not forget that the patron saint of Germany was black, hence the name - Maurice. Indeed, the Sport's Illustrated writer skims over the fact that many names were given based on one's location, physical characteristics, etc. Therefore, names like Moor, Mohr, Mor, Dane, Pict, Scot, Dubh, Duff, Douglas, Schwartz, Cole, etc. more often than not, betrayed the existence of a black ancestor. In the 1940's Joel Augustus Rogers found the coats-of-arms of many prominent German families bearing the head or body of a Moor indicating a black progenitor.

All over ancient and medieval Europe including the British Isles, the story was the same. Substantial evidence of African peoples can be found: whether it was in the form of phallic rituals, the famous 'Venus' statuettes, burials [as opposed to cremations practiced by nomadic cultures], names that translate into "dark", "swarthy-coloured", etc. There have been discoveries in France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, England [where it seems they predated the Anglo-Saxons], Finland, Scandinavia and as far north as the Arctic Circle. There were blacks among the Celts and the Vikings. They featured in Nordic history and folklore [such as Thorhall the Hunter, Thorstein the Black, Halfdan the Black - the first king to unite Norway]. Many of the British folk-tales that speak about dwarves, imps, fairies, giants and gnomes were actually poetic, allegorical recording of actual encounters with African Twa and San people by the Celts, Anglos and Saxons. Gerald Massey in "Book of the Beginnings: an attempt to recover and reconstitute the lost origines [sic] of the myths and mysteries, types and symbols, religion and languages with Egypt for the mouthpiece and Africa as the Birthplace" exhaustively lists the many English words [and customs] that have Egyptian roots.

Of course, the ignorant and the semi-literate will ask "So what?" What, indeed, does all this have to do with anything today? Well, if this kind of information was more widely known, the xenophobia, and bigotry that we are faced with would not be as widespread or at least so deeply ingrained. But then those who advocate racism and xenophobia know fully well the implications of information such as this. So they will continue to play these kinds of history down and conceal these in a mountain of impressive sounding academic terms. Also concealed are the stories of Afri-Germans like actor Theodore Michael who endured Hitler's Germany. Further, the attitude displayed by US, Britain and European countries with regards to the World Conference on Racism, more than anything else shows that the hypocrisy, the bigotry did not go away in 1968 or with the advances in information and technology as some seem to think. The language of influential people in Britain with regard to immigration must also be taken in its proper context. How ironic is it that in Europe there are immigration laws against the descendants of people who were in Europe before the ancestors of those who drafted the laws.

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