It is often taught that Black people first arrived in the Americas during the slave trade. But that history is in the process of being rewritten as archaeologists continue to find evidence that Black people occupied the American content before the Bering Strait was crossed by Mongolian Asians.
According to the BBC documentary series Ancient Voices and some scholars, these peoples were the Black aboriginal people of Australia and Melanesia. They were later massacred by the invaders from Asia.
Here is some of the evidence that has been presented to prove Black people were the first to populate the Americas.
Human Skulls
Human skulls have been uncovered in Central and South America that are 9,000 to 12,000 years old, among the oldest skulls in the Americas.
Walter Neves, an archaeologist from the University of Sao Paolo, has taken extensive measurements from dozens of skulls, including the oldest, from a young woman whom the archaeologist named Luzia, discovered in Lagoa Santa, Minas Gerais, Brazil. “The measurements show that Luzia was anything but mongoloid,” he says.
Reconstruction of Luzia’s 12,000-year-old skull by forensic artist Richard Neave from the University of Manchester, England, showed all the features of a Negroid face, Neave said in a 1998 segment of the BBC documentary series Ancient Voices.
In the broadcast segment, the scientist concluded that the dimensions of the prehistoric skulls found in Brazil matched those of the aboriginal people of Australia and Melanesia.
