Over at r/Africa someone posted an article about African cities and one of the claims in the article is that Africans reached the Americas before Columbus.
I live in Africa myself and love learning about the often overlooked history of the continent but this claim seems dubious to me. A quick browse through the article and site raised similar concerns.
When I raised my concerns I was referred to"They Came Before Columbus" by Dr. Ivan Sertima. How credible is his work and the claim?
The article in question is http://www.corespirit.com/100-amazing-african-cities-completely-destroyed-europeans/
I've written previously on van Sertima here, covering a lot of the topics in the book. This Current Anthropology articlealso goes into further detail on some notable claims in the books]. Recent genetic research shows no evidence of admixture with Africans among Native Americans. This review is also a great read, and highlights the prejudice latent in the argument:
Once Africans could not put two bricks together without a Caucasian foreman. In von Daniken's world non West-European cultures are in stasis without periodic visits from alien counterparts of the Enterprise. [...] neither Van Sertima nor anyone else seems very interested in possible Amerindian influences on the Old World prior to 1492. How can you expect the early Americans to have made it across that expanse of ocean? They couldn't even build a respectable pyramid.
Even ignoring the content, the book is a slog to read, producing no new research and relying heavily on two or three earlier sources interspersed with mindless filler and god-awful attempts at citing and indexing.