The purpose of this essay is to de-center European history, European "culture," and European ideology and "philosophy" from the history and lived reality of the history, culture, ideology and reality of man- and womankind.

No honest paleoanthropologist, or just plain anthropologist, disputes the visible fact that humans came into their humanity in the real "Garden of Eden" on the continent of Africa — specifically, East Africa. And…if they are honest, they will not, cannot, deny that those first human beings were black people, just as black as the current inhabitants of that blessed place.

No honest student of human history rejects the fact that black people were the first "people"; that all other people came from us, their black descendants; and that all other people on this planet are genetically and physically the children of Africans. Even Charles Darwin himself, the founder of human evolutionary theory, mused that the true beginnings of humanity would someday be found in Africa.

This does not mean that Africans and their black descendants are "superior" to anybody else.

We were simply first:

First to branch off from all the other, earlier, and contemporary ape and ape-like ancestors.

First to come down out of the trees.

First to rise up and walk on two feet rather than four.

First to speak and develop symbolic and meaningful language.

First to fashion tools to manipulate the environment.

First to use tools as offensive and defensive weapons against all manner of fearsome predators.

First to harness and tame fire.

First to band together in clans and create social systems for the protection and preservation of "elder" and/or weaker members.

First to practice lifelong monogamy and to nurture children until they reach their majority.

First to become self-aware.

First to develop "religion."

First to ceremoniously bury the dead.

First to understand that everybody dies — "just as sure as you're born."

From the Cape to Cairo

Africa has never been "poor." As this earth's second largest continent, Africa has always been its most naturally well-endowed space. We're talking about twelve million square miles of land, mountains, waterways, and today, fifty-four "nation-states" and 1.4 billion people. Indeed, just in geographic terms, the African continent is five times larger than the US, including its two largest states, Alaska and Texas. The entire subcontinent of "Europe" (which is really only a far-flung backwater peninsula of Asia, the world's largest continent) fits neatly within Africa seven times over.

Yet, in this nation-state and throughout the "Western world," we are taught from birth, "socialized," indoctrinated, and propagandized, that is, to not only believe but to accept as received wisdom that The Motherland, the place where mankind was born, has no real history, no "culture," and certainly has never contributed anything of value to "Western" notions of "civilization."

Students from elementary school through Ph.D. studies are told that it was the ancient Greeks or the Romans or the Etruscans or the Arabs who first came up with the idea and then bequeathed the whole concept of "civil society," of "civilization," to the "uncivilized" world.

Only since the advent of "Black Studies," or of African Studies, or of African American History, and the work of some past and current honest scholars, who have produced works chronicling the fact that those selfsame ancient Greeks, Etruscans, Arab, and Middle Easterners (the Levant) actually, frequently, traveled to ancient Egypt and the great library of Alexandria, to sit at the feet of Egyptian philosophers, thinkers, authors, and teachers, where they showed Herodotus, Aristotle, Euripides, and Plato himself, among many others, how to organize a nation-state in the first place; how to construct those prodigious monuments, columns, obelisks, and yes, pyramids.

As students of "world history," we were never told of the Moors of North Africa, the black Moors of North Africa, who conquered and ruled Spain and large portions of Europe for 800 years during Europe's medieval period, a period appropriately called Europe's "Dark Ages. We are only taught that once Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand united the many city-states of Spain, and then finally routed the Muslim Moors, the black Moors, that Columbus promptly then obtained their permission and money to cross the ocean-sea and begin the European conquest of this earth.

We have never been told that over the course of the black Moors' 800-year reign in Europe, those black Moors taught not-yet-self-identified white Spain, white Portugal, white France, white Germany, and, yes, white Britain, why and how to conduct themselves in a "civilized" manner; why and how to wash their hands after defecating; why and how to properly and thoroughly cook food, especially meat; why and how to clean their teeth. Their achievements influenced and actually created much of "Western" science, including algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, surgery, pharmacology, and agronomy.

As students, we were never told of the great ancient West African civilizations Ghana, Mali, Dahomey, Songhai, etc., which had hot and cold running water, irrigated fields, iron smelting, and sophisticated agricultural techniques — all while not-yet-"white" Europeans engaged in endless and bloody ("Thirty Years" or "Hundred Years") wars and petty tribal and boundary disputes.

As students, we were never told of the great Central and Southern African empires and king-and-queendoms of Angola, Great Zimbabwe , and Shaka, legendary Zulu warrior, king, and conqueror who fought British invaders to a standstill in present-day South Africa — Azania.

For Euro-Americans, African history begins and ends with the enslavement and colonization of Africa; with the imperial "conquest" of Africa.

We are, nonetheless, on the precipice of an African Renaissance, a return to a Golden Age of Africa's and Africans' rightful place as not just the centerpiece of human civilization, but to a renewed period of actual, real and worldwide "civility." I write here of human compassion, a collective human consciousness which does not require aggression, conquest or domination to express our humanity.

Indeed, a number of African nation-states are actively kicking out their former European colonists, neo-colonists, imperialists, neo-imperialists, enslavers, and contemporary natural resource-stealing "friends."

And the Europeans, as well as the Euro-Americans, don't like it. They don't like and refuse to accept the coming new dispensation, the emerging "United States of Africa," and thus the "new and improved" "New World Order." They don't like it because they understand clearly that when, not if, but when Africa frees itself of their greedy and always exploitative influence, they (the Europeans and Euro-Americans) will be forced to deal with Africa as an equal geopolitical and, most importantly, essential economic partner. They will be forced to pay "market" rates and prices for the stuff they've been stealing from Africa for the last 500 years.