CHAPTER 1

THE ANCIENT WORLD RECONSIDERED

When we hear the term "Viking," the image that comes to mind most readily is that of a tall,blond, broad-shouldered, bearded white man dressed in animal skins, wearing a rounded helmet withhorns protruding from either side of it. Many books written by Western scholars present illustrationsof Norsemen thusly attired, and the few Viking films that have been made reinforce this image,although Vikings rarely, if ever, wore such helmets, or never actually wore them. Numerous books havechronicled the exploits of these vigorous peoples, also called Norsemen and Northmen, who swoopeddown from Scandinavia to wreak havoc on civilizations from the British Isles to Spain, Italy, Franceand Russia. That these Vikings or Norsemen left an indelible impact on the territories they scourgedis undeniable; that they were all members of the white or "Nordic" race, however, is questionable, forample evidence—evidence heretofore not unknown, strongly confirms that a substantial number ofthese peoples were black or dark-skinned.

Black-skinned will not always denote "African" in this work, although most people, especially Caucasians,seem to associate blackness of skin exclusively with Africa. However, there are numerous black-skinnedIndians (from India), Indonesians, Burmese, Pacific islanders and Southeast Asians and, as will be shown,several millennia ago the earth's population was comprised of many more black-skinned peoples in theseareas, as well as in Asia and Europe, generally. White historians and anthropologists have classified thepopulations of some of the aforementioned areas—including the black-skinned, so-called Aborigines ofAustralia—Caucasian by methods only they seem to understand, which has only added to confusion inthose of us unacquainted with their intricate methods of categorization. Even new DNA technology hasnot clarified the issue, somehow arriving at the same conclusions that pre-DNA historians and scientistshave asserted for two centuries or so in regard to race. The new DNA science has forced Eurocentricscholars and historians to grudgingly admit that the origin of Homo sapiens, or modern man, was Africa,but a number of them (although this theory is at least two centuries old) are still uncomfortable with thisnotion and continue to seek ways to revise it, rework it, disprove it to fit the Eurocentric racial models theyhave so long cherished.

I reject the classifying of obviously black-, brown-, and dark-pigmented people as Caucasian or white,as Eurocentric historians and scientists do the Aborigines, Indians, and historic peoples like the ancientEthiopians and Egyptians. And the reader who wishes to understand this humble work needs to understandthat an element of the white race—or people who considered themselves "white," different, and perhapssuperior to the dark races of mankind—introduced the theory of race, nurtured it after invading theterritories of the darker races all over the earth, destroying civilizations and countless human beings inthe process. They then wrote the books that most of us read depicting these deeds and assigning this orthat people to one race or another. A plague arose, and continues to afflict most of the world: racism.Racism is the dominant malady infecting today's world—more than crime, drugs, pollution, weapons ofmass destruction, poverty, cancer and war. Race and racism, in fact, seem to be at the root of most warsfought over the last thousand years or so, perhaps longer, obviously (at least to this writer) a factor in thefirst Crusade in 1096 when Christian Europe, with the blessing of Pope Urban II, invaded the Holy Landto wrest Jerusalem from the Infidels—dark-skinned, Muslim Turks and Saracens. European and Americanhistorians of course cite other causes for the wars Europeans have waged since the decline of Greeceand the fall of Rome at the end of the 5th century, but even a cursory look at wars fought by Europeansoutside the European continent would show them to have been expansionist and waged (when Europeancountries were not fighting each other) against dark-skinned peoples.

Except, perhaps, for World War I and the Revolutionary War, race has been a factor in all of America'swars, beginning with the subjugation and near-genocide of Native American peoples in establishing whatwould become the United States.

Eurocentric historians and scholars almost never mention racism—that is, a collective white racial hatredtoward non-white peoples—in their assessments of European colonization and warfare. They have excusedEuropean trespasses and the destruction of numerous non-Caucasian cultures and peoples as mere acts ofeconomic necessity (for Europeans) or strategic...