Sankofa Odyssey History

Brief Historical Perspective of African Seamanship

There is established proof that Africans were great sailors from as far back as 3,000 years ago. Some obvious evidence suggests that there was an ancient cultural contact between Africa and America.

It is known that North and West African peoples possessed boat building skills. There were tribes that could build boats large enough to carry twelve tons of cargo across the Niger. The Swahili people were known to trade with China and India by navigating the Indian Ocean. These vessels weighed as much as seventy tons and had oars and sails.

Additionally, there are accounts of a West African King that took hundreds of vessels on a voyage down the Senegal and into the Atlantic, never to be heard from again. Speculation is that at least some of these vessels were swept in to the Canaries Current and flowed westward in the North Equatorial Current. This current flows to the Americas and hits South American shores from Guineas through the Antilles in the Caribbean.

There were many villages of “tall black men” at war with regions of Mexico and Columbia South America. Artifacts have been discovered in Mexico that were crafted before the Mayans and Aztecs that suggest there were North Africans residing in the regions of Mexico and Panama.

This brief account summarizes the perspective of the sailors of the Sankofa Odyssey. The sailors of the Sankofa Odyssey recognize the natural and spiritual similarities in those African sailors that have sailed before us.