He comes to them with two outstanding gifts: a remarkable flair for the sociology - perhaps one should say politics - of knowledge, and a formidable linguistic proficiency. His account is as gripping a tale of scholarly detection and discovery as one could hope to find - Margaret Drabble * Observer * Bernal makes an exotic interloper in Classical studies. In an unprecedented tour de force, Bernal makes meaningful links between a wide range of areas and disciplines-drama poetry, myth, theological controversy, esoteric religion, philosophy, biography, language, historical narrative, and the emergence of "modern scholarship." Volume 1 concentrates on the crucial period between 17, which saw the Romantic and racist reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and the consolidation of Northern expansion into other continents.
But the Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this "Aryan model." They did not see their political institutions, science, philosophy, or religion as original, but rather as derived from the East in general, and Egypt in particular. The popular view is that Greek civilisation was the result of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers-or Aryans-from the North. But these Afro-Asiatic influences have been systematically ignored, denied, or suppressed since the eighteenth century - chiefly for racist reasons.
Classical civilisation, Martin Bernal argues, has deep roots in Afro-Asiatic cultures.
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