While earning his graduate degree, he published his most famous work, They Came Before Columbus, in 1976. In 1967, he published a dictionary of Swahili legal terms. Van Sertima began publishing before he came to the United States. After his divorce from Maria, he married Jacqueline Pattern in 1984 and gained two stepdaughters. In 1970, Van Sertima began his graduate work at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He then attended the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, graduating in 1969 as an honor student with a Bachelor of Arts in African languages and literature. In 1964, Van Sertima married Maria Nagy and together they adopted two boys.
In the late 1960s, Van Sertima did weekly broadcasts to Africa and the Caribbean as a journalist. After completing high school, he worked as a Press and Broadcasting Officer for Guyana Information Services. Van Sertima was born on January 26, 1935, in Kitty Village, Guyana when it was still a British colony.
Combining impressive scholarship with a novelist’s gift for storytelling, Van Sertima re-creates some of the most powerful scenes of human history: the launching of the great ships of Mali in 1310 (two hundred master boats and two hundred supply boats), the sea expedition of the Mandingo king in 1311, and many others. Examining navigation and shipbuilding cultural analogies between Native Americans and Africans the transportation of plants, animals, and textiles between the continents and the diaries, journals, and oral accounts of the explorers themselves, Ivan Van Sertima builds a pyramid of evidence to support his claim of an African presence in the New World centuries before Columbus. "They Came Before Columbus reveals a compelling, dramatic, and superbly detailed documentation of the presence and legacy of Africans in ancient America.
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