Where does Bernal's thesis and interest in African cultural influence on the wider Mediterranean and Afro-Eurasian civilizations leave us? If we allow for validity in Bernal's method, then there is a continuing range of scholarship and potential for scrutiny of the wider contacts and cultural influences that emerged in various periods of antiquity. More importantly, we may use the Black Athena thesis to examine other areas of cultural contact and influence in other periods of history.
As a final project, students are to form groups or write a paper about the issues presented in Bernal's Black Athena. Take at least one form of evidence from Bernal or from the examples we have explored in class and in this blog to examine and interpret the meaning and context of Greek, Mediterranean and Afro-Asiatic contact and exchange between 3000 BCE and 500 AD.
