Black Athena 30 Years On

30 years ago, Martin Bernal's incendiary book Black Athena sent shockwaves through the world of classical and Afrocentric scholarship. Bernal argued that classical Greek wisdom and culture (and thus the very basis of Western civilisation) in fact came from Africa, specifically ancient Egypt and Phoenicia, challenging many assumptions about the provenance of knowledge, and with it, historic intellectual justifications for white superiority. We're seizing the opportunity afforded by this anniversary to re-examine the importance of Black Athena and investigate its intellectual, social and racial legacy.