Until comparatively recent times, knowledge that black Africa was the seat of highly evolved civilizations and cultures during a time when Europe stagnated was limited to a small group of scholars. That great empires such as Ghana, and later, Mali flourished for centuries while Europe slept through its dark ages almost has been ignored by historians. Thousands of years before that, as Rudolph R. Windsor notes in this enlightening book, civilizations began with the black races of Africa and Asia, including the Hebrews, who in Biblical times were jet black. Then, western Europe had no nations as such, and its stone age inhabitants had but the crudest tools and lived in caves.Because of the scarce literature on the contributions of blacks to world civilizations, most people today hold the erroneous opinion that the black races have little real history. It was not known, for instance, that the ancient Hebrews, Mesopotamians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians were black. Now, a growing body of literature is presenting the illustrious history of the blacks and their enormous contributions.