Martin Gardiner Bernal (1937 - 2013) was Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The first two volumes of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (I: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece, 1785-1985; and II: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence) have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish, Greek and Japanese. Black Athena won the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation in 1990.