|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
| Moderated by: The Watcher, Saida.M, safetyblitz, Raven, Miss Brighter Days, LadyDay, Kunjufu, Kibibi, Happiness, Dillinger, Breadfruit, Backatya |
|
|
| Author | |
|---|
Apedemak
Villager
| Joined: | Sunday October 17th, 2004 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 3135 |
| Photo: | [Download] |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |   |
Click here for your Black Profile
Search for Black Sites
|
Posted: Monday April 23rd, 2007 11:27 |
|
100 things that you did not know about Africa
1. The human race is of African origin. The oldest
known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans
(or homo sapiens) were excavated at sites in East
Africa. Human remains were discovered at Omo in
Ethiopia that were dated at 195,000 years old, the
oldest known in the world.
2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa
that date back between 4 and 5 million years. The
oldest known ancestral type of humanity is thought to
have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at
least 4.4 million years ago.
3. Africans were the first to organise fishing
expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in
northeastern Zaïre (now Congo), was recovered a finely
wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately
polished and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool,
equally well crafted, believed to be a dagger. The
discoveries suggested the existence of an early
aquatic or fishing based culture.
4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000
years ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in
Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain
range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered
including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian
Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site, dated
the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old.
5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years
ago. The Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches
carved into it found in the Ishango region of Zaïre
(now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was
originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old,
but a more sensitive recent dating has given dates of
25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of notches.
Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four
carved next to eight, ten carved next to two fives and
finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8, and 10 and 5,
represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven
notches carved next to twenty-one notches, and
nineteen notches carved next to nine notches. This
represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 - 1 and 10 - 1. Finally,
Row 3 shows eleven notches, thirteen notches,
seventeen notches and nineteen notches. 11, 13, 17 and
19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20.
6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the
first known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred
Wendorf discovered that people in Egypt’s Western
Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas,
dates, legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools
were also recovered. There were grindstones, milling
stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving
burins, and mortars and pestles.
7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A
mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag
rock shelter in south western Libya. The infant was
buried in the foetal position and was mummified using
a very sophisticated technique that must have taken
hundreds of years to evolve. The technique predates
the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by at
least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but
the mummy may date from 7438 (±220) BC.
8. Africans carved the world’s first colossal
sculpture 7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of
Giza was fashioned with the head of a man combined
with the body of a lion. A key and important question
raised by this monument was: How old is it? In October
1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a geologist from Boston
University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted
between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered
conservative.
9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an
article on its front page also page sixteen that was
entitled Nubian Monarchy called Oldest. In this
article we were assured that: “Evidence of the oldest
recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the
rise of the earliest Egyptian kings by several
generations, has been discovered in artifacts from
ancient Nubia� (i.e. the territory of the northern
Sudan and the southern portion of modern Egypt.)
10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of
tropically adapted skeletal proportions as modern
Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in American
Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia
Zakrzewski entitled Variation in Ancient Egyptian
Stature and Body Proportions where she states that:
“The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had
the ‘super-Negroid’ body plan described by Robins
(1983). The values for the brachial and crural indices
show that the distal segments of each limb are longer
relative to the proximal segments than in many
‘African’ populations.�
11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer
tells us that the Egyptians “manufactured a very
striking range of combs in ivory: the shape of these
is distinctly African and is like the combs used even
today by Africans and those of African descent.�
12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city
of Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists
regularly visit today. An outer wall, now mostly in
ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the
entrance are a series of columns, the first
stone-built columns known to historians. The North
House also has ornamental columns built into the walls
that have papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the
complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of limestone
blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the
centre of the complex is the Step Pyramid, the first
of 90 Egyptian pyramids.
13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most
extraordinary building in history, was a staggering
481 feet tall - the equivalent of a 40-storey
building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of
limestone and granite, some weighing 100 tons.
14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the world’s
first planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city
was divided into two parts. One part housed the
wealthier inhabitants – the scribes, officials and
foremen. The other part housed the ordinary people.
The streets of the western section in particular, were
straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other
at right angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre
wide, ran down the centre of every street.
15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun - each
boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or
quarters. There was a master’s quarter, quarters for
women and servants, quarters for offices and finally,
quarters for granaries, each facing a central
courtyard. The master’s quarters had an open court
with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this
was a colonnade.
16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with
its massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and
halls, was the very largest building in antiquity.
Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were
above ground and the other 1,500 were underground.
17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient
Egypt. One of the pharaohs built a city now known as
Amarna. An American urban planner noted that: “Great
importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in
other Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use
to dispose waste. Soap was made for washing the body.
Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour.
A solution of natron was used to keep insects from
houses . . . Amarna may have been the first planned
‘garden city’.�
18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on
earth - even more than Egypt. There are at least 223
pyramids in the Sudanese cities of Al Kurru, Nuri,
Gebel Barkal and Meroë. They are generally 20 to 30
metres high and steep sided.
19. The Sudanese city of Meroë is rich in surviving
monuments. Becoming the capital of the Kush*te Empire
between 590 BC until AD 350, there are 84 pyramids in
this city alone, many built with their own miniature
temple. In addition, there are ruins of a bath house
sharing affinities with those of the Romans. Its
central feature is a large pool approached by a flight
of steps with waterspouts decorated with lion heads.
20. Bling culture has a long and interesting history.
Gold was used to decorate ancient Sudanese temples.
One writer reported that: “Recent excavations at Meroe
and Mussawwarat es-Sufra revealed temples with walls
and statues covered with gold leaf�.
21. In around 300 BC, the Sudanese invented a writing
script that had twenty-three letters of which four
were vowels and there was also a word divider.
Hundreds of ancient texts have survived that were in
this script. Some are on display in the British
Museum.
22. In central Nigeria, West Africa’s oldest
civilisation flourished between 1000 BC and 300 BC.
Discovered in 1928, the ancient culture was called the
Nok Civilisation, named after the village in which the
early artefacts were discovered. Two modern scholars,
declare that “[a]fter calibration, the period of Nok
art spans from 1000 BC until 300 BC�. The site itself
is much older going back as early as 4580 or 4290 BC.
23. West Africans built in stone by 1100 BC. In the
Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists
have found “large stone masonry villages� that date
back to 1100 BC. The villages consisted of roughly
circular compounds connected by “well-defined
streets�.
24. By 250 BC, the foundations of West Africa’s oldest
cities were established such as Old Djenné in Mali.
25. Kumbi Saleh, the capital of Ancient Ghana,
flourished from 300 to 1240 AD. Located in modern day
Mauritania, archaeological excavations have revealed
houses, almost habitable today, for want of renovation
and several storeys high. They had underground rooms,
staircases and connecting halls. Some had nine rooms.
One part of the city alone is estimated to have housed
30,000 people.
26. West Africa had walled towns and cities in the
pre-colonial period. Winwood Reade, an English
historian visited West Africa in the nineteenth
century and commented that: “There are . . . thousands
of large walled cities resembling those of Europe in
the Middle Ages, or of ancient Greece.�
27. Lord Lugard, an English official, estimated in
1904 that there were 170 walled towns still in
existence in the whole of just the Kano province of
northern Nigeria.
28. Cheques are not quite as new an invention as we
were led to believe. In the tenth century, an Arab
geographer, Ibn Haukal, visited a fringe region of
Ancient Ghana. Writing in 951 AD, he told of a cheque
for 42,000 golden dinars written to a merchant in the
city of Audoghast by his partner in Sidjilmessa.
29. Ibn Haukal, writing in 951 AD, informs us that the
King of Ghana was “the richest king on the face of the
earth� whose pre-eminence was due to the quantity of
gold nuggets that had been amassed by the himself and
by his predecessors.
30. The Nigerian city of Ile-Ife was paved in 1000 AD
on the orders of a female ruler with decorations that
originated in Ancient America. Naturally, no-one wants
to explain how this took place approximately 500 years
before the time of Christopher Columbus!
31. West Africa had bling culture in 1067 AD. One
source mentions that when the Emperor of Ghana gives
audience to his people: “he sits in a pavilion around
which stand his horses caparisoned in cloth of gold:
behind him stand ten pages holding shields and
gold-mounted swords: and on his right hand are the
sons of the princes of his empire, splendidly clad and
with gold plaited into their hair . . . The gate of
the chamber is guarded by dogs of an excellent breed .
. . they wear collars of gold and silver.�
32. Glass windows existed at that time. The residence
of the Ghanaian Emperor in 1116 AD was: “A well-built
castle, thoroughly fortified, decorated inside with
sculptures and pictures, and having glass windows.�
33. The Grand Mosque in the Malian city of Djenné,
described as “the largest adobe [clay] building in the
world�, was first raised in 1204 AD. It was built on a
square plan where each side is 56 metres in length. It
has three large towers on one side, each with
projecting wooden buttresses.
34. One of the great achievements of the Yoruba was
their urban culture. “By the year A.D. 1300,� says a
modern scholar, “the Yoruba people built numerous
walled cities surrounded by farms�. The cities were
Owu, Oyo, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ketu, Popo, Egba, Sabe, Dassa,
Egbado, Igbomina, the sixteen Ekiti principalities,
Owo and Ondo.
35. Yoruba metal art of the mediaeval period was of
world class. One scholar wrote that Yoruba art “would
stand comparison with anything which Ancient Egypt,
Classical Greece and Rome, or Renaissance Europe had
to offer.�
36. In the Malian city of Gao stands the Mausoleum of
Askia the Great, a weird sixteenth century edifice
that resembles a step pyramid.
37. Thousands of mediaeval tumuli have been found
across West Africa. Nearly 7,000 were discovered in
north-west Senegal alone spread over nearly 1,500
sites. They were probably built between 1000 and 1300
AD.
38. Excavations at the Malian city of Gao carried out
by Cambridge University revealed glass windows. One of
the finds was entitled: “Fragments of alabaster window
surrounds and a piece of pink window glass, Gao 10th –
14th century.�
39. In 1999 the BBC produced a television series
entitled Millennium. The programme devoted to the
fourteenth century opens with the following
disclosure: “In the fourteenth century, the century of
the scythe, natural disasters threatened civilisations
with extinction. The Black Death kills more people in
Europe, Asia and North Africa than any catastrophe has
before. Civilisations which avoid the plague thrive.
In West Africa the Empire of Mali becomes the richest
in the world.�
40. Malian sailors got to America in 1311 AD, 181
years before Columbus. An Egyptian scholar, Ibn Fadl
Al-Umari, published on this sometime around 1342. In
the tenth chapter of his book, there is an account of
two large maritime voyages ordered by the predecessor
of Mansa Musa, a king who inherited the Malian throne
in 1312. This mariner king is not named by Al-Umari,
but modern writers identify him as Mansa Abubakari II.
41. On a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 AD, a Malian
ruler, Mansa Musa, brought so much money with him that
his visit resulted in the collapse of gold prices in
Egypt and Arabia. It took twelve years for the
economies of the region to normalise.
42. West African gold mining took place on a vast
scale. One modern writer said that: “It is estimated
that the total amount of gold mined in West Africa up
to 1500 was 3,500 tons, worth more than $30
billion in today’s market.�
43. The old Malian capital of Niani had a 14th century
building called the Hall of Audience. It was an
surmounted by a dome, adorned with arabesques of
striking colours. The windows of an upper floor were
plated with wood and framed in silver; those of a
lower floor were plated with wood, framed in gold.
44. Mali in the 14th century was highly urbanised.
Sergio Domian, an Italian art and architecture
scholar, wrote the following about this period: “Thus
was laid the foundation of an urban civilisation. At
the height of its power, Mali had at least 400 cities,
and the interior of the Niger Delta was very densely
populated�.
45. The Malian city of Timbuktu had a 14th century
population of 115,000 - 5 times larger than mediaeval
London. Mansa Musa, built the Djinguerebere Mosque in
the fourteenth century. There was the University
Mosque in which 25,000 students studied and the
Oratory of Sidi Yayia. There were over 150 Koran
schools in which 20,000 children were instructed.
London, by contrast, had a total 14th century
population of 20,000 people.
46. National Geographic recently described Timbuktu as
the Paris of the mediaeval world, on account of its
intellectual culture. According to Professor Henry
Louis Gates, 25,000 university students studied there.
47. Many old West African families have private
library collections that go back hundreds of years.
The Mauritanian cities of Chinguetti and Oudane have a
total of 3,450 hand written mediaeval books. There may
be another 6,000 books still surviving in the other
city of Walata. Some date back to the 8th century AD.
There are 11,000 books in private collections in
Niger. Finally, in Timbuktu, Mali, there are about
700,000 surviving books.
48. A collection of one thousand six hundred books was
considered a small library for a West African scholar
of the 16th century. Professor Ahmed Baba of Timbuktu
is recorded as saying that he had the smallest library
of any of his friends - he had only 1600 volumes.
49. Concerning these old manuscripts, Michael Palin,
in his TV series Sahara, said the imam of Timbuktu
“has a collection of scientific texts that clearly
show the planets circling the sun. They date back
hundreds of years . . . Its convincing evidence that
the scholars of Timbuktu knew a lot more than their
counterparts in Europe. In the fifteenth century in
Timbuktu the mathematicians knew about the rotation of
the planets, knew about the details of the eclipse,
they knew things which we had to wait for 150 almost
200 years to know in Europe when Galileo and
Copernicus came up with these same calculations and
were given a very hard time for it.�
50. The Songhai Empire of 16th century West Africa had
a government position called Minister for Etiquette
and Protocol.
51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to
“a scale comparable with the Great Wall of China�.
There was a vast system of defensive walling totalling
10,000 miles in all. Even before the full extent of
the city walling had become apparent the Guinness Book
of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that
described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the
world carried out prior to the mechanical era.�
52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest
quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für
Völkerkunde once stated that: “These works from Benin
are equal to the very finest examples of European
casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have
cast them better, nor could anyone else before or
after him . . . Technically, these bronzes represent
the very highest possible achievement.�
53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the Ashanti
Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s
palace, which consists of many courtyards, each
surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and having two
gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare .
. . But the part of the palace fronting the street was
a stone house, Moorish in its style . . . with a flat
roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the
first floor. It was built by Fanti masons many years
ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of Wardour Street.
Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many
languages, Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old
furniture, Persian rugs, Kidderminster carpets,
pictures and engravings, numberless chests and
coffers. A sword bearing the inscription From Queen
Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A copy of the Times,
17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of
Moorish and Ashanti handicraft.�
54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an
English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an
article of cloth can be woven by the Yoruba weavers as
by any people . . . in durability, their cloths far
excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.�
55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city
of Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was
100 miles long and seventy feet high in places. The
internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.
56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were
also distinguished. Various European writers of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrote of the
delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo
and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks,
sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth of tissue and
velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious
observation that: “Their brocades, both high and low,
were far more valuable than the Italian.�
57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one
modern scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting . . .
the existence of an expert metallurgical art in the
ancient Kongo . . . The Bakongo were aware of the
toxicity of lead vapours. They devised preventative
and curative methods, both pharmacological (massive
doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting
of pressure to free the digestive tract), for
combating lead poisoning.�
58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano
dates back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad
Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has gradually evolved over
generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial
report of the city from 1902, described it as “a
network of buildings covering an area of 33 acres and
surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15
feet inside . . . in itself no mean citadel�.
59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central
African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that
the emperor’s cavalry had golden “stirrups, spurs,
bits and buckles.� Even the ruler’s dogs had “chains
of the finest gold�.
60. One of the government positions in mediaeval
Kanem-Borno was Astronomer Royal.
61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno,
became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth
century world. By 1658 AD, the metropolis, according
to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a
million people�. It had 660 streets. Many were wide
and unbending, reflective of town planning.
62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the
sixteenth century. Even in ruin it was an impressive
sight, built on a horizontal vertical grid. A modern
scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are
about 10 miles in circumference and include many large
bastions or walled suburbs running out at right angles
to the main wall. The large compound at Kanta is still
visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings,
one of which is said to have been two-storied. The
striking feature of the walls and whole ruins is the
extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel)
or very hard red building mud, evidently brought from
a distance. There is a big mound of this near the
north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show
regular courses of masonry to a height of 20 feet and
more in several places. The best preserved portion is
that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of
the eastern gate . . . The main city walls here appear
to have provided a very strongly guarded entrance
about 30 feet wide.�
63. The Nigerian city of Kano in 1851 produced an
estimated 10 million pairs of sandals and 5 million
hides each year for export.
64. In 1246 AD Dunama II of Kanem-Borno exchanged
embassies with Al-Mustansir, the king of Tunis. He
sent the North African court a costly present, which
apparently included a giraffe. An old chronicle noted
that the rare animal “created a sensation in Tunis�.
65. By the third century BC the city of Carthage on
the coast of Tunisia was opulent and impressive. It
had a population of 700,000 and may even have
approached a million. Lining both sides of three
streets were rows of tall houses six storeys high.
66. The Ethiopian city of Axum has a series of 7 giant
obelisks that date from perhaps 300 BC to 300 AD. They
have details carved into them that represent windows
and doorways of several storeys. The largest obelisk,
now fallen, is in fact “the largest monolith ever made
anywhere in the world�. It is 108 feet long, weighs a
staggering 500 tons, and represents a thirteen-storey
building.
67. Ethiopia minted its own coins over 1,500 years
ago. One scholar wrote that: “Almost no other
contemporary state anywhere in the world could issue
in gold, a statement of sovereignty achieved only by
Rome, Persia, and the Kushan kingdom in northern India
at the time.�
68. The Ethiopian script of the 4th century AD
influenced the writing script of Armenia. A Russian
historian noted that: “Soon after its creation, the
Ethiopic vocalised script began to influence the
scripts of Armenia and Georgia. D. A. Olderogge
suggested that Mesrop Mashtotz used the vocalised
Ethiopic script when he invented the Armenian
alphabet.�
69. “In the first half of the first millennium CE,�
says a modern scholar, Ethiopia “was ranked as one of
the world’s greatest empires�. A Persian cleric of the
third century AD identified it as the third most
important state in the world after Persia and Rome.
70. Ethiopia has 11 underground mediaeval churches
built by being carved out of the ground. In the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD, Roha became the
new capital of the Ethiopians. Conceived as a New
Jerusalem by its founder, Emperor Lalibela
(c.1150-1230), it contains 11 churches, all carved out
of the rock of the mountains by hammer and chisel. All
of the temples were carved to a depth of 11 metres or
so below ground level. The largest is the House of the
Redeemer, a staggering 33.7 metres long, 23.7 metres
wide and 11.5 metres deep.
71. Lalibela is not the only place in Ethiopia to have
such wonders. A cotemporary archaeologist reports
research that was conducted in the region in the early
1970’s when: “startling numbers of churches built in
caves or partially or completely cut from the living
rock were revealed not only in Tigre and Lalibela but
as far south as Addis Ababa. Soon at least 1,500 were
known. At least as many more probably await
revelation.�
72. In 1209 AD Emperor Lalibela of Ethiopia sent an
embassy to Cairo bringing the sultan unusual gifts
including an elephant, a hyena, a zebra, and a
giraffe.
73. In Southern Africa, there are at least 600 stone
built ruins in the regions of Zimbabwe, Mozambique and
South Africa. These ruins are called Mazimbabwe in
Shona, the Bantu language of the builders, and means
great revered house and “signifies court�.
74. The Great Zimbabwe was the largest of these ruins.
It consists of 12 clusters of buildings, spread over 3
square miles. Its outer walls were made from 100,000
tons of granite bricks. In the fourteenth century, the
city housed 18,000 people, comparable in size to that
of London of the same period.
75. Bling culture existed in this region. At the time
of our last visit, the Horniman Museum in London had
exhibits of headrests with the caption: “Headrests
have been used in Africa since the time of the
Egyptian pharaohs. Remains of some headrests, once
covered in gold foil, have been found in the ruins of
Great Zimbabwe and burial sites like Mapungubwe dating
to the twelfth century after Christ.�
76. Dr Albert Churchward, author of Signs and Symbols
of Primordial Man, pointed out that writing was found
in one of the stone built ruins: “Lt.-Col. E. L. de
Cordes . . . who was in South Africa for three years,
informed the writer that in one of the ‘Ruins’ there
is a ‘stone-chamber,’ with a vast quantity of Papyri,
covered with old Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Boer hunter
discovered this, and a large quantity was used to
light a fire with, and yet still a larger quantity
remained there now.�
77. On bling culture, one seventeenth century visitor
to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that ruled
over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress
in various ways: at court of the Kings their grandees
wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold and silk
cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width
four covados [2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes
with gold lace in between, trimmed on two sides, like
a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place
with a two fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses
on silk.�
78. Southern Africans mined gold on an epic scale. One
modern writer tells us that: “The estimated amount of
gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients
was staggering, exceeding 43 million tons. The ore
yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which today would
be valued at over $7.5 billion.�
79. Apparently the Monomotapan royal palace at Mount
Fura had chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. An
eighteenth century geography book provided the
following data: “The inside consists of a great
variety of sumptuous apartments, spacious and lofty
halls, all adorned with a magnificent cotton tapestry,
the manufacture of the country. The floors, cielings
[sic], beams and rafters are all either gilt or plated
with gold curiously wrought, as are also the chairs of
state, tables, benches &c. The candle-sticks and
branches are made of ivory inlaid with gold, and hang
from the cieling by chains of the same metal, or of
silver gilt.�
80. Monomotapa had a social welfare system. Antonio
Bocarro, a Portuguese contemporary, informs us that
the Emperor: “shows great charity to the blind and
maimed, for these are called the king’s poor, and have
land and revenues for their subsistence, and when they
wish to pass through the kingdoms, wherever they come
food and drinks are given to them at the public cost
as long as they remain there, and when they leave that
place to go to another they are provided with what is
necessary for their journey, and a guide, and some one
to carry their wallet to the next village. In every
place where they come there is the same obligation.�
81. Many southern Africans have indigenous and
pre-colonial words for ‘gun’. Scholars have generally
been reluctant to investigate or explain this fact.
82. Evidence discovered in 1978 showed that East
Africans were making steel for more than 1,500 years:
“Assistant Professor of Anthropology Peter Schmidt and
Professor of Engineering Donald H. Avery have found as
long as 2,000 years ago Africans living on the western
shores of Lake Victoria had produced carbon steel in
preheated forced draft furnaces, a method that was
technologically more sophisticated than any developed
in Europe until the mid-nineteenth century.�
83. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory was
found at Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping
the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran,
Bellatrix, Central Orion, etcetera, as well as the
moon, in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days.
84. Autopsies and caesarean operations were routinely
and effectively carried out by surgeons in
pre-colonial Uganda. The surgeons routinely used
antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. Commenting
on a Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the
Edinburgh Medical Journal in 1884, one author wrote:
“The whole conduct of the operation . . . suggests a
skilled long-practiced surgical team at work
conducting a well-tried and familiar operation with
smooth efficiency.�
85. Sudan in the mediaeval period had churches,
cathedrals, monasteries and castles. Their ruins still
exist today.
86. The mediaeval Nubian Kingdoms kept archives. From
the site of Qasr Ibrim legal texts, documents and
correspondence were discovered. An archaeologist
informs us that: “On the site are preserved thousands
of documents in Meroitic, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Old
Nubian, Arabic and Turkish.�
87. Glass windows existed in mediaeval Sudan.
Archaeologists found evidence of window glass at the
Sudanese cities of Old Dongola and Hambukol.
88. Bling culture existed in the mediaeval Sudan.
Archaeologists found an individual buried at the
Monastery of the Holy Trinity in the city of Old
Dongola. He was clad in an extremely elaborate garb
consisting of costly textiles of various fabrics
including gold thread. At the city of Soba East, there
were individuals buried in fine clothing, including
items with golden thread.
89. Style and fashion existed in mediaeval Sudan. A
dignitary at Jebel Adda in the late thirteenth century
AD was interned with a long coat of red and yellow
patterned damask folded over his body. Underneath, he
wore plain cotton trousers of long and baggy cut. A
pair of red leather slippers with turned up toes lay
at the foot of the coffin. The body was wrapped in
enormous pieces of gold brocaded striped silk.
90. Sudan in the ninth century AD had housing
complexes with bath rooms and piped water. An
archaeologist wrote that Old Dongola, the capital of
Makuria, had: “a[n] . . . eighth to . . . ninth
century housing complex. The houses discovered here
differ in their hitherto unencountered spatial layout
as well as their functional programme (water supply
installation, bathroom with heating system) and
interiors decorated with murals.�
91. In 619 AD, the Nubians sent a gift of a giraffe to
the Persians.
92. The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has
ruins of well over 50 towns and cities. They
flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries
AD.
93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note
that Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys
high�.
94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East
African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the
fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, include the city
walls, the palace, private houses, the Great Mosque,
seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.
95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a
water purifier made of limestone for recycling water.
96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains
evidence of piped water controlled by taps. In
addition it had bathrooms and indoor toilets.
97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city
of Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was
the “principal city on the coast the greater part of
whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.�
Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most
beautiful and well-constructed cities in the world.
The whole of it is elegantly built.�
98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A
Portuguese chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote
that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many rich garments of
gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also
with much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which
they wear on their legs and arms, and many jewelled
earrings in their ears�.
99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins
of Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian
city of Kilwa. It had over a hundred rooms, including
a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and
an octagonal swimming pool.
100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent
ambassadors to China carrying a gift that created a
sensation at the Imperial Court. It was, of course, a
giraffe.
By Robin Walker © 2006
Enosakhare Idubor
Last edited on Monday April 23rd, 2007 16:32 by Apedemak
____________________
____________________
Click here for your Black Profile
|
Neferkare
Villager
| Joined: | Sunday March 5th, 2006 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 21 |
| Photo: | |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |  |
Click here for your Black Profile
Search for Black Sites
|
Posted: Friday May 4th, 2007 20:14 |
|
Let me be the first to say that that was an absolutely magical read. How is it that the descendants of the greatest civilizations of the world, and Africa, the mother of civilization, now struggle for justice, food, health and peace? Also, how is it that we, Africans and Diaspora, do not know many of the facts listed?
Groups from other continents seem to be socially and psychologically bound together by a host of facts or myths that serve as a basis for a common narrative and collective memory. If the typical African or Diasporian knows little about the facts on this list, what information, facts or data form our collective memory? Is our common story one of slavery? colonization? Or far worse, is our story, our view of the AFRICAN self, a mixed bag of European misinformation, racist scholarship and out right lies. If this is true, what fool could possibly compare Diasporic Africans to Chinese, Indians, and Europeans who are grounded and conected by their distinct ancient cultural foundations.
In a recent article, I read that social psychologists have made a link between culture and an individual's chances for upward mobility in society. According to the research, American immigrants who were bi-cultural (i.e., practicing both their own culture and the culture of the country of relocation) moved up in American society much faster than immigrants who completely shunned their original culture in favor of the American dream and culture. (http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/studies/report-51904.html).
If this is true, and I did not need to see the article to believe that it is, did the freed slaves of the Diaspora have equal chances for success since the African cultural institutions that served as the foundations of the African genius had been compromised? As Randal Robinson said in The Debt, (paraphrasing) culture is what you fall back on in difficult times. It is what propels you to succeed. It explains the unexplainable; it is the fabric of life.
These thoughts go through my mind regularly. Nonetheless, these very same thoughts confront me with a striking dilemma. In short, how can any African say that we are hindered when we can refer to so many achievements in the 20 century? Also, isn't it social blasphemy to say that we are hindered in any way? Should we not insist, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that we are at the top of our game? On the other hand, if we were to argue that the descendants of freed slaves are worse off since slavery because they were victims of near cultural genocide, is there any recourse or solution that could reverse this horrible and unrecognized crime against humanity. Moreover, if we argued it publicly, can it really be measured and what should the Diaspora do about it? Lastly, if every African new this list by heart, would it change our minds and ultimately our predicament? Hmmm.
Any thoughts?
____________________
www.blacksearch.co.uk - Helping to promote Black African and Caribbean Websites
|
|
|
Current time is 14:27 | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Join the
Blacknet
mailing list
|
|
