American Autocthonous History aka Black/African American History & History of Autocthonous People World Wide
- Thread starter Lexx Diamond
- Start date
Vodun was actively suppressed during colonial times.
“Many Priests were either killed or imprisoned, and their shrines destroyed, because of the threat they posed to Euro-Christian/Muslim dominion. This forced some of the Dahomeans to form Vodou Orders and to create underground societies, in order to continue the veneration of their ancestors, and the worship of their powerful gods.”
The Affaire de Bizoton of 1864. The murder and alleged canibalization of her body by eight voodoo devotees caused a scandal worldwide and was taken as proof of the evil nature of voodoo even though the confessions that condemned the accused were obtained illegally by torture.
Vodou has often been associated in popular culture with Satanism, witchcraft, zombies and “voodoo dolls”. Zombie creation has been referenced within rural Haitian culture,but is not a part of Vodou. Such manifestations fall under the auspices of the bokor or sorcerer, rather than the priest of the Loa. The practice of sticking pins in voodoo dolls has history in folk magic. “Voodoo dolls” are often associated with New Orleans Voodoo and Hoodoo as well the magical devices of the poppet and the nkisi or bocio of West and Central Africa.
The general fear of Vodou in the US can be traced back to the End of the Haitian Revolution (1791). There is a legend that Haitians were able to beat the French during the Haitian Revolution because their Vodou deities made them invincible. The US, seeing the tremendous potential Vodou had for rallying its followers and inciting them to action, feared the events at Bois-Caiman could spill over onto American soil. Fearing an uprising in opposition to the US occupation of Haiti, political and religious elites, along with Hollywood and the film industry, sought to trivialize the practice of Vodou. After the Haitian Revolution many Haitians fled as refugees to New Orleans. Free and enslaved Haitians who moved to New Orleans brought their religious beliefs with them and reinvigorated the Voodoo practices that were already present in the city. Eventually, Voodoo in New Orleans became hidden and the magical components were left present in the public sphere. This created what is called hoodoo in the southern part of the United States. Because hoodoo is folk magic, Voodoo and Afro-diasporic religions in the U.S. became synonymous with fraud. This is one origin of the stereotype that Haitian Vodou, New Orleans Voodoo, and hoodoo are all tricks used to make money off of the gullible. [47]
The elites preferred to view it as folklore in an attempt to render it relatively harmless as a curiosity that might continue to inspire music and dance.”[48]
Hollywood often depicts Vodou as evil and having ties to Satanic practices in movies such as The Skeleton Key, “The Devil’s Advocate”, The Blair Witch Project, The Serpent and the Rainbow, Child’s Play, Live and Let Die, and in children’s movies like The Princess and the Frog.
In 2010, following the 7.0 earthquake that devastated Haiti, negative attention to Vodou also followed. One of the more notable examples would be of televangelist Pat Robertson’s televised discourse on the subject. Robertson stated that the country had cursed itself after the events at Bois-Caiman because he claimed they had engaged in Satanic practices in the ceremony preceding the Haitian Revolution. “They were under the heel of the French, you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said ‘We will serve you if you will get us free from the prince.’ True story. And so the devil said, ‘Ok it’s a deal.’ And they kicked the French out. The Haitians revolted and got something themselves free. But ever since they have been cursed by one thing after another”.
Egypt or Ta Meri is a by product of Inner Afraka. There is nothing really new so to speak about it.
1. The so called religion,(Afrakans never had a word that corresponded to religion). Let’s examine that
1a) Budge was also a prolific author,and he is especially remembered today for his works onancient Egyptian religionand his hieroglyphic primers.Budge argued that the religion ofOsirishad emerged from an indigenous African people:“There is no doubt”, he said of Egyptian religions inOsiris and the Egyptian Resurrection(1911),“that the beliefs examined herein are of indigenous origin,Niloticor Sundani in the broadest signification of the word, and I have endeavoured to explain those which cannot be elucidated in any other way,by the evidence which is afforded by the Religions of the modern peoples who live on the great rivers of East, West, and Central Africa…Now, if we examine the Religions of modern African peoples, we find that the beliefs underlying them are almost identical with those Ancient Egyptian ones described above. As they are not derived from the Egyptians,it follows that they are the natural product of the religious mind of the natives of certain parts of Africa, which is the same in all periods. Budge’s contention that the religion of the Egyptians was derived from similar religions of the people of northeastern and central Africa was regarded as impossible by his colleagues
2.Mapping out the stars.The Nabta Playa preceded before there was an Egypt.Also similar findings in Kenya. 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.
3.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.
4.Math. 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.
5.The Line of Royal Descent. And the larger part of the customs of the Egyptians are, they hold, Ethiopian, the colonists still preserving their ancient manners.For instance, the belief that their kings are gods, the very special attention which they pay to their burials, and many other matters of a similar nature are Ethiopian practices, Furthermore, the orders of the priests, they maintain, have much the same position among both peoples; for all are clean who are engaged in the service of the gods, keeping themselves shaven, like the Egyptian priests, and having the same dress and form of staff, which is shaped like a plough and is carried by their kings, who wear high felt hats which end in a knob at the top and are circled by the serpents which they call and this symbol appears to carry the thought that it will be the lot of those who shall dare to attack the king to encounter death-carrying stings.
6. Heiroglyphs, while the shapes of their statues and the forms of their letters are Ethiopian; for of the two kinds of writing which the Egyptians have, that which is known as "popular” (demotic) is learned by everyone, while that which is called “sacred" is understood only by the priests of the Egyptians, who learn it from their fathers as one of the things which are not divulged, but among the Ethiopians everyone uses these forms of letters.
7.Maternal Power.Ta-seti or Nubia decent was Maternal also found in early Kenya.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.)
8.Central Afrakans did what?The first Paleolithic man was the Twa who was evolved in Central Africa at the source of the Nile Valley and from here all originated (civilization) and was carried throughout the world.The Twa created religion. They are the first human. Connection between Twa, Khoi, Masaba connected with Nilotic black created religion. The first Nilotic Egyptian Gods were Twa(Ptah, Bes) and the Goddess were Twa.
9.Where did the Ancient Egyptians come from?They themselves say TheBase of the Mountain of the Moons and the Land of Punt(Ta Netjer)! Batwa historical origins
The Batwa were the original ancient dwellers of the forest. The first records of pygmies were made by the Egyptians over 4000 years ago. They described short stature people living near the“Mountains of the Moon” extolling their abilities as dancers and story tellers.
Ancient Egyptian scripts named them as"Dancers of the Gods”for their great ability in dance.We know of a letter sent by a Pharaoh of ancient Reign to one of his governors in which he thanked the governor for donating a “Dwarf”coming from “the spirit land,” the name with which Egypt named the lands in its southern territories.
10.Professor Kenneth P. Vickery of North Carolina State said, “At Egypt’s High Point over half of Africa’s population may have dwelled in Egypt”
11.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.
12.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 theEdinburgh 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.”
So, why do people always talk about Egypt????
Because most people born in this materialistic worldneed to see objects, glamour, razzle dazzle.Most of our preceptions come from a Euro view.The Twa people in my eyes are more civilized then people in the United States. “They don’t have Iphones or car like us, that’s stupid”. Well look at the family structure, look at the intergration within nature.
It’s one thing to have knowledge of math and use it , it’s another to create it, it’s one thing for some one to tell you the names of the months. It’s another thing to map out the stars with no tools and prior knowldege. E.G. the Oromos,Dogons,and Leba
Egypt serves as a compendium of the many Afrakans ethnics that made it.We like the gold masks, pyramids, mummies etc.Symbolically we love it because it was multiple ethnic groups from Central and East Africa that produce something the world has never seen. Independently!!!
It’s easier to talk about Egypt because it’s a sum factor of Inner Afraka. Plus, most people would lose attention when you look at Nomad Peoples because, you don’t see material so called wealth.
Egypt is the great great grandchild of Inner Afraka.
There is nothing that’s new about Egypt, to her Great Great Grandparents, but Egypt taught the rest of the world.
Greeks to the Romans to the Brits and Arabs
So, your right everything doesn’t come from Egypt!!!!
The Luo people believe in a Supreme being and creator God known as Jok.
Driberg in Okot (1971:50) explains that the idea of the word Jok to a Lang‘o (Luo) is “The sum total of the long departed souls merged into one pre-existing deity called Jok, a plurality of spirits merged into one person of a single godhead, a spiritual force composed of innumerable spirits, any of which may be temporarily detached without diminishing the oneness of the force.”
Ogot 1961 noted that the word Jok was found in various forms in all Nilotic languages and that for the Shilluck Juok and Nyikang are the most general explanatory concepts. Jok accounting for the existence of nature or reality and Nyikang for the way in which it is ordered and interpreted.
Jok mal created and maintains the world, while Juok piny determines how and for what purpose the God‘s gift should be utilized by man. For the idea of Jok among the Lang‘o and Acholi (Hayley1947), it was a neutral power permeating the universe, neither well nor badly disposed towards mankind, unless made use of by man. Lang‘o religion was the conception of this Jok power, and their magic was the practice by which man uses jok power.
The world to Acholi (Wright) was one vast plain enclosed by the vault of the sky, charged throughout with magical force. The force is released by change from its static condition which then becomes fluid and powerful as seen in lightning, whirlwind, curious mountains and rocks. The Lang‘o (Harley) attributes anything of an unusual nature and unusual occurrences to some aspect of jok power. This included abnormal births, peculiarly shaped stones, hills, rain, hail, lightning, locusts and earthquakes. They (Hayley and Wright) noted that it was not the hills or forests that formed the objects of worship; these were mere shrines, the abode of Jok.
When lightning struck a house in a village, or when rain failed or hail, locust destroyed crops, prayers were offered to jok and sacrifices made to ancestral ghosts, just as other troubles occurred. But they were not sparks of jok power. Whirlwinds were regarded as jok in transit. Twins were regarded as jok. The spiritual part of man, the only part which survives death, is jok. Hence, to the Nilotes Jok is not an impartial universal power; it is the essence of everything, the force which makes everything what it is, and God Himself. The Greatest Jok is life force in itself. Above all force is God, Juok of Jok mal which is followed by the famous chiefs of the old such as Nyikang’ among the Shilluck and Podho among the Kenyan Luo. Next to come are the dead followed by specialists like ajwaka (ajuoga), medicine men and prophets who are believed to have special jok power. The specialists are followed by ordinary mortals, then animals, plants and finally, inanimate objects (Okot, ibid.:55).
The ajwaka/Ajuoga may be possessed by a spirit which helps him or her to divine; the witch la-jok also has jok power in him. And to have more jok power meant to be a more dangerous witch. The dead among the Luo are mostly forgotten, except those that believed to be troublesome. Such are referred to as cen, vengeance ghosts. The ghosts of certain animals such as elephant, lion and leopard are feared. Certain inanimate objects used by sorcerers to harm their victims such as lugaga (gagi). But, these are not considered as bits of jok power.
Jok Possession
Outstanding feature of the religious activity of the Luo was the annual feast at the chiefdom shrines. Each chiefdom had a shrine on a hill, in a dark forest or by a riverside. Some of the shrines were unusual natural phenomena or outstanding landmarks in the landscape. Some of the larger chiefdoms had more than one shrine at which they offered sacrifices. Among the lowland Alur the jok possessed one of the chief‘s wives in each reign; she then had duties in the service of the jok. Jok Lokka of Koc in Acholi possessed the priest who was also the medium. Jok Langol of Padibe caused the person possessed to become barren. Jok Lamwoci of the Payira caused barrenness in men, and insanity in women. Jok Lalangabi of Palaro made the possessed person hate members of the opposite sex, so that he or she remained a bachelor or spinster for life, or if married, divorce followed soon after Lalangabi had fallen on one of the couple. Few shrines were founded by chiefs. In fact, most of the chiefdom shrines and Jok originally belonged to commoner clans who continued to provide the line of priests. When chiefs visit or go to the village of priests they lose their normal prerogatives. Moreover the chiefdom Jok that possessed persons did not possess members of the chief‘s clan. Almost every force which can affect human beings may be and has been spiritualized. The elemental power of nature, sun, moon, rain, thunder and lightning, lakes and rivers and forests and deserts, all have been conceived of as spirit and have become objects of worship and sacrifice. The Luo did not offer sacrifices to the rocks or forests or rivers, they did not worship the spirit of the hills or forests or rivers, but Jok whom they believed lived in the caves or in the middle of the dark forest or by the riverside. Areas around these places were sacred grounds. No one might urinate, defecate, drive the blade or the butt of his spear into the earth. The duties of a priest were burdensome, dangerous and profitless. Ibaana (Crazzolara) means a person chosen and at times possessed by Jok. The Lang‘o put the phenomena of possession by ghosts in the province of Jok Nam which is contrasted with Jok Lang’o. Nam refers to riverine peoples: Pa-Luo, Nyoro and those bordering the Nile and Lake Kyoga. Ajwaka (Driberg) who dealt with diseases caused by Jok Nam were abanwa or abani (plural) who were men or women possessed by Jok Nam.
Spirit Possession
When according to the diviner, ajwaka, ill-health or misfortune was due to certain spirits other than ancestral or chiefdom jok, the situation was dealt with by inducing the offending spirit to possess the victim, and then depending on whether the particular spirit was friendly or hostile, it was allowed to stay in the victim or sent to where it belonged, or killed and destroyed. The preliminary examination of the patient usually took place at the home of the ajwaka, but the spirit possession ceremony, yeng’ng’o jok, shaking jok, was held at the home of the patient.
Education by Proverbs
The Luo elders use proverbs intensively for the education of their children and grandchildren. Every child in turn is expected to learn these proverbs, even though some of them are quite difficult to understand. Examples of some Luo proverbs and their meanings:
1. “Jarakni jamuod nyoyo gi kuoyo” (Don`t go shares in the flesh before the buffalo is dead, since he fights in the bush). This means one should not be rushing in life. Patience is everything.
2. “Alot muchayo ema tieko kuom” (The hen begins as an egg, man as blood). It means even an insignificant work is still of a value done nothing at all.
3. “wadu en wadu” (Blood is thicker than water
4. “Kik nyany nyang kapod in epige” (Do not abuse crocodile while you are still in its water). It means one should reflect on the consequences of his action whilst still indebted to somebody or under authority.
5. “Yath achiel ok los bungu” (One tree has never made a forest). It means it is always good to be united.
6. “Kik iwe ngowo man piny to odhi ni man malo” (He who stands on the ground sees the fruit better than the man up in the tree). It means we should respect everyone`s point of view.
Death and Afterlife
Among the Luo, it is believe that when a person dies his or her spirit or soul goes to the underworld after few days or weeks. The underworld is determined to be the centre of the Earth, at the bottom of the sea, and at a distant steppe down below the mountains.
Luo people believe that death comes from God and He alone has control over life and death. When someone dies Luo people just say “"Ekaka nose wacho” (It is how He has decided), "Ekaka nose kor" (That was what was predicted) or “Nyasaye okowe” (God has taken him).
Some deaths are considered to be abnormal death of persons whose body houses Jachien (troublesome spirits). A person who commits suicide is feared that he may become a ghost. The body of Ngamodere ( suicide man) had to be punished by whoever comes to his funeral. Because it is a taboo to commit suicide. The body of Ngamodere is slashed by a twig from the Powo tree. This is done to remind its Tipo (spirit) that it was the fault of his own man, and not someone else. If a person commit suicide on a tree, that tree is immediately cut down and burned. On Ngamotho e Pi (Death on sea), it is considered that ones Juok had preferred to live in the water. It is therefore proper to bury the one who died at sea closer to the sea. It is also necessary to bury the body of one who dies in water, Japi, must be buried by the Lake or waterside.
Luo, a Western Nilotic people, perform a series of rituals and many feasts for the dead because of their strong fear and respect for the dead. The Luo attitude towards their burial place evidently shows how they fear and respect the deceased ancestors
Luo people perform a total of about fourteen rituals for one deceased. All rituals are performed only when elderly men died, and a certain number of rituals are omitted depending upon age, sex, and marital status of the deceased. First, I will provide a list of a series of rituals in successive order of their occurrence, and then explain each ritual.
1) Death announcement
2) Vigil (budho)
3) Grave digging (kunyo)
4) Burial (iko)
5) Accompanying the spirit of the deceased to the former battleground (tero
buru matin)
6) Shaving (liedo)
7) Mourners’ departure for their houses (kee)
8) Serving a meal to the deceased and its family by married women (yaodhoot)
9) Serving a meal to the deceased and its family by married women (tedo)
10) Going to the former battleground with the spirit of the deceased (tero buru
maduong’)
11) Visiting the widow’s natal home (tero cholla)
12) Dividing articles left by the deceased (keyo nyinyo)
13) Remembrance (rapar)
14) Serving a meal to the family of the deceased by affines (budho)
Empress Yodit of Ethiopia Gudit(Ethiopian)……..
Empress Yodit of Ethiopia Gudit is a legendary Queen (flourished c.960) who laid waste to Axum and its countryside, destroyed churches and monuments, and attempted to exterminate the members of the ruling Axumite dynasty. Her deeds are recorded in the oral tradition and mentioned incidentally in various historical accounts. She reigned for forty years
BLACK HISTORY MONTH!
David Alan Harvey
TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO. 1993. Famous painter Bosco Holder.
thanks....
NEVER FORGET!
kemetic-dreams
IS RACISM THE REAL PROBLEM?
Is Racism now just a way for money and for political gain?
Have so called Democrats solved it? No they are part of it.
They’re playing a giant con game, a political con game. You know how it goes. One of them – One of them comes to you and makes believe he’s for you, and he’s in cahoots with the other one that’s not for you. Why?Because neither one of them is for you, but they got to make you go with one of them or the other. So this is a con game.And this is what they’ve been doing with you and me all these years.- Malcolm X
Racism sounds like the War on Drugs? The govt is in cahoots with it.
The Narrative on TV and written in books is “Feel sorry for these weak primitive Negros”.
Constantly showing Africans being beaten by the Superior European man
Constantly showing Africans as Slaves. I over stand the importance of it.
Its seems nobody is solving the issue, it’s just something to rant about.
Or make money by doing a show or movie about it.
What’s worse some European walking pass you spiting on you and call you a ******
Or you own people doing it to you.
More than Donald Trump or the KKK. Africans people say more negative comments about ourselves than I see or hear Europeans do.
I routinely hear African Americans talk about islanders like they are something beneath them. Or speak like “She is an African?” Like she is an “it or something”.
Your African?!!And education would tell you that Africa is a continent that has 3,000 ethnic groups that don’t share the same culture. Why are you grouping everyone together.
Africans complain of racism and disdain for Europeans but who is the first group we run to for marriage. Sounds like when European released slaves then they ran back to them.
Racism is a day to day convo. So for the last 4 years I sat back and just listened.
Not once have I heard any parties say anything the restoration of the Native American families nor that of Africans.
I have listen to African complain for hours about european, and how racist the are. Not once did I hear anybody speak of learning a African Language or naming their kids an African name.
Africans still think one day they can just vote a pale skin Jesus Christ to the White House to change everything.
How can we blame Europeans for their mis treatment of slavery. Then African from the United States went to Liberia and did the same thing.
I have personal experience with Mulattos or kids with an African parent and a European one. And they have that attitude that been half blooded African makes them above us.
Oprah spoke of her disdain as a child about kids her age saying,” I got Indian is my blood”
Ask the average African American in the United States, what is your African Identity. Our parents screwed us over mentally, the only thing we know when we ask our parents who are our people. And the only thing we her is “Great Great Great Grandma is part Cheorkee” or we just know about that one Rapist Slave Owner.
And we wonder why African people have an obsession with say “ I’m not black, I’m mixed, I am better than you”
Racism is not the problem, the problem is that Native Americans and African suffer from the sickness of Self Hatred!
Self Preservation and Self Esteem is a key component to any Nation,Race, or Ethnic group.
Africans do have good self esteem, Any Negro can get some money come back to his people who don’t have the financial status to make himself feel good.
But, does that African have any racial self esteem.
I stop blaming and pointing the finger at Europeans when I was in Middle School.
If you dumb enough to let someone come up to and disrespect you or put their hands on you. That’s not racism that, your lack of self respect for yourself.
If your dumb enough to listen you European who have been lying way before Donald Trump.They are constantly throwing shade to our people. Killing our people and have the lack respect to name your kids after them??
THE ISSUE OF RACE IN AMERICA IS NOT AN ISSUE. ITS A MONEY MAKING SCAM. LOOK AT THIS COP BEAT UP THE GUY. WATCH CNN TO TURN MY RATINGS.
THE WORST THING FROM EUROPEAN INVASIONS AND SO CALLED RACISM IS THAT EVERYTHING THEY SAID WE ACTUÅLLY BELIEVE.
SELF HATED IS THE MOST DANGEROUS THING IN THE UNITED STATES
kemetic-dreams
IS RACISM THE REAL PROBLEM?
Is Racism now just a way for money and for political gain?
Have so called Democrats solved it? No they are part of it.
They’re playing a giant con game, a political con game. You know how it goes. One of them – One of them comes to you and makes believe he’s for you, and he’s in cahoots with the other one that’s not for you. Why?Because neither one of them is for you, but they got to make you go with one of them or the other. So this is a con game.And this is what they’ve been doing with you and me all these years.- Malcolm X
Racism sounds like the War on Drugs? The govt is in cahoots with it.
The Narrative on TV and written in books is “Feel sorry for these weak primitive Negros”.
Constantly showing Africans being beaten by the Superior European man
Constantly showing Africans as Slaves. I over stand the importance of it.
Its seems nobody is solving the issue, it’s just something to rant about.
Or make money by doing a show or movie about it.
What’s worse some European walking pass you spiting on you and call you a ******
Or you own people doing it to you.
More than Donald Trump or the KKK. Africans people say more negative comments about ourselves than I see or hear Europeans do.
I routinely hear African Americans talk about islanders like they are something beneath them. Or speak like “She is an African?” Like she is an “it or something”.
Your African?!!And education would tell you that Africa is a continent that has 3,000 ethnic groups that don’t share the same culture. Why are you grouping everyone together.
Africans complain of racism and disdain for Europeans but who is the first group we run to for marriage. Sounds like when European released slaves then they ran back to them.
Racism is a day to day convo. So for the last 4 years I sat back and just listened.
Not once have I heard any parties say anything the restoration of the Native American families nor that of Africans.
I have listen to African complain for hours about european, and how racist the are. Not once did I hear anybody speak of learning a African Language or naming their kids an African name.
Africans still think one day they can just vote a pale skin Jesus Christ to the White House to change everything.
How can we blame Europeans for their mis treatment of slavery. Then African from the United States went to Liberia and did the same thing.
I have personal experience with Mulattos or kids with an African parent and a European one. And they have that attitude that been half blooded African makes them above us.
Oprah spoke of her disdain as a child about kids her age saying,” I got Indian is my blood”
Ask the average African American in the United States, what is your African Identity. Our parents screwed us over mentally, the only thing we know when we ask our parents who are our people. And the only thing we her is “Great Great Great Grandma is part Cheorkee” or we just know about that one Rapist Slave Owner.
And we wonder why African people have an obsession with say “ I’m not black, I’m mixed, I am better than you”
Racism is not the problem, the problem is that Native Americans and African suffer from the sickness of Self Hatred!
Self Preservation and Self Esteem is a key component to any Nation,Race, or Ethnic group.
Africans do have good self esteem, Any Negro can get some money come back to his people who don’t have the financial status to make himself feel good.
But, does that African have any racial self esteem.
I stop blaming and pointing the finger at Europeans when I was in Middle School.
If you dumb enough to let someone come up to and disrespect you or put their hands on you. That’s not racism that, your lack of self respect for yourself.
If your dumb enough to listen you European who have been lying way before Donald Trump.They are constantly throwing shade to our people. Killing our people and have the lack respect to name your kids after them??
THE ISSUE OF RACE IN AMERICA IS NOT AN ISSUE. ITS A MONEY MAKING SCAM. LOOK AT THIS COP BEAT UP THE GUY. WATCH CNN TO TURN MY RATINGS.
THE WORST THING FROM EUROPEAN INVASIONS AND SO CALLED RACISM IS THAT EVERYTHING THEY SAID WE ACTUÅLLY BELIEVE.
SELF HATED IS THE MOST DANGEROUS THING IN THE UNITED STATES
Onye Oji, Black as the Bluest Blue
Silent Dweller
Eze ndi isi oji
Onye oma, a god with starry eyes
My Beloved
Groom of all grooms
My King, Eze’m
I bow before you Lord of the Worlds
Cosmic representative of truth and justice, ofo na ogu
Star traveler, mapping the way, taking us where we need to go
Trailblazer
You
Eze Osetulu, Eze nke kachisi eze
You build the pyramids with your hands
Split the world in half
Spin the cosmic waters
Make matter out of words, okwu afa
Nna nke uwa, whose love is eternal
May we never forget our inheritance
We your chosen ones
Your eternal suns.
by Ebele Chizea
ByGrace Kiwangaon April 1, 2014 — A newly released report reveals how the British and American governments are facilitating the corporate takeover of African food systems.
Campaigners protest outside the UK Department for International Development. Photo: WDM
Huge tracts of land in African countries with access to the sea and high economic growth are being targeted by corporations such as Monsanto and Unilever with help from the British and American governments –including millions of dollars that are intended for helping the poor, says a report published today by UK campaigning group World Development Movement.
The document, titled Carving up a continent: How the UK government is facilitating the corporate takeover of African food systems, explains that a G8 initiative called the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is using money intended for poverty reduction to instead ease access to key African locations for some of the world’s biggest companies, which already control much of the global food market.
Using money intended for poverty reduction to ease access to key African locations
Doublespeak and the new “scramble for Africa”
What’s more, the New Alliance agreements signed with ten key African countries (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania) are conditional, and many of them require the country in question to bring legislation – for example, revising seed laws to force small farmers to buy seeds and fertilisers from the corporates rather than seed sharing, which has been practised for generations and ensures biodiversity.
Under the new paradigm, multinationals gain access to fertile land and agricultural corridors on the pretext of tackling food poverty and helping Africa’s starving and needy. In reality this is doublespeak. If the New Alliance continues unchecked, it’s likely that problems are stored up for the future, as small scale and family farmers are forced off their land to make way for industrial scale crop production. WDM also identifies issues such as insecure and poorly paid jobs and a focus on producing for export markets rather than to feed local populations.
The report’s introduction, by WDM director Nick Dearden, says: “This is an old story given new impetus. More than a century ago the ‘scramble for Africa’ was instituted under the pretence of civilising the continent. Barbaric crimes were committed and the continent systematically de-developed because it profited Europe. Since that time, Africa’s problem has never been a lack of integration into the international economy – the problem is how it is integrated and in whose interests.”
One of the campaigners outside Downing Street – where the UK Prime Minister and Chancellor live – holds up a cake of Africa with New Alliance countries marked out with flags. Photo: WDM
Oblivious citizens
This isn’t the first time the New Alliance has come under fire – the Guardian newspaper published a critical piecelast year. But the general populations of the countries whose taxpayers are supporting this power grab are woefully unaware that it is even happening, and so too are the citizens in whose countries these events are unfolding. This despite the fact that a whopping £600 million of UK aid money, for example, via the Department for International Development (DFID), is being channelled into this between 2012 and 2016.
Ironically this comes at a time when alternatives to the industrialisation of agriculture are being explored worldwide, and as the realities of climate change are being better understood. Africa is a place where new models of permaculture could meet old models of sustainable farming and cooperation to leapfrog the West – finding sustainable and locally owned solutions to nutritious food production.
The wheels are already turning
But this hangs in the balance. Many New Alliance partnership countries, such as Malawi, have already instituted many of the changes demanded as part of their agreement, and it has become much easier for foreign corporations to buy great tracts of land. Ghana recently saw thePlant Breeders’ Billbeing pushed through its Parliament by politicians that Food Sovereignty Ghana impliedmight be on the take.
The corporations involved in the New Alliance are huge – Monsanto, Unilever, Syngenta, DuPont, Cargill, Diageo, SABMiller, Coca Cola, Yara. The last company – Yara – may not be a name you recognise, but is the largest global manufacturer of fertiliser. According to the WDM report, these agrochemicals “already cause serious levels of food poisoning in sub-Saharan Africa, with the UN estimating that health problems linked to pesticides could cost the region $90 billon between 2005 and 2020. Fertilisers also damage soil, leading farmers to rely on them even more in order to maintain production, which increases their risk of getting into debt.”
“The tragic consequences of small-scale farmers’ reliance on fertilisers in India have been much reported. An estimated 250,000 farmers committed suicide between 1995 and 2010 after getting into debt through buying agrochemicals.”
Campaigners representing the New Alliance multinationals carve and eat up Africa. Why no protests anywhere in Africa? Because most of us are oblivious to what’s being done behind our backs, is the simple answer. Photo: WDM
Under the guise of charity
Remember that old development chestnut “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Show him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”? The New Alliance seems to be about snapping his fishing rod in half, throwing it into the sea and telling him that you now own the sea and he must buy his fish from you, at wildly fluctuating prices. And it’s under the guise of charity.
The ‘scramble for Africa’ was instituted under the pretence of civilising the continent
Yet look at the personnel. Unilever’s external affairs director was previously at DFID and DFID’s director of policy used to work for Unilever. Meanwhile, for all the talk of wanting to solve African hunger, the chosen countries are almost all coastal, and tend to have high economic growth. Of the countries in Africa that have the worst hunger index scores, only one – Ethiopia – is a New Alliance country.
While all the players talk about poverty reduction and food security, the reality is that the path that will have the most positive effect for African farmers and populations long term is food sovereignty. That means ownership and control of land and non-reliance on imported seeds and foods, as well as being able to adjust crops to need. It might be tempting to apply the machine logic of industrialisation to agriculture and scale it up, on the basis that more food grown equals more people fed. But in reality the problem of hunger is not one to do with volume of food produced worldwide – rather it’s to do with existing unjust systems of food production and distribution. These are the very systems that the New Alliance is desperate to bring to Africa.
Other players are the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, set up by the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Gates Foundation; the New Vision for Agriculture, launched by the World Economic Forum and led by 33 multinationals from Monsanto to Walmart; and Grow Africa, a collaboration between the World Economic Forum and the African Union.
Of course, the New Alliance does have itsdefenders. Namely, international pop gimp Bono’s ONE Foundation, which hit the headlines a few years ago for giving a whopping 1% of its funds to actual charity…
In its 2013 report Growing Africa: Unlocking the potential of agribusiness the World Bank said: “Africa represents the ‘last frontier’ in global food and agricultural markets.” Once Africa’s greatest commodity to line the pockets of its pillagers was its human capital. Now they’re coming for the land, and the sustenance it offers. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
Now read this
What did African countries promise to secure New Alliance agreements?
The full Carving UP A Continent report
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African Biodiversity Network
Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum
Indigenous Peoples of Africa Co-ordinating Committee
Food Sovereignty Ghana
Sustainable Agriculture Tanzania
California, the land of the ever-living Muurish Empress Calafia/Califia. Calafia was the title of each empress. California was her land. She was known to be dark of skin, of the muurish nationality, and ruled over Islands and Islands of afrakan people, from California, Baja, to Hawaii.
A muurish Island, ruled by women. It was first mentioned in the records of the western European christians in the seventh century, and retold “The Song of Roland” where a passing mention of a place called Califerne, was made perhaps because it was the caliph’s domain. See (Putnam, Ruth (1917). Herbert Ingram Priestley. ed. California: the name. Berkeley: University of California)
Spanish conquistadors told stories about a mystical afrakan muurish queen that ruled a State of California, situated in the same location as the present day California. The modern state of State California continues the legacy and the memory of this great afrakan Queendom and its Queens.
(Califia, Queen of California painting by Arthur Wright)
The Muurs and Calafia
Khalifa means God’s ruler (in Muurish Arabic).
The story of Calafia was later re-narrated in the book The Adventures of Esplandián, a book written in 1500, probably based on stories gleaned from the old Muurish seamen of Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium and England.
Calafia is introduced as “… a regal Muurish afrakan woman, courageous, strong of limb and large in person, full in the bloom of womanhood, the most beautiful of a long line of queens who ruled over the mythical realm of California.”
She supposedly commanded a fleet of ships with which she ruled and maintained peace in the surrounding lands, and islands including Baja and Hawaii. She reportedly kept an aerial defense force of “griffins”, and other fabulous animals which were native to California, trained to defend the land against invanders.
She was so powerful she could project her imperial power over the seas of the mediteranean at will. The Esplandian narrates that Calafia maintained cultural and trading contacts with the Muurs of Africa. It told of her wars in the mediterranean seas,in Anatolia, the Byzantine empire and in southern Europe. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calafia#cite_ref-Sabir2004_23-1
According to the author of The Adventures of Esplandián:
“Know ye that at the right hand of the Indies there is an island called California, very close to that part of the Terrestrial Paradise, which was inhabited by dark brown women without a single man among them, and they lived in the manner of Amazons. They were robust of body with strong passionate hearts and great virtue. The island itself is one of the wildest in the world on account of the bold and craggy rocks.”(Putnam, Ruth (1917). Herbert Ingram Priestley. ed. California: the name. Berkeley: University of California)
The crusader and conqueror of the territory of California Hernán Cortés and his men were familiar with the book. Cortés quoted liberally from the book and it did have an influence on his decision to look for the Island of California. As governor of Mexico he sent out an ill-fated expedition of two ships, one guided by the famous pilot Fortún Ximénez. That expedition did not fare well at all and most of the ships and the men were lost.
In 1535, Cortés led an expedition back to the land of Calafia or California, and decided to re-named it Santa Cruz. However, that name did not stick, as the natives, and the Muurs and the dark brown Indians and red Indians and so-called whites continued to use the ancient and old name of the land “California”.
Cortes himself and his contemporaries appeared to have used the name too. In 1550 and 1556, the name appears three times in reports about Cortés written by Giovanni Battista Ramusio.
Thus over the years of increasing conquest, colonization and rape of the land of California, the ancient land of the muurs has held onto its name and identity, in the knowledge that one day, it will be as it was in the beginning.
African-Americans and Queen Califia
In 2004, the African American Historical and Cultural Society Museum in San Francisco assembled a Queen Califia exhibit, curated by John William Templeton, featuring works by artists such as TheArthur Wright and James Gayles; artistic interpretations of Calafia.
The show displayed a 1936 treatment of Lucille Lloyd’s “California Allegory” triptych, with Queen Califia as the central figure. Templeton said that “Califia is a part of California history, and she also reinforces the fact that African Americans had always been in California. See, Sabir, Wanda. “Wanda’s Picks”. San Francisco Bayview. Retrieved January 2, 2011.http://sigidiart.com/Docs/WandasPicksCalifia.htm
“Califia is a part of California history, and she also reinforces the fact that when Cortes named this place California, he had 300 Afrakan people with him. And throughout the whole Spanish-Mexican war, 40 percent of the population was black.” .
Templeton pointed out that most of the navigators on the explorations to the New World were African, because Africans knew how to get the New World.
For instance, Columbus had a afrakannavigator. Muurish folks had been going back and forth between Africa and America from the dawn of time. All they had to do was get in the wind right off the West Coast of Africa.
A Muurish (African) Emperor Abu Bukari took 1,000 ships to the New World in the 1300s. So Muurish navigators and sea men were highly sought in those days that the previously land-bounded Europeans were in their infancy in navigational and maritime sciences.
A afrakan man used to own the San Fernando Valley. That was Pio de Jesus Pico (1801-1894). He was also the last Mexican governor of California. In total, in the 1800s, there were atleast four afrakan governors of the state of California. See Sabir, Wanda. “Wanda’s Picks”. San Francisco Bayview. Retrieved January 2, 2011http://sigidiart.com/Docs/WandasPicksCalifia.htm
Dr. William E. Hoskins, director of the museum, said that very few people know the story of Queen Califia. He said, “One of the things we’re trying to do is let people have the additional insight and appreciation for the contributions of African Americans to this wonderful country and more specifically to the state of California”. See Sabir, Wanda. “Wanda’s Picks”. San Francisco Bayview. Retrieved January 2, 2011http://sigidiart.com/Docs/WandasPicksCalifia.htm
Soledad Brothers
The Soledad Brothers were three African-American prison inmates: George Jackson, co-founder of the Black Guerilla Family, and Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette. The three were falsely accused of beating a white prison guard and throwing him from a third-floor tier to his death at California’s Soledad Prison on Jan. 16, 1970. The murder occurred just a few days after another white guard shot and killed three African inmates by firing from a tower into the courtyard during a racial fist fight.
The Soledad brothers had recently led a hunger strike to combat the abusive, inhumane practices that led to the death of several Black inmates, when they were indicted for the murder.
Opie G. Miller, the guard who shot the three African inmates, was exonerated in a secret trial where none of the African inmates who witnessed the shootings were permitted to testify.
Less than a year later and just three days before the opening of his trial, George Jackson was shot to death by a tower guard inside San Quentin Prison in an alleged escape attempt. Some people called it an assassination and “No Black person,” wrote James Baldwin, “will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.”
The two surviving Soledad Brothers, Clutchette and Drumgoole, were acquitted by a San Francisco jury. — inWales.
Ancient China’s Afrakan Civilizations
Although most information on the history of Asia is elusive on any details pertaining to the ancient afrakan ethnic civilizations that once existed there, the fact still remains that there is evidence of their presence in archaeological data and genealogical research.The two major empires that have a mysterious connection to African roots are the Xia and Shang- Li (Yin) Dynasties. The founders of these two civilizations have been traced backed to the fertile crescent by way of what is now known as Iran.Linguistically, very little is known about the pronunciations of language in Ancient China but the similarities in writing styles amongst the Shang- Li and the ancient inhabitants of the Indus Valley are undeniable. Both groups used the technique of writing styles using shell and bone to carve out wedged shapes into stone as seen on pottery found in China dating back to around 2000 B.C.The Dravidian and Manding speaking tribes of Ancient Saharan African also used this style of writing in African cuneiform making similar shapes with almost identical meanings as outlined by Clyde Winters.The archaeological research of F. Weidenreich in Bull. Nat. Hist. Soc. Peiping 13, (1938-30) and K.C Chang in The archaeology of ancient China notated that oceanic negroid skulls were excavated in Northern and Southern China placing them back in Ancient Chinese periods which predates the findings of any classical Mongoloids skeletal remains.
The Mulberry Tree and Ten Suns
In Chinese mythology there is tale of ten three legged sun’s who resided in a Mulberry tree. All were shot down but one by an archer by the name of Yi. It is said the the story purports the unifying of the ten founders of the Shang dynasty under one. Ironically, the Ancient chinese revered ancestral totems of which the black bird was a classic symbol of the afrakan ethnic groups in china. Could it be that the mythological story was in fact a symbolic representation of the history of blacks in Ancient China?
Buddha
A Naga Buddha statue with undeniable Afrakan features.Source: Bringing Back the tradition
Buddha in Africa
The three enlightened ones; according to Scholar Sir William Jones, were Africans. (Anacalypsis by G. Higgins). The term Buddha is a title in fact, not a name that is given to blessed one’s who have become awakened and learned how to master the mind.The ancient priesthood, Buddhism was established 500 years before Christianity, in what is now known as the Middle East. The ancient Buddhist religion of India has left many remains of scared temples scattered across a wide range of Asia. Within those temples are statues of some buddhas, some depicted as a dark figure with tightly coiled hair, wide noses, and thick lips.Wilford, another European scholar during a treatise on the Nile in Asiatic researches wrote “nor can it be reasonably doubted, that a race of Negroes formerly had power and pre-eminence in India.”A Buddha is a mortal human being who has simply realized the true nature of existence and with that realization, he is able to inspire others to do the same.It was said by Gerald Massey (book of beginnings) that the Black Buddha’s of India were definitively of Negroid type and that the fashion and worship of this image, must have first been by Negroes ( Sut- Nahasi/ Nehesi) themselves.
“ DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU”
The Golden rule of Buddhism is indeed a powerful mantra. If we are ever to unify humanity we must begin with righting the wrongs of our past. Can it be that great nations of afrakan formerly possessed the dominion of Ancient Asia? Is it possible then that the famous terra cotta army of china DOES in fact have some afrakan soldiers in the mix? Why would historical evidence suppress these findings from common history books? Does the notion that ancient africans once spread themselves out across not only asia but the earth help to bridge the gaps between the divided races of humanity? Could this theory help to explain current anomalies such newborn infants born of various ethnic groups commonly possessing what are known as “mongolian spots”? Were the first negroids in fact accustomed to migrations both on land and by sea? Or could this all just be propaganda?
Yasuke, the Samurai
Origins of the Japanese Samurai- Shogun
“For a Samurai to be brave, he must have a bit of Afrakan blood.”-Japanese Proverb
Around 35000 B.C a group of Afrakan chinese known as Jormon became the first inhabitants of the japanese islands.Historians say that the oceanic Afrakan were found in every country from the Indian ocean to southern China, the east coast and into Japan.The Afrakan General of Japan–Sakanouye Tamurarmaro is perhaps the single most symbolized warrior in Japanese history according to anthropologist Alexander Chamberlain, and writers like Marion Pryde.The first shogun,Sakanouye Tamura Maro a famous character in Japanese history was of african descent eident by his rich pigment and frizzy hair.A military commander for the royal court of the Heian period. it was during this time that use of the term Samurai began. The Samurai were knights on guard at the Imperial Palace of Medieval Japan. This warrior class received a pension and were given the honor of wearing two swords. Only intermarrying among the class, the offspring were also given the title of Samurai, yet only heirs would received pension from the feudal lord. During his years of service, Sakanouye Tamaura Maro was named “barbarian-subduing generalissimo” or Sei-i Tai-Shogun, the first shogun and warrior statesman of Japan.(Dr. Mark Hyman,Black Shogun of Japan)
International research team make astounding discovery
In 1999, a team of International scientists concluded a five year study that discovered similar genetic markers withing the 65 branches of the Chinese and people of east Africa.This DNA analysis cleared the age old debate between historians and archaeologists who argued over the validity of any genetic relationship between Asians and Africans. Once again science makes a discovery that brings the world one step closer to the revelation that we are all closely related and in fact descendants of one race- the human race
Legend of the Little Afrakan Man of Asia
The original inhabitants of the Philippines, the Agta also known as the Aeta, Negritos, and Pygmies,can be described as having a unusually dwarf stature, spiral-haired, dark pigment,and broad-nosed phenotype. This group, now said to be extinct, were documented to be found in the Ching dynasty, Liang dynasty, in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia,Indonesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, and other pacific islands. Practioners of the Lapita culture, the little afrakan man is commerated in ceremony by the Saisiyat tribe to this day. According to the Saisiyat, the little afrakan man taught them about agriculture, and passed down some native songs to their people.In their honor the Ritual of the Little Afrakan People is held bi-annually in the mountains of Hsinchu and Miaoli county in China.
~ Chuck D, Public Enemy #1
Afraka in the tamazight language means sunny place. In the Medu Neter means the birthplace,Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, “to turn toward the opening of the Ka.” The Ka is the energetic double of every person and “opening of the Ka” refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, “the birthplace.”
When someone says that they are Afrakan it means we are people that come from a sunny place that is the birthplace of humans and culture.
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 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 Kushite 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 inscriptionFrom 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 theEdinburgh 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.
1.Today, many African people use a white image to depict Jesus. Africans who practiced Christianity before slavery used African images historically to describe their god.
2.Enslaved Africans were taught to fear and devalue African religious practices. Today, most African people in the world still don’t seek to inculcate traditional African religions.
3.Many African people across the world still use the King James version of the Bible as the final authority of Christianity.
4.Today, many African people focus only on religious dogma that was taught during slavery and colonialism rather than developing a spiritual relationship with the creator.
5.The majority of enslaved Africans were taught to no longer honor and connect spiritually with their ancestors. As a result, many African people today devalue the idea of developing a connection with their ancestors.
Celebrating African culture and histories worldwide
#african#african history month#african pride#black panther#african culture#culture
We would be shocked at the things that are hid and the amount of brainwashing that has been programmed on the masses.
If not at ALL times, this thread should definitely be a STICKY this February and every February going forward.
A constant reminder of utter injustice.
Let's you know many Baby Boomer's are so brainwashed choosing to assimilate post segregation, when it comes to hairstyles.
I have long said, any 4 years on BGOL, I learned more than my 14 years of secondary education.
I have to deliver to the state capitol very often...when I am in there I can only think about the structure during segregation...going backwards.Lena Baker was a black maid that was put on trial for the killing of her white employer Earnest Knight for trying to rape her. Though she claimed self defense, she was sentenced to death by an all white male jury. Her trial only lasted one day! Sitting in the electric chair, this is what she said: “What I done, I did in self defense or I would’ve been killed myself. Where I was, I could not overcome it. I am ready to meet my God”. She was executed on March 5, 1945 as the only woman ever executed in Georgia. She left behind 3 children. Her last words, along side with her picture are displayed near the now-retired electric chair at a museum at Georgia state prison in Reidsville.
A constant reminder of utter injustice.
I see whites were always allowed to attend HBCU'S.
Technical Drawing Class at Hampton Institute in Virginia (1900)
Man The Original Man's culture is sooooooooo diverse.Rwanda traditional hairstyle
Let's you know many Baby Boomer's are so brainwashed choosing to assimilate post segregation, when it comes to hairstyles.
Tasmanian devil is an animal, however, this comparison just made me question how I see this cartoon.
Man, NOTHING!
That maybe this is where it should have been taught all along...alongside sexuality.what can you say when you get damn near better knowledge from a porn board than a school........
I have long said, any 4 years on BGOL, I learned more than my 14 years of secondary education.
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Embarkation on the Nile (papyrus). Late Period, ca. 664-332 BC. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Turin.
“Egypt was undoubtedly the best place to have been born a woman in the whole of the Ancient World….Egyptian women enjoyed a legal, social, and sexual independence unrivaled by their Greek or Roman sisters, unrivaled, indeed by women in Europe until the late nineteenth century. They could own and trade in property, work outside the home, marry foreigners and even live alone without the protection of a male guardian. Furthermore, women fortunate enough to be members of the royal harem were vastly influential, as were those rare women who rose to rule Egypt as ‘female kings’.”
―Daughters of Isis: Women of Ancient Egypt, by Joyce Tyldesley
Ezulwini, Swaziland 2009 (by Félix le Masne)
Chicago, Photo by Yasuhiro Ishimoto, 1951-52_files
This is from when King Leopold ll took control of The Congo during the late 1800’s and claimed that he was guiding them towards independence. Instead he implemented extremely harsh policies.
Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into a real improvement of living conditions.
—
Amílcar Cabral
Taken from “Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War” (page 66)
—
Amílcar Cabral
Taken from “Amílcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War” (page 66)
Oromo people, Ethiopia