STOP BEING A FOOLISH AFRICAN
Many people have a misconception that Africa has no history,
however, studies into history and archeological records has proven that Africa
has more rich and great history than what the old historians tried to make us
believe. A careful reading of the information below compiled by Dr Robin Walkin
makes it abundantly clear that African has an unequal history in the world. –
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 kn
own in the world.
2. Skeletons of pre-humans have been found in Africa that
date back between 4 and 5 million years. The oldest known ancestral type of
humanity is thought to have been the australopithecus ramidus, who lived at
least 4.4 million years ago.
3. Africans were the first to organise fishing expeditions
90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in northeastern Zaïre (now Congo), was
recovered a finely wrought series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished
and barbed. Also uncovered was a tool, equally well crafted, believed to be a
dagger. The discoveries suggested the existence of an early aquatic or fishing
based culture.
4. Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years
ago. In 1964 a hematite mine was found in Swaziland at Bomvu Ridge in the
Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately 300,000 artefacts were recovered including
thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists
on the site, dated the mine to a staggering 43,200 years old.
5. Africans pioneered basic arithmetic 25,000 years ago. The
Ishango bone is a tool handle with notches carved into it found in the Ishango
region of Zaïre (now called Congo) near Lake Edward. The bone tool was
originally thought to have been over 8,000 years old, but a more sensitive
recent dating has given dates of 25,000 years old. On the tool are 3 rows of
notches. Row 1 shows three notches carved next to six, four carved next to
eight, ten carved next to two fives and finally a seven. The 3 and 6, 4 and 8,
and 10 and 5, represent the process of doubling. Row 2 shows eleven notches
carved next to twenty-one notches, and nineteen notches carved next to nine
notches. This represents 10 + 1, 20 + 1, 20 – 1 and 10 – 1. Finally, Row 3
shows eleven notches, thirteen notches, seventeen notches and nineteen notches.
11, 13, 17 and 19 are the prime numbers between 10 and 20.
6. Africans cultivated crops 12,000 years ago, the first
known advances in agriculture. Professor Fred Wendorf discovered that people in
Egypt’s Western Desert cultivated crops of barley, capers, chick-peas, dates,
legumes, lentils and wheat. Their ancient tools were also recovered. There were
grindstones, milling stones, cutting blades, hide scrapers, engraving burins,
and mortars and pestles.
7. Africans mummified their dead 9,000 years ago. A
mummified infant was found under the Uan Muhuggiag rock shelter in south
western Libya. The infant was buried in the foetal position and was mummified
using a very sophisticated technique that must have taken hundreds of years to
evolve. The technique predates the earliest mummies known in Ancient Egypt by
at least 1,000 years. Carbon dating is controversial but the mummy may date
from 7438 (±220) BC.
8. Africans carved the world’s first colossal sculpture
7,000 or more years ago. The Great Sphinx of Giza was fashioned with the head
of a man combined with the body of a lion. A key and important question raised
by this monument was: How old is it? In October 1991 Professor Robert Schoch, a
geologist from Boston University, demonstrated that the Sphinx was sculpted
between 5000 BC and 7000 BC, dates that he considered conservative.
9. On the 1 March 1979, the New York Times carried an
article on its front page also page sixteen that was entitled Nubian Monarchy
called Oldest. In this article we were assured that: “Evidence of the oldest
recognizable monarchy in human history, preceding the rise of the earliest
Egyptian kings by several generations, has been discovered in artifacts from
ancient Nubia” (i.e. the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern
portion of modern Egypt.)
10. The ancient Egyptians had the same type of tropically
adapted skeletal proportions as modern Black Africans. A 2003 paper appeared in
American Journal of Physical Anthropology by Dr Sonia Zakrzewski entitled
Variation in Ancient Egyptian Stature and Body Proportions where she states
that: “The raw values in Table 6 suggest that Egyptians had the ‘super-Negroid’
body plan described by Robins (1983). The values for the brachial and crural
indices show that the distal segments of each limb are longer relative to the
proximal segments than in many ‘African’ populations.”
11. The ancient Egyptians had Afro combs. One writer tells
us that the Egyptians “manufactured a very striking range of combs in ivory:
the shape of these is distinctly African and is like the combs used even today
by Africans and those of African descent.”
12. The Funerary Complex in the ancient Egyptian city of
Saqqara is the oldest building that tourists regularly visit today. An outer
wall, now mostly in ruins, surrounded the whole structure. Through the entrance
are a series of columns, the first stone-built columns known to historians. The
North House also has ornamental columns built into the walls that have
papyrus-like capitals. Also inside the complex is the Ceremonial Court, made of
limestone blocks that have been quarried and then shaped. In the centre of the
complex is the Step Pyramid, the first of 90 Egyptian pyramids.
13. The first Great Pyramid of Giza, the most extraordinary
building in history, was a staggering 481 feet tall – the equivalent of a
40-storey building. It was made of 2.3 million blocks of limestone and granite,
some weighing 100 tons.
14. The ancient Egyptian city of Kahun was the world’s first
planned city. Rectangular and walled, the city was divided into two parts. One
part housed the wealthier inhabitants – the scribes, officials and foremen. The
other part housed the ordinary people. The streets of the western section in
particular, were straight, laid out on a grid, and crossed each other at right
angles. A stone gutter, over half a metre wide, ran down the centre of every
street.
15. Egyptian mansions were discovered in Kahun – each
boasting 70 rooms, divided into four sections or quarters. There was a master’s
quarter, quarters for women and servants, quarters for offices and finally,
quarters for granaries, each facing a central courtyard. The master’s quarters
had an open court with a stone water tank for bathing. Surrounding this was a
colonnade.
16 The Labyrinth in the Egyptian city of Hawara with its
massive layout, multiple courtyards, chambers and halls, was the very largest
building in antiquity. Boasting three thousand rooms, 1,500 of them were above
ground and the other 1,500 were underground.
17. Toilets and sewerage systems existed in ancient Egypt.
One of the pharaohs built a city now known as Amarna. An American urban planner
noted that: “Great importance was attached to cleanliness in Amarna as in other
Egyptian cities. Toilets and sewers were in use to dispose waste. Soap was made
for washing the body. Perfumes and essences were popular against body odour. A
solution of natron was used to keep insects from houses … Amarna may have been
the first planned ‘garden city’.”
18. Sudan has more pyramids than any other country on earth
– even more than Egypt. There are at least 223 pyramids in the Sudanese cities
of Al Kurru, Nuri, Gebel Barkal and Meroë. They are generally 20 to 30 metres
high and steep sided.
19. The Sudanese city of Meroë is rich in surviving
monuments. Becoming the capital of the 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.
Ancient Africans
51. The mediaeval Nigerian city of Benin was built to “a
scale comparable with the Great Wall of China”. There was a vast system of
defensive walling totalling 10,000 miles in all
. Even before the full extent of the city walling had become
apparent the Guinness Book of Records carried an entry in the 1974 edition that
described the city as: “The largest earthworks in the world carried out prior
to the mechanical era.”52. Benin art of the Middle Ages was of the highest
quality. An official of the Berlin Museum für Völkerkunde once stated that:
“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European
casting technique. Benvenuto Cellini could not have cast them better, nor could
anyone else before or after him … Technically, these bronzes represent the very
highest possible achievement.”53. Winwood Reade described his visit to the
Ashanti Royal Palace of Kumasi in 1874: “We went to the king’s palace, which
consists of many courtyards, each surrounded with alcoves and verandahs, and
having two gates or doors, so that each yard was a thoroughfare … But the part
of the palace fronting the street was a stone house, Moorish in its style …
with a flat roof and a parapet, and suites of apartments on the first floor. It
was built by Fanti masons many years ago. The rooms upstairs remind me of
Wardour Street. Each was a perfect Old Curiosity Shop. Books in many languages,
Bohemian glass, clocks, silver plate, old furniture, Persian rugs,
Kidderminster carpets, pictures and engravings, numberless chests and coffers.
A sword bearing the inscription From Queen Victoria to the King of Ashantee. A
copy of the Times, 17 October 1843. With these were many specimens of Moorish
and Ashanti handicraft.”54. In the mid-nineteenth century, William Clarke, an
English visitor to Nigeria, remarked that: “As good an article of cloth can be
woven by the Yoruba weavers as by any people … in durability, their cloths far
excel the prints and home-spuns of Manchester.”
55. The recently discovered 9th century Nigerian city of
Eredo was found to be surrounded by a wall that was 100 miles long and seventy
feet high in places. The internal area was a staggering 400 square miles.
56. On the subject of cloth, Kongolese textiles were also
distinguished. Various European writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries wrote of the delicate crafts of the peoples living in eastern Kongo
and adjacent regions who manufactured damasks, sarcenets, satins, taffeta, cloth
of tissue and velvet. Professor DeGraft-Johnson made the curious observation
that: “Their brocades, both high and low, were far more valuable than the
Italian.”
57. On Kongolese metallurgy of the Middle Ages, one modern
scholar wrote that: “There is no doubting … the existence of an expert
metallurgical art in the ancient Kongo … The Bakongo were aware of the toxicity
of lead vapours. They devised preventative and curative methods, both
pharmacological (massive doses of pawpaw and palm oil) and mechanical (exerting
of pressure to free the digestive tract), for combating lead poisoning.”
58. In Nigeria, the royal palace in the city of Kano dates
back to the fifteenth century. Begun by Muhammad Rumfa (ruled 1463-99) it has
gradually evolved over generations into a very imposing complex. A colonial
report of the city from 1902, described it as “a network of buildings covering
an area of 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 feet high outside and 15
feet inside … in itself no mean citadel”.
59. A sixteenth century traveller visited the central
African civilisation of Kanem-Borno and commented that the emperor’s cavalry
had golden “stirrups, spurs, bits and buckles.” Even the ruler’s dogs had
“chains of the finest gold”.
60. One of the government positions in mediaeval Kanem-Borno
was Astronomer Royal.
61. Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one
of the largest cities in the seventeenth century world. By 1658 AD, the
metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about quarter of a
million people”. It had 660 streets. Many were wide and unbending, reflective
of town planning.
62. The Nigerian city of Surame flourished in the sixteenth
century. Even in ruin it was an impressive sight, built on a horizontal
vertical grid. A modern scholar describes it thus: “The walls of Surame are
about 10 miles in circumference and include many large bastions or walled
suburbs running out at right angles to the main wall. The large compound at
Kanta is still visible in the centre, with ruins of many buildings, one of
which is said to have been two-storied. The striking feature of the walls and
whole ruins is the extensive use of stone and tsokuwa (laterite gravel) or very
hard red building mud, evidently brought from a distance. There is a big mound of
this near the north gate about 8 feet in height. The walls show regular courses
of masonry to a height of 20 feet and more in several places. The best
preserved portion is that known as sirati (the bridge) a little north of the
eastern gate … The main city walls here appear to have provided a very strongly
guarded entrance about 30 feet wide.’
Axum,Ethiopia
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 th
e 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.”
i
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 o
ne of the ‘Ruins’ there is a ‘stone-chamber,’ with a vast
quantity of Papyri, covered with old Egyptian hieroglyphics. A Boer hunter
discovered this, and a large quantity was used to light a fire with, and yet
still a larger quantity remained there now.”77. On bling culture, one
seventeenth century visitor to southern African empire of Monomotapa, that
ruled over this vast region, wrote that: “The people dress in various ways: at
court of the Kings their grandees wear cloths of rich silk, damask, satin, gold
and silk cloth; these are three widths of satin, each width four covados
[2.64m], each sewn to the next, sometimes with gold lace in between, trimmed on
two sides, like a carpet, with a gold and silk fringe, sewn in place with a two
fingers’ wide ribbon, woven with gold roses on silk.”78. Southern Africans
mined gold on an epic scale. One modern writer tells us that: “The estimated
amount of gold ore mined from the entire region by the ancients was staggering,
exceeding 43 million tons. The ore yielded nearly 700 tons of pure gold which
today would be valued at over $7.5 billion.”79. Apparently the
Monomotapan royal palace at Mount Fura had chandeliers hanging from the
ceiling. An eighteenth century geography book provided the following data: “The
inside consists of a great variety of sumptuous apartments, spacious and lofty
halls, all adorned with a magnificent cotton tapestry, the manufacture of the
country. The floors, cielings [sic], beams and rafters are all either gilt or
plated with gold curiously wrought, as are also the chairs of state, tables,
benches &c. The candle-sticks and branches are made of ivory inlaid with
gold, and hang from the cieling by chains of the same metal, or of silver
gilt.”
80. Monomotapa had a social welfare system. Antonio Bocarro,
a Portuguese contemporary, informs us that the Emperor: “shows great charity to
the blind and maimed, for these are called the king’s poor, and have land and
revenues for their subsistence, and when they wish to pass through the
kingdoms, wherever they come food and drinks are given to them at the public
cost as long as they remain there, and when they leave that place to go to
another they are provided with what is necessary for their journey, and a
guide, and some one to carry their wallet to the next village. In every place
where they come there is the same obligation.”
81. Many southern Africans have indigenous and pre-colonial
words for ‘gun’. Scholars have generally been reluctant to investigate or
explain this fact.
82. Evidence discovered in 1978 showed that East Africans
were making steel for more than 1,500 years: “Assistant Professor of
Anthropology Peter Schmidt and Professor of Engineering Donald H. Avery have
found as long as 2,000 years ago Africans living on the western shores of Lake
Victoria had produced carbon steel in preheated forced draft furnaces, a method
that was technologically more sophisticated than any developed in Europe until
the mid-nineteenth century.”
83. Ruins of a 300 BC astronomical observatory was found at
Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as
Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, etcetera, as well as the moon,
in order to create a lunar calendar of 354 days.
84. Autopsies and caesarean operations were routinely and
effectively carried out by surgeons in pre-colonial Uganda. The surgeons
routinely used antiseptics, anaesthetics and cautery iron. Commenting on a
Ugandan caesarean operation that appeared in the Edinburgh Medical Journal in
1884, one author wrote: “The whole conduct of the operation … suggests a
skilled long-practiced surgical team at work conducting a well-tried and
familiar operation with smooth efficiency.”
85. Sudan in the mediaeval period had churches, cathedrals,
monasteries and castles. Their ruins still exist today.
86. The mediaeval Nubian Kingdoms kept archives. From the
site of Qasr Ibrim legal texts, documents and correspondence were discovered.
An archaeologist informs us that: “On the site are preserved thousands of
documents in Meroitic, Latin, Greek, Coptic, Old Nubian, Arabic and Turkish.”
87. Glass windows existed in mediaeval Sudan. Archaeologists
found evidence of window glass at the Sudanese cities of Old Dongola and
Hambukol.
88. Bling culture existed in the mediaeval Sudan.
Archaeologists found an individual buried at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity
in the city of Old Dongola. He was clad in an extremely elaborate garb
consisting of costly textiles of various fabrics including gold thread. At the
city of Soba East, there were individuals buried in fine clothing, including
items with golden thread.
Great Zimbabwe Walls
89. Style and fashion existed in mediaeval Sudan. A
dignitary at Jebel Adda in the late thirteenth century AD was interned with a
long coat of red and yellow patterned damask folded over his body. Underneath,
he wore plain cotton trousers
of long and baggy cut. A pair of red leather slippers with
turned up toes lay at the foot of the coffin. The body was wrapped in enormous
pieces of gold brocaded striped silk.90. Sudan in the ninth century AD had
housing complexes with bath rooms and piped water. An archaeologist wrote that
Old Dongola, the capital of Makuria, had: “a[n] … eighth to … ninth century
housing complex. The houses discovered here differ in their hitherto
unencountered spatial layout as well as their functional programme (water
supply installation, bathroom with heating system) and interiors decorated with
murals.”91. In 619 AD, the Nubians sent a gift of a giraffe to the Persians.92.
The East Coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, has ruins of well over 50 towns and
cities. They flourished from the ninth to the sixteenth centuries AD.
93. Chinese records of the fifteenth century AD note that
Mogadishu had houses of “four or five storeys high”.
94. Gedi, near the coast of Kenya, is one of the East
African ghost towns. Its ruins, dating from the fourteenth or fifteenth
centuries, include the city walls, the palace, private houses, the Great
Mosque, seven smaller mosques, and three pillar tombs.
95. The ruined mosque in the Kenyan city of Gedi had a water
purifier made of limestone for recycling water.
96. The palace in the Kenyan city of Gedi contains evidence
of piped water controlled by taps. In addition it had bathrooms and indoor
toilets.
97. A visitor in 1331 AD considered the Tanzanian city of
Kilwa to be of world class. He wrote that it was the “principal city on the
coast the greater part of whose inhabitants are Zanj of very black complexion.”
Later on he says that: “Kilwa is one of the most beautiful and well-constructed
cities in the world. The whole of it is elegantly built.”
98. Bling culture existed in early Tanzania. A Portuguese
chronicler of the sixteenth century wrote that: “[T]hey are finely clad in many
rich garments of gold and silk and cotton, and the women as well; also with
much gold and silver chains and bracelets, which they wear on their legs and
arms, and many jewelled earrings in their ears”.
99. In 1961 a British archaeologist, found the ruins of
Husuni Kubwa, the royal palace of the Tanzanian city of Kilwa. It had over a
hundred rooms, including a reception hall, galleries, courtyards, terraces and
an octagonal swimming pool.
100. In 1414 the Kenyan city of Malindi sent ambassadors to
China carrying a gift that created a sensation at the Imperial Court. It was,
of course, a giraffe.
By Robin Walker.
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