Historical Misconception of Africa

“It is not true that the work of man is finished, that we have nothing to do in the world, that we are parasites in the world, that we have only to accept the way of the world. But the work of man has only began and no race has a monopoly of beauty, intelligence and strength and there is room for all at the rendezvous of conquest.” - Aime Cesaire

1.    The Land of the Blacks?

Murdock traces the cradle of Neolithic civilization in Africa to the Mande area of West Africa. The independent development of the Neolithic culture in the area, according Murdock, it started earlier than 4,500 B.C. It was an independent ‘genuine invention, not a borrowing from another people’. Murdock’s claim, which is based on excellent research, may be rejected by racist scholars who deny the African an indigenous cultural heritage.

The high stage of agricultural development in the West African sub-region, observed by the first Europeans who landed on the Atlantic Coast in the 15th century, is a confirmation of a long Neolithic tradition in the sub-region. According to Skinner;

“West Africa was by far the region of greatest indigenous economic development in Sub-Saharan Africa…the peoples of this part of the continent had economies which made agricultural produce available in amount large enough to be sold in rural and urban markets, different kinds of currencies which were nearly always convertible one to another and, later to European denominations of value; and elaborate trading systems, eternal as well as internal. Goods produced even in the smallest African societies were circulated in local markets and from there channeled to urban markets centres and ultimately by porters, caravans, and boats to the large Sudanese emporiums from which they could be shipped to the Mediterranean area in exchange for foreign products.”   

Muslim geographers and historians have also provided excellent records of Muslim rulers and peoples in Africa. Among them are Al-Khwarzimi, Ibn Munabbah, Al-Masudi, Al-Bakri, Abul Fida, Yaqut, Ibn Batutah, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Fadlallah al-’Umari, Mahmud al-Kati, Ibn al Mukhtar and Abd al-Rahman al-Sa’di. Islam reached the Savannah region in the 8th Century C.E., the date the written history of West Africa begins. Islam was accepted as early as 850 C.E. by the Dya’ogo dynasty of the Kingdom of Tekur. They were the first Negro people who accepted Islam. 

It was for this reason that Muslim-Arab historians referred to Bilad al-Tekur as ‘The Land of the Black Muslims.’ War-jabi, son of Rabis, was the first ruler of Tekur in whose reign Islam was firmly established in Tekur and the Islamic Shari’ah system was enforced. This gave a uniform Muslim law to the people. By the time the Al- Murabitun of Almoravids began their attack on Tekur in 1042 C.E., Islam had made a deep impact on the people of that area. Al-Idrisi in 1511 described the Tekur Country as ‘secure, peaceful and tranquil.’ 

The capital town of Tekur was also called Tekur which had become center of commerce. Merchants used to bring wool to sell there from Greater Morocco and in return, took with them gold and beads. There are enough documents about the history of this region since it was known to the Arab historians as the Bilad al-Sudan, ‘The Land of the Blacks’. In the medieval period, the most well-known empires that grew there are known until our day: The empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem Bornu. Eminent Arab historians have written about the glories of these lands, notable among whom are Al-Bakri, Al-Masudi, Ibn Batutah and Ibn Khaldun. Besides these scholars, there were local scholars whose works have come down to us. 

As for example Tarikh al-Sudan, the History of the Sudan, by Al-Sadi and Tarikh al-Fattash by Muhammad al-Kati. There were famous trade routes, like the one from Sijilmasa to Taghaza, Awdaghast, which led to the empire of Ghana, and another from Sijilmasa to Tuat, Gao and Timbikutu. There were others which connected the present Nigeria with Tripoli via Fez to Bornu and Tunisia with Nigeria via Ghadames, Ghat, and Agades to Hausa land. These routes had made all the above mentioned places famous trade centers. These centers of trade invariably became centers of Islamic learning and civilization. New ideas came through visiting traders in the field of administrative practices.

According to the Wikipedia, Islamic influence was a major contributing factor to architectural development from the time of the Kingdom of Ghana in south of the Sahara. At Kumbi Saleh, locals lived in domed huts, but traders had stone houses. Sahelian architecture initially grew from the two cities of Djenné and Timbuktu. The Sanskore Mosque in Timbuktu, constructed from mud on timber, was similar in style to the Great Mosque of Djenné. The rise of kingdoms in the West African coastal region produced architecture which drew instead on indigenous traditions, utilizing wood. The famed Benin City, destroyed by the Punitive Expedition, was a large complex of homes in coursed mud, with hipped roofs of shingles or palm leaves. The Palace had a sequence of ceremonial rooms, and was decorated with brass plaques.

Trade and commerce paved the way for the introduction of new elements of material culture, and made possible the intellectual development which naturally followed the introduction and spread of literacy. Eminent Arab historians and African scholars have written on the empires of Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and Kanem Bornu. They document famous trade routes in Africa - from Sijilmasa to Taghaza, Awdaghast, which led to the empire of Ghana, and from Sijilmasa to Tuat, Gao and Timbikutu. Al-Bakri describes Ghana as highly advanced and economically a prosperous country as early as the eleventh century. He also discusses the influence of Islam in Mali in the 13th century and describes the rule of Mansa Musa, whose fame spread to Sudan, North Africa and up to Europe.

At the height of their glory, many pre-colonial African states and empires found trade to be a better way to prosperity than through conquests. Gold was shipped from Wangara in the Upper Niger across the Sahara desert to Taghaza, in Western Sahara, in exchange for salt, and to Egypt for ceramics, silks and other Asian and European goods. The old Ghana Empire controlled much of the Trans-Sahara trade in copper and ivory. At Great Zimbabwe, gold was traded for Chinese pottery and glass. From Nigeria, lather and iron goods were traded throughout West Africa.

2. A Generation Without Change?

If the just narrated history is anything to go by, then the Arab scholars description of Africa is a perfect picture of ancient Africa. Africa and its diverse cultures have been elaborated and articulated negatively in Europe and North America in broad cultural and racial terms, as ‘dark’, ‘savage’, ‘barbarous’, ‘heathen’, ‘uncivilized’ and more recently ‘underdeveloped’-expressions that have had profound ramification on the idea of Africa in Western thought. Africa appears in European literature and art as a static, timeless and separated land, more like an outcast.

Many Western historians especially those without any background or training in African historiography, have assumed incorrectly that prior to European contact with Africa, indigenous ‘traditions’ were ancient or permanent and reproduced from generation to generation without change.

These stories and representation mask more about Africa than they reveal, and tell us much more about Europeans than about African. Professor of Modern History, Hugh Trevor-Roper asserts;

“perhaps in the future, there will be some African history to teach. But at present there is none; there is only the history of Europeans in Africa. The rest is darkness…and darkness is not the subject of history”.

According to Graham C. Clark, much of Africa during the late Pleistocene;

“remained a kind of cultural museum in which archaic traditional continued…without contributing to the main course of human progress.”

It must be mentioned that at different moments in history, negative images of Africa have been used to endorse various Western activities on the African continent-such as slave trade, military occupation, colonial expansionism, Christian evangelical conversion, or even the terms and conditions of international World Bank loans. For instance, Archibald Dalzal, a British official, painted an especially negative image of the people of Dahomey (now Republic of Benin), describing them variously as:

“a ‘savage’, ‘warlike’, and ferocious’ nation whose rulers legitimated their authority through the frenetic exercise of large-scale human sacrifices.”

As if not enough, he asserted that the slave trade could be justified on the grounds that it rescued potential victims of human sacrifice who would otherwise be killed by their own people. It was later revealed that he had a vested interested in the slave trade when this became a subject of debate in British parliament. 

Africa, as the second largest of Earth’s seven continents, covering 23 percent of the world’s total land area and containing 13 percent of the world’s population, is a land of great diversity. Africa straddles the equator and most of its area lies within the tropics. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Indian Ocean and Red Sea on the east, and the Mediterranean Sea on the north. In the northeastern corner of the continent, Africa is connected with Asia by the Sinai Peninsula.

Africa is the birthplace of the human race. Here, early humans are said to evolve from apes between 8 million and 5 million years ago. Modern human beings evolved between 130,000 and 90,000 years ago, and subsequently spread out of Africa.

For tens of thousands of years, Africa was in the center of mathematics history. From the civilizations of southern, central and northern Africa came contributions which would enrich both ancient and modern understanding of nature through math and science. From the measurement used in the African forest kingdoms, and the mathematics used in building the great stone complexes of Zimbabwe, to the efficient irrigation technologies, central administration, and the great accuracy of the dimensions of the pyramids, the achievements of Africans still give rise to wonder.

Despite great achievements, there are still negative images of Africa and Africans worldwide. In opposing these myths, Nwankwo Ezeabasili (1977) argues that African science is "African account of nature and how it works." He goes on to say that "...the black African has an authentic scientific culture." Africans were among the first humans to raise crops and to domesticate cattle 15,000 years ago (Van Sertima 1984).

"...between 17,000 and 18,500 years ago while ice still covered much of Europe - African peoples were already raising crops of wheat, barley, lentils , chick- peas, capers and dates" (Wendorf, Schild & Close 1984).

From the foregoing, it is evident that African and their cultures have been misrepresented. During the last 500 years, however, Africa became increasingly dominated by European traders and colonizers. European traders sent millions of Africans to work as slaves on colonial plantations in North America, South America, and the Caribbean. Europeans also sought Africa’s wealth of raw materials to fuel their industries. In the late 19th century, European powers seized and colonized virtually all of Africa. Fortunately, the Encyclopédie clearly portray how the Colonialist reported the state of Africans to the whole world;

‘The natives are idolaters, superstitious, and live most filthily; they are lazy, drunken rascals, without thought for the future, insensitive to any happening, happy or sad, which gives pleasure to or afflicts them; they have no sense of modesty or restraint in the pleasures of love, each sex plunging on the other like a brute from the earliest age. Africa is the victim of her heterogeneous idolatries. Africa is wasting away beneath the accretions of moral and civil miseries. Darkness covers the land and gross darkness the people. Great social evils universally prevail. Confidence and security are destroyed. Licentiousness abounds everywhere. Moloch rules and reigns throughout the whole continent, and by the ordeal of Sassywood, Fetishes, human sacrifices and devil-worship, is devouring men, women, and little children.’

Though Alexander Crummell’s (African-American by birth, Liberian by adoption, an Episcopalian priest with a University of Cambridge education) vision of Africa thus differed little from that of the Encyclopédie about a century earlier, he had a different analysis of the problem:

"They have not the Gospel. They are living without God. The Cross has never met their gaze. …”

Crummell's view of a "native religion" that consisted of "the ordeal of Sassywood, Fetishes, human sacrifices and devil-worship" in the African "darkness" was less subtle than Edward Blyden's (West Indian Negro who settled in Liberia). Blyden wrote:

“There is not a tribe on the continent of Africa, in spite of the almost universal opinion to the contrary, in spite of the fetishes and greegrees which many of them are supposed to worship - there is not, I say, a single tribe which does not stretch out its hands to the Great Creator. There is not one who does not recognize the Supreme Being, though imperfectly understanding His character - and who does perfectly understand his character? They believe that the heaven and the earth, the sun, moon, and stars, which they behold, were created by an Almighty personal Agent, who is also their Maker and Sovereign, and they render to Him such worship as their untutored intellects can conceive. … There are no atheists or agnostics among them.”

Edward Blyden - who for all his sentimentality of race, was a shrewder observer than Crummell - later wrote:

“There are Negroes and Negroes. The numerous tribes inhabiting the vast continent of Africa can no more be regarded as in every respect equal than the numerous peoples of Asia or Europe can be so regarded. There are the same tribal or family varieties among Africans as among Europeans … there are the Foulahs inhabiting the region of the Upper Niger, the Housas, the Bornous of Senegambia, the Nubas of the Nile region, of Darfoor and Kordofan, the Ashantees, Fantees, Dahomians, Yorubas, and that whole class of tribes occupying the eastern and middle and western portions of the continent north of the equator. Then there are the tribes of Lower Guinea and Angola … all these differing in original bent and traditional instincts. … Now it should be evident that no short description can include all these people, no single definition, however comprehensive, can embrace them all. Yet writers are fond of selecting the prominent traits of single tribes with which they are best acquainted, and applying them to the whole race.”

Thus customs relating to procreation, work, leisure, death and sundry circumstances of life are based on or reflect doctrines about God, mind, goodness, destiny and human personality that most Africans will articulate at the slightest prompting. And if one were to come in contact with the genuine philosophers among Africans traditional folk, one would hear not only articulations but also explanations, elaborations, and critiques of these doctrines and much else besides.

3. A People Without Modern Technology? 

Whilst Christopher Columbus sailed to America thinking he was heading to India, men in Europe did not even know for sure that the Earth was not flat. Yet the Great Pyramid (the Pyramid of Giza) had been built over 4,600 years ago on the exact center of land mass of the Earth. Further, the pyramid which is 30 times larger than the Empire State Building with it base that covers 13.6 acres (equal to 7 midtown Manhattan city blocks) was built to face true north. According to John Zaja (1990):

“…the heading is off by 3 minutes of arc. There are 360 degrees in a circle, each made up of 60 minutes. The most accurate observatory ever constructed to locate and measure the North Pole is off by 6 minutes of arc, and it was built much more recently, in the International Geophysical Year of 1957. Apparently, modern science cannot more closely point to the North Pole than the pyramid does. And since the pyramid was built, the North Pole has moved. Modern technology cannot place such 20-ton stones with greater accuracy than those in the pyramid. The pyramid’s stones were placed together with an intentional gap between them of 0.02 inch, which means that the blocks were placed with an accuracy better than 0.02 inch. Accuracy of 0.005 inch, which is the thickness of human hair, is more the norm. Even 4,600 years later, a piece of aluminum foil still cannot be forced between the stones. How were 40,000-pound blocks that are virtually square moved within a hair’s distance of the next one? What technology was used, and who engineered, designed, and directed the building of this structure?”

Ancient Egypt, one of the world’s first great civilizations, arose in northeastern Africa more than 5,000 years ago. Over time many other cultures and states rose and fell in Africa, and by 500 years ago there were prosperous cities, markets, and centers of learning scattered across the continent. Research has proved that as earlier as 4500 B.C., the inhabitants of that part of the Nile Valley had begun to develop, by continuous and gradually accelerating stages, a complex society based on the efficient management of land and other resources, sophisticated technical skills, and the beginnings of hieroglyphic writing.

Shortly before 3000 B.C., this process culminated in the unification of the entire land under a single ruler, an event that the Egyptians considered the beginning of their dynastic history. For the next three thousand and years, Egypt was to remain a major cultural-and often military-power. Today, man is still impressed by the rich legacy of this extraordinary civilization: huge structures, extensive written records, diverse artistic achievements, such as portraits carved in stones, and spectacular gold-works.

In Ivan Van Sertima's (1984) book ‘Blacks in Science: Ancient and Modern’, countless examples of African science from articles by several different authors are given. A few examples are listed below:

1. The Dogon of Mali had an excellent understanding of the solar system and the universe 700 years ago. The Dogon had detailed knowledge of a white dwarf companion star to Sirius A which was not visible to the naked eye. Western scientists stated that there was no way that the Dogon could have uncovered this knowledge on their own and that it must have been supplied to them by a visiting European or an extra- terrestrial visitor.
2. The Yoruba tribe had an exceedingly complex number system based on twenty.
3. A 35,000 year old, fossilized baboon bone found in Zaire, the Ishango bone, is covered with a series of notches or tally marks, which makes it the oldest mathematical object in the world, and the world's earliest number system. The bone is also a lunar phase counter, which suggest that African women were the first mathematicians since keeping track of menstrual cycles requires a lunar calendar.
4. There was a very accurate calendar system in Eastern Africa by the first millenium B.C. (Lynch & Robbins 1984).
5. A megalithic site similar to stonehenge dating to 300 B.C. was found in northwest Kenya. Its nineteen basalt pillars were aligned extremely accurately with the stars and constellations (Lynch & Robbins 1984).
6. A model of a glider dated to the 4th or 3rd century B.C. was found in Egypt. The structure of the object was most definitely aerodynamically designed (Messiha et al. 1984).
7. An iron-ore mine in Swaziland, the oldest found in the world, was dated as 43,000 years old. The ore specularite was used as a cosmetic and pigment (Zaslavsky 1984).
8. Africans developed technology to build sea-worthy boats and the ability to navigate over long expanses of ocean . There is ample evidence to suggest that African explorers reached South and Central America long before Columbus made his journeys (Malloy 1984).
9. 1500 to 2000 years ago near Lake Victoria, carbon steel was made in blast furnaces. The temperature achieved in the furnaces, 1,800C, was much higher than was managed in Europe until modern times (Van Sertima 1984).
10. By the year 1000 AD, in the Middle East, Ibn al-Haytham, a Muslim mathematician and astronomer, was studying atmospheric refraction, and by the 1100s a fellow Muslim, geographer Abu Abdallah Muhammad al-Idrisi, divided the world into seven climatic zones. Climate changes have long since tuned vast savannas and grasslands bodering Africa’s Sahara into desert. Translations of Arabic texts into Latin help spread knowledge of such instruments as the astrolabe.

 So if African were and still ‘warlike’, ‘ferocious’, ‘dark’, ‘savage’, ‘barbarous’, ‘heathen’, ‘uncivilized’ and more recently ‘underdeveloped’, how come modern Western Science has still not found and understood the advanced technology Africans used to the Great Pyramid over 46,000 years ago? This enlightenment which shall bring light to the eyes of man’s understanding is what the West is failing to accept.