African Genius
African Genius
Junious Ricardo Stanton
The past
few weeks I have shared information about the accomplishments of Africans that
go unrecognized and overlooked due to a deliberate movement to suppress, obfuscate
and ignore African history. We spoke about early boat building, navigation of
the rivers and lakes in African and later circumnavigating the world by
Africans.
Celebrating African and Black history during
the shortest month of the years is counterproductive even though we need the
exposure. We should celebrate African history all year long, daily because it
is human history.
Let’s look
at the things we take for granted that were begun, invented and developed by
our aboriginal African ancestors. Africans developed the concept of family as a
social as well as a biological unit. It formed the basis of social organization
and culture. Africans recognized the importance of blood connections and used
those blood connection what we call families as the core foundation of their
group, tribe, clan and society.
While animals have instinctive ways
to determine leaders for example the proverbial “alpha male”, humans developed
specific methods to create formal leadership and governance. On the most
primitive level leadership was conducted by group consensus through elders who
served as leaders because of their life experiences and direct connection to
their family members. These elders were charged with not just wisdom in day to
day affairs but also with propitiating the spirit realm, serving as intermediates
between the people, the forces of nature and the invisible energies they
perceived around them.
The leaders created traditions,
rituals, and ceremonies to acknowledge births, deaths, seasonal changes and to map
the passing of the heavenly bodies. This was the origin of Adams Calendar,
Nabta Playa and the other megaliths we mentioned in previous weeks. This is also the origin of what we call
culture. These rituals and ceremonies included chants, hand clapping, foot
stomping and rudimentary instruments.
In short Africans invented
government whether it was tribal elders, tribal council, selected chiefs,
hereditary chiefs or kings and queens. As their groups expanded over territory
and their populations grew, they developed hierarchies for social
administration, they created divisions of labor, work details and they
encouraged and incorporated artistic skills into their daily lives.
So when we attend a wedding funeral
or witness governments in action remember our ancestors were the first to do
these things! When we look at Africa we see
the beginnings of social/civil organization what we now call civilization. We
see aboriginal people exchanging, battering and trading amongst themselves and
between other tribal groups. This was the beginnings of commerce across the
continent and later into Asia and Europe.
Our ancestors were the first to chop
and carve trees into boats and canoes, to weave reeds to make water tight canoes
and we were the first to use these boats, canoes and sailing vessels to trade
our surplus crops, goods and artifacts first throughout Africa
then the world.
Europeans admit the first articulated and
practiced system of ethics (Maat) originated in Africa.
Timelines indicate the first monarchy/dynasty, extensive territorial occupation
and social organization originated in Africa.
Africans had empires but they were not all created by violence and invasion,
some were some were not.
In review Africans created: social
organization; we created rites of passage to mark the growth and transition of
members within the community and determined how they each fit into the social
scheme via trial and error and later formal tradition. We invented rituals and
ceremonies, we invented trade and commerce. We created metallurgy, working in
metals like gold, bronze and iron. We invented clothing, we invented adornment,
demarcations and decorations to distinguish social status, to tell whether a
female was married was an adolescent or a male was an initiated member of the
community, a warrior or an elder. We were the first to map the heavens. We
recognized sound had power and invented music, instruments and incorporated
music and sounds into our daily activities.
We invented meaningful symbols and their recognition whether it was
hieroglyphics on papyrus, on the walls, the megaliths or Her-em-akhet (misnamed
the Sphinx by the Greeks).
We created technology whether it
was a digging stick, a rudimentary plow, the ramp, and pulley. We developed
farming techniques like crop rotation, using fire to burn the soil to give it
nutrition. We were the first fishermen. We created the first planned urban
centers and cities. We were the first educators.
I could go on but you get the
drift, we are a creative, inventive and profound people. This creativity
resides in our DNA; it is in our genes and blood. We do ourselves our ancestors
and progeny a disservice if we allow our genius to atrophy, not be fully
developed or expropriated by others for their benefit and not ours!
-30-
Ancient African Megaliths Part 2
Ancient African
Megaliths Part 2
Junious
Ricardo Stanton
In recent weeks I've shared some
little known accomplishments of African people: boat building, seafaring and
last week the astronomical and ceremonial megaliths in South Africa and the Nubian
Desert. This information sheds light on the variety of African
genius, innovation creativity and achievement.
This week I’ll share two more ancient
megalithic sites. The word megalithic describes structures made of large stones
without the use of mortar or concrete, representing definite periods of
prehistory. Europeans always point to Stonehenge in Britain
as an example of a megalith but rarely mention the African megaliths that are
thousands of years older then Stonehenge.
Two examples are the Senegambian Circles on
the border of Senegal and Gambia and the Tiya Megaliths in central Ethiopia. The
Senegambian Circles are in West Africa located on the border between Senegal and Gambia is an ancient burial ground
and ceremonial center. The Senegambia Circles date back to around the third
century B.C.
“As ancient monuments go, the stone
circles of
Senegal
and
Gambia may not be in the
same league as the Great Pyramids, Stonehenge or the
Easter
Island statues. Yet, they represent a remarkable cultural and
architectural achievement of pre-historic western
Africa.
Located in an area 100 km wide and 350 km within Senegal and Gambia are 1053
stone circles consisting of no less than 28,930 monoliths around 2 m in height
and weighing more than 7 tons each. The stone circles seem to have had a
funerary purpose. Recent excavations suggest that the stones date back
from the 3rd century B.C. to 16th century A.D., reflecting a tradition that
endured for almost two millennia. The stone circles of Senegambia are just one
of the three trans-border World Heritage properties on the
Dark
Continent. It required some geological knowledge to identify the
best laterite rocks from the nearby quarries and carve out the monoliths in
cylindrical or polygonal pillars. The stones had to be extracted in singular
pieces, which required tremendous skill. Having accomplished this, the stones
were transported and erected in the various complexes along the River Gambia.
This required a strong social order able to mobilize the hundreds of laborers
required for the erection of each circle, much like in ancient
Egypt.
As the name suggests, the Stone Circles of
Senegambia are located between the River Senegal and the River Gambia in
West Africa. Around 1 km to the east of the Sine Ngayene
complex in
Senegal
lies the quarry from which many of the megaliths were removed and processed
.” Stone Circles of Senegambia
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/stone-circles-of-senegambia.html
The megaliths at Senegambia
have been designated by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) as a World Heritage site because they recognize the
significance of the culture that produced these megaliths.
While the megaliths at Tiya are not
as old as Adam’s Calendar, Nabta Playa or the Senegambian Circles they
represent the use of large stones that have been carved and inscribed with
symbols that so far archaeologists and linguists have not been able to decode or
decipher. Researchers postulate the figures were erected and carved somewhere
between the tenth and fifteenth centuries of the Common Era.
In an academic thesis for a Masters Degree in
Tourism Development and Management on the importance of the Tiya site by Helebo
Elias, he writes “Tiya distinguishes with standing stelae, which are supposed
to be grave markers. Circles of smaller stones mark the graves. Archaeologists
dug up many skeletons, which could be dated to 1200-1400 A.D. (Gurage Zone
culture and Tourism,2017). Among the 36 currently standing stelae, 32 of them
are decorated. A sword design is frequent among the stelae. Inscribed under
UNESCO world heritage list in 1980. Since 1980, the outstanding universal value
of the Tiya megalithic site has been recognized as a World Heritage Site (WHS)
under the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. Tiya qualifies for inclusion on the
world Heritage List under Criterion I as the stelae with their enigmatic
configurations are unique as ‘a masterpiece of human creative genius.’ In
addition, they are highly representative of an expression of the Ethiopian
Megalithic period which clearly qualifies them to be included under Criterion
IV (Be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural, or
technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage (b)
in human history.”
http://etd.aau.edu.et/bitstream/handle/123456789/14871/8.%20Helebo%20Elias.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Both the Senegambian Circles and
Tiya have been designated by the United Nations Educational Scientific and
Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as World Heritage sites. The Senegambian Circles
and Tiya sites are similar to many African monuments in that they are
ceremonial funerary sites used to mark the burial places of leaders and common
folks.
The other similarity is they are
made from huge stones often weighing several tons that were dug and transported
to specific sites and crafted using tools to form precise shapes, engravings or
symbols. All this requires a set of values based upon beliefs and notions about
life and death, technological and manual skill to dig, transport, and shape and
erect the megaliths and monuments. We are talking about the fundamentals of
advanced civilizations.
We know Africans explored and
settled the continent of Africa but also the
whole globe and they carried their values, cosmology and ingenuity with them
wherever they went. We know ancient Africans were sky gazers and astronomers
who mapped the stars. Many African cultures such as the Dogan either claim they
came from other planets or that the beings who gave them their knowledge came
from the stars.
Africans invented and created
rituals, ceremonies, rites of passage and cosmologies that connected themselves
with the universe and the CREATOR (Ubuntu “I am because we are, we are because
I am” is a universal African philosophy) so it is not surprising they would
create monuments to mark what they saw in the sky and incorporated what they
saw in the heavens and believed about its origin with their personal lives and
environment on earth. The ancient admonition “As above so below” originated in Africa. The origins of cosmology, religion, ethics,
morality and philosophy were in Africa!
As I have said so many times,
Africans are an ancient and ingenious people. But we must also realize our
genius is not just about the material world it is also higher abstract thinking
that included ethics, spirituality, relationships with the universe, nature,
the social collective and each other e.g. Ubuntu, Maat and Hermetism. We ought
to celebrate and honor our ancestors and ourselves every day!!
-30-
Ancient African Megaliths
Ancient African Megaliths
Junious Ricardo Stanton
As we celebrate Black History, our
challenge is where do we begin, how do we fill in the blanks and connect the
dots to a legacy that is at least a hundred thousand years old? All too often we
think our history began with our ancestors’ enslavement and haulage to this
hemisphere, or with the earlier Arab invasions that influenced parts of the
African continent. Agreed there is much history and lessons of resiliency,
adaptation and survival we can learn from those but we must go back to the roots.
Some of us are so infatuated with
the Nile Valley
contributions, and rightly so because the remnants of those civilizations are
so awesome, we forget African people were always doing phenomenal things, being
creative and innovative in ways we don’t associate with Africa
due to our Eurocentric brainwashing and programming. There is evidence of ancient
African greatness that pre date dynastic Nubia and Kemet scattered throughout the continent.
Last week we spoke about seafaring,
how Africans were the earliest boat builders and I shared information about a
dug out canoe that was found in Nigeria
that is over eight thousand years old. This information is huge because it
shows the innovation and genius of our ancestors to navigate their environment.
We rarely associate Africans with water and seafaring but we were the first to
do it!
When we look at the continent of Africa, which by the way is the second largest on the
planet, we see remnants of greatness and genius all over. In fact when the European
invaders came upon them, they refused to believe or accept the fact they were
created by Africans! They said white people or aliens from outer space created
them.
Once they were forced to come to the conclusion
Africans did it, they suppressed much the information or use much more recent Europeans
sites as points of reference and comparison.
To be truthful there were/are some
Europeans like Albert Churchward, Basil Davidson, Robert Bauval and others who
gave Africans credit for their genius, and we are grateful for their honesty,
but it is up to us to do the research and tell our story first to ourselves
then to the world!
Way before there was Kush, Nubia, Kemit
and Aksum there were organized, settled communities throughout the African continent
that created megaliths, sky maps, sun and star calendars and living shelters
that were and still are remarkable in their lay out, construction and mystery.
Huge stones weighing tons were transported from other regions and placed in
strategic ordered locations that have astrological and energy significance. I will share a few with you and hope you will
do further research to get an idea just how awesome and creative we Africans
are.
One of the oldest discovered
megaliths in Africa is called Adam’s Calendar (a megalith is
a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either
alone or together with other stones. The word megalithic describes structures
made of such large stones without the
use of mortar or concrete, representing periods of prehistory characterized
by such constructions. (wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalith, my emphasis). Building without use of mortar or cement is a
process that is seen all over Africa!
Adam’s Calendar was discovered in South Africa quite
by accident by a pilot who flew over the region many times noticing circular
stone configurations. When one of his pilot buddies crashed into the mountains,
during the search and rescue effort he got a chance to explore and examine the
megaliths for himself.
“Adam’s Calendar is controversially
suggested to be the oldest man-made structure in the world. Sometimes
referred to as ‘African Stonehenge’, it predates both
Stonehenge
and the Great Pyramid of Giza by tens of thousands of years. Located in
Mpumalanga,
South Africa it is a standing stone
circle about 30 meters in diameter and has been estimated by some accounts to
be more than 75,000 years old. Various astronomical alignments have been
identified at the site and it is possibly the only example of a completely
functional, mostly intact megalithic stone calendar in the world.”
https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-africa/adam-s-calendar-oldest-megalithic-site-world-003160
Another fascinating site is Nabta
Playa, an ancient settlement located in the Nubian Desert many believe pre-dates
the dynastic period of Nubia
and Kemet. From the archeological evidence it appears Nabta Playa was an
urbanized community that served as a central location for astrological
observations, rituals and ceremonies. When discussing Nabta Playa many
Europeans call it the oldest site for astrological tracking and use Stonehenge
(in Britain)
as a comparative reference point. This is because they know nothing about
Adam’s Calendar which is thousands of years older than both Nabta Playa and Stonehenge.
Like Adam’s calendar Nabta Playa
had major sky mapping significance.
“Two
of these pairs align to form a line very close to a true north-south line,
and the other two pairs or gates align
to form an east-west line
. The
east-west alignment is calculated to be where the sun would have risen and set
from the summer solstice 6,500 years ago (4,500BC).
Alignments of standing stones and
megalithic structures (oval clusters of recumbent stones) extend for up to a
mile, marking north and east as well as 24 to 28 and 126 degrees east
of north, directions whose meanings are still being worked out. A ten-foot
circle composed primarily of stone slabs has four ‘windows/gates’ marked by
pairs of standing stones; the four are arranged in two pairs, one forming a
north-south line of sight and the other a line stretching from 62 to 298
degrees east of north. The latter coincides approximately with the summer
solstice sunrise
6,800 years
ago (4,800 BC), which would have fallen about 63 degrees east of north.”
http://transmissionsmedia.com/astronomical-alignments-of-some-ancient-structures/
It’s fascinating all these sites
have astronomical significance and some even speculate they are sky mapping
ceremonial centers. We discuss two more
ancient African sites next week.
-30-
Celebrate Black History All The Time
Celebrate Black
History All the Time
Junious
Ricardo Stanton
We’re in
Black History Month and we still don’t get it, African people have the oldest, longest
and most creative history of any people or ethnic group in the planet; but we
don’t do the research or study the research others have done to show just how
ingenious our ancestors were/have been.
Last year I
came across a story on a Website that showed an eight thousand year old dug out
canoe in Nigeria.
This was significant on so many levels. First of all when we think of Africa, the second largest continent on this planet, we
don’t think of Africans as being seafarers, mariners or navigators. But we
should.
What we don’t realize is Africa is a large continent that abounds with major
rivers tributaries and lakes. Thousands of years ago our ancestor learned to
build the means to navigate these waterways. We tend to only think of the Nile River
but Africa has several major rivers, lakes and
bodies of water.
The Nile
River is the world’s longest river and
is one of two that flow south to north (the Amazon River in South
America is the second). The Congo River is also a long river, but
there are others such as the Niger,
Senegal, Volta, Zambezi, Orange and Limpopo
scattered throughout the continent. Then here are the large lakes: Victoria (named by the invading English), Albert, Nyasa
and Tanganyika.
So it should come as no surprise the ancient people of Africa
learned to build canoes, sail boats or that they were expert fishermen,
swimmers and explorers.
We know ancient
Africans populated the world but we never consider the fact they did so by sea
as well as land, mainly because we still believe the lies about Africans spread
by our adversaries and enslavers.
Most maps of African out-migrations
show land routes but I’m convinced they also used rafts and boats to travel
from Africa to
Asia and beyond. Now others
postulate this theory also. “Human ancestors that left
Africa
hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no
landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete
indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had
used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via
at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas
Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.
Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at
nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at
least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7
at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these
finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa
about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus,
he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of
Asia and Europe.” Hominoids Went Out of
Africa On Rafts.
https://www.wired.com/2010/01/ancient-seafarers/
Our African
ancestors first learned to navigate water by mastering the streams, rivers and
lakes in Africa. The discovery of the eight
thousand year old canoe in Nigeria
makes the case for African technology, ingenuity and use of water to secure
food and travel from place to place.
This canoe is the third oldest in
the world. “Since the Dufuna canoe was
discovered by a local Fulani herdsman in 1987 archaeologists have been in
frenzy about the discovery. The canoe which was excavated by a combined team of
Nigerian and German archeologists in 1994 at Dufuna, has continued to amaze
them, for the simple reason that it has changed the course of history. Dufuna
is a village along the Komodugu Gana river in Fune local government area of Yobe State.
The boat was dug out from a depth of five meters beneath the earth's surface
and measured 8.4 meters in length, 0.5 meters wide and about 5 cm thick varying
at certain parts of the surface. The age of the boat has been put at about 8000
years old (6000 BC), thus, becoming the oldest boat in Africa
and third oldest on earth. The canoe belongs to the Late Stone Age period
(Neolithic Age), when humans ceased to roam the face of the earth hunting to
become herdsmen and cultivators and in the process becoming modifiers of their
environment, with complex social structures, in response to new problems and ways
of dealing with situations. ‘The discovery of this boat is an important
landmark in the history of Nigeria
in particular and Africa in general’ said the
late Dr. Omotoso Eluyemi then the Director of the National Commission for
Museums and Monuments.
‘Besides proving that the Nigerian
society was at par (if not earlier) than that of
Egypt,
Mesopotamia, and
Phoenicia,
the discovery also provides early concrete evidence that Africans have been
exploring technology to modify their environment and suit their needs. But more
importantly, the canoe has shown that people in the
Niger area had a history of
advanced technology and that they had mastered the three major items of
neolithic culture which included the fashioning, standardization and
utilization of tools according to set traditions. It gives concrete evidence of
transportation by seas as well as providing evidence of some form of long
distance commercial activities indicative of existing political and economic
structures.’”
https://www.nigeriagalleria.com/Nigeria/States_Nigeria/Yobe/Dufuna-Canoe-Yobe.html
We tend to
focus only on the Nile Valley contributions to human development, but the Nile Valley
was merely one center of advanced development. Our ancestors were innovative
and ingenious all over the continent of Africa.
We need to learn more about their genius and innovation, Black History Month is
merely the starting point.
-30-
