BLACK HISTORY MONTH
Africa's gifts to civilization
Part One
By Pat
Chin
The first Africans in the Western Hemisphere were not
slaves. In fact, mounting scientific evidence strongly supports
the view that Africans crossed the Atlantic Ocean more than 100
years before Christopher Columbus reached the Americas.
Columbus' voyages, funded by the Spanish crown, sparked the
trans-Atlantic slave trade that launched the African holocaust.
Native peoples, whose ancestors were the true discoverers of
America, were also victims of the genocidal slaughter unleashed
by the Europeans in their lust for territory and profits.
Racism was most likely invented to justify the enslavement
of African people. An ideology deeply rooted in white
supremacy, racism continues to affect the lives of millions
some 500 years after Columbus first crossed the Atlantic,
laying the basis for capitalist exploitation and colonial
plunder.
The myth that Europe introduced civilization to Africa
complements the racist lie that Black people are half-animals
and therefore inferior. The vast kingdom of the Congo, to cite
just one example, had been in existence for hundreds of years
before the Portuguese arrived in West Africa in the 15th
century.
"There can be no doubt," wrote African-American historian
Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, "that the level of culture among the
masses of Negroes in West Africa in the fifteenth century was
higher than that of northern Europe, by any standard of
measurement--homes, clothes, artistic creation and
appreciation, political organization and religious
consistency."
It is widely accepted in scientific circles, however
begrudgingly by some, that hominids--the ancestors of all human
beings--first appeared on earth some five million to eight
million years ago in Africa. It is not illogical to believe,
then, that this is where civilization first developed.
Three golden ages
Dr. John Henrik Clarke documented three "golden ages of
grandeur" involving massive state and empire building in
ancient Africa. "The first two reached their climax and were in
decline before Europe as a functioning entity in human society
was born," noted Clarke.
It all began around 6,000 B.C. when Egypt emerged as the
first organized nation, inspired largely by the cultural
influences of Black Africa. Development then spanned the period
of three great successive empires, starting in 1062 A.D. with
the rise of Ghana, the Mali nation with its legendary capital
at Timbuktu, and the Songhai. It ended when the European slave
trade broke up West Africa's coastal states and expanded
further into the interior.
On this vast continent in ancient times fire and tools were
used for the first time. Medical practice was later developed
and the first phonetic writing system was invented in Egypt.
The drum was used for long-distance communication in a way that
rivaled the telegraph.
Raw materials were mined and metals forged. In fact,
scientific evidence now proves that Africans were producing
carbon steel some 2,000 years ago on the shores of Lake
Victoria in furnaces unmatched until the 19th century by the
Europeans.
During the long periods of ascendancy, science, technology
and the arts flourished. The calendar was invented and
agricultural science grew in early Africa, several thousand
years before the cultivation of crops on any other continent.
Africans used mathematics for trading and astronomy as well as
for executing great engineering feats--from rope suspension
bridges to massive stone structures, including the pyramids of
Egypt and the Sudan.
Some ancient sites, including the pyramids, were aligned
with the stars, reflecting an early knowledge of astronomy. In
fact, at around the same time that the steel furnace was
discovered, scientists found an astronomical observatory in
Kenya dated 300 B.C.
"It was the ruins of an African Stonehenge, with huge
pillars of basalt like the stumps of petrified trees lying at
angles in the ground. Each stone was aligned with a star as it
rose in 300 B.C.," wrote Guyanese scholar, Prof. Ivan Van
Sertima.
"This evidence attests to the complexity of prehistoric
cultural developments in sub-Saharan Africa," concluded the
scientists who measured the site. "It strongly suggests that an
accurate and complex calendar system based on astronomical
reckoning was developed by the first millenium B.C. in eastern
Africa."
Knowledge of astronomy
Even more amazing was the discovery of a complex knowledge
of astronomy among the Dogon people of West Africa, whose
centuries-long understanding of the universe matches later
scientific "discoveries."
The Dogon lived in the Republic of Mali, some 200 miles from
the capital of Timbuktu. They knew of the rings of Saturn, the
moons of Jupiter and the spiral structure of the Milky Way
galaxy. They knew that the universe was composed of billions of
stars spiraling in space and that the moon was barren.
They also knew, said Van Sertima, "far in advance of their
time, intricate details about a star which no one can see
except with the most powerful of telescopes. They not only saw
it. They observed or intuited its mass and its nature. They
plotted its orbit almost up until the year 2,000. And they did
all this between five and seven hundred years ago."
It is not entirely clear how the Dogon were able to detect a
companion star within the Sirius star system so dense that a
German astronomer viewed the white dwarf in only 1862, using
the most advanced instrument of that day. But scientists have
unearthed evidence which suggests the mountain-dwelling Dogon
might have used telescopes as did the ancient Egyptians during
Egypt's African-dominated period.
Galileo himself reportedly insisted that "the ancients used
telescopes." Well before 1609, when he built one in Venice,
Africa in fact had an astronomical system based on mathematics.
This was long before 1202, when Hindu numerals were first
introduced into Western Europe.
"Among the earliest evidence of the use of numbers is a find
in Africa in the Congo," wrote Van Sertima. "These are
markings--a notation count--on a bone 8,000 years old."
Scientists believe the bone was used as a lunar calendar. It's
the first of its kind found in Africa and one of the world's
original calendars.
Mathematics was also used for trading and for engineering
projects, from pyramids to palaces, churches and ceremonial
centers.
The building of "Great Zimbabwe," a massive stone complex
located in sub-Saharan Africa, required tremendous engineering
skill. It was once a seat of civilization, the development of
which was not restricted to Egypt in the north. "Great
Zimbabwe" was in fact one of over 200 stone villages scattered
across Zimbabwe and Mozambique. After the pyramids, it was one
of the most enormous construction sites found in Africa. But
even before "Great Zimbabwe" rose to prominence, Africans in
the south had dug the most ancient mines discovered on the
continent.
Another great feat of African civilization involved
navigation in the search for trade routes and the crossing of
the Atlantic at least 100 years before Columbus' unfortunate
arrival in the Western Hemisphere.
Part Two will cover the pre-Columbian presence of
Africans in America and in early Asia and Europe. But no work
would be complete without an analysis of the economic and class
basis of the European trade in human cargo snatched from the
African continent.
Sources:
Clarke, John Henrik, Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan
Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism, 1993;
Du Bois, W. E. Burghardt, The World and Africa: An inquiry into
the part which Africa has played in world history, 1965;
Josephy, Jr., Alvin M., 500 Nations, 1994; Van Sertima, Ivan ,
ed., Blacks in Science: ancient and modern, 1983; Van Sertima,
Ivan, They Came Before Columbus, 1976.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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