First of all, Africans were not ''stark illiterates'' when Europeans arrived. Thousands of Africans were educated. Universities existed on the continent. After the collapse of Egypt following the Arab invasion, Islam and Arabic became the cultural vehicles of progress in the Nile Valley and beyond. Africans with proximity to this dispensation became part and parcel of that new world. The Timbuktu Manuscripts, several hundred thousand volumes of written text covering science to astronomy, architecture to religion, and dated from at least the 12th century, are clear evidence that knowledge and education were never extinguished on the African continent, and in fact blossomed, with numerous treatises on medicine, literature, and law written in several African languages by African scholars.

The Arabic script incidentally is little more than a corrupted form of the ancient African writing system of hieroglyphs.

The Arabic script directly came from the Nabatean script, which came from the Aramaic script, which came from the Phonecian script, which came from the African Hieroglyphs of the Nile Valley.

''Africans have had enough time to blah blah blah''. What, 50 years?

You think 50 years is ''more than enough time'' because you are not very thoughtful.

Tell me. Are YOU not an African?

What have YOU done personally to move Africa away from ''backwardness''? Stop projecting your own personal racial insecurities onto ''Africans''. Do YOUR bit and leave the rest to others to do theirs. Afterall today, many Africans work far harder than you to make life better for their fellows, so they by right should be pointing their fingers at YOU, and asking what have YOU done?

Quote
First of all, Africans were not ''stark illiterates'' when Europeans arrived. Thousands of Africans were educated. Universities existed on the continent.  After the collapse of Egypt following the Arab invasion, Islam and Arabic became the cultural vehicles of progress in the Nile Valley and beyond. Africans with proximity to this dispensation became part and parcel of that new world. The Timbuktu Manuscripts, several hundred thousand volumes of written text covering science to astronomy, architecture to religion, and dated from at least the 12th century, are clear evidence that knowledge and education were never extinguished on the African continent, and in fact blossomed, with numerous treatises on medicine, literature, and law written in several African languages by African scholars.

The Arabic script incidentally is little more than a corrupted form of the ancient African writing system of hieroglyphs.

The Arabic script directly came from the Nabatean script, which came from the Aramaic script, which came from the Phonecian script, which came from the African Hieroglyphs of the Nile Valley.

My friend STOP using Egypt to cover the backside of the rest of Africa. The Egyptians are Africans but they are not exactly in the same category as the ''pure'' blacks of Sub-saharan Africa down south.

Excluding the north Africans what else do you have to defend your position? I guess nothing.

Taking Nigeria as part of the Sub-saharan blacks, which universities existed in Nigeria before the coming of the Europeans?

How many were educated

You are still repeating your 50 years of independence thing. I asked you to tell me what the people occupying Nigeria were doing before the Europeans came and you didn't do so.

The fact is if Africans were not weak, they wouldn't have been colonized

and your talk of 50 years of existence as Nigeria wouldn't have been necessary by now. By the way I don't think you realize the magnitude of what 50 years represent. 50 years of independence is enough to make Nigeria at least the fifth largest economy in the world if you don't know.

I DON'T believe that whites are superior to the blacks. But what I believe is Africans weren't naturally made to be like the Europeans and have the same culture with them. In other words, before Africans can match the Europeans in brain contest, they have to be TRAINED to live like an European. If you send an African black baby to be raised in a 100% white European community, that African baby will grow up programmed to behave exactly like an European. And if you bring in a white baby into the Massai tribe of Kenya, that white baby will grow up to behave like a massai.

Blackteeth:

This is Brownteeth. I was banned two days ago, so here I am with a new ID.

@Koruji. Am yet to believe that all of humanity came from Africa. And there has been no concrete proof to show that. If they are saying that it was a change in environment that made the blacks who migrated from Africa to other regions of the world to have a white skin, pointed nose, straight hair and all that, Why are the blacks in foreign lands at present not transforming to whites or Asians in their host countries? Saying that blacks transformed to whites is like saying that human beings transformed to monkeys cos the began to spend more time on top of trees. Besides who among us is an eye witness to the black to white transformation? NOBODY!! Forget those stories.


@ROSSIKE. First of all do try to make your comments as short as possible to enable an easy and quick grasp of the message you intend passing across. I think you depend so much on the history books without using your brain to question the things you read. Those things you wrote there may be true but I am still trying to let you know that the Egyptian Africans who played those roles thousands of years are not the same as the Africans we have today spread across Sub Saharan Africa. If actually they were the same, that knowledge of civilization should have been passed to the later generations. But it didn't happen cos when the Europeans visited Africa, Africans were stark illiterates. That knowledge should NEVER have escaped like that. But the fact is those things you mentioned are all history. It's time for us to focus on the present age.

I asked you to explain how the TEACHER EVENTUALLY BECAME AN ILLITERATE AND HAD TO BE MADE LITERATE BY THE STUDENT HE TAUGHT, but you brushed it aside.

Anyway, the main thing is whether Africa ushered in civilization or not, it still doesn't change the fact that Africans are presently backward and the focal question is why are they backward? I think you have been beating about the bush with your history book. This is the question you should answer straight away. Don't tell me slave trade or colonization please because Africans have had enough time to fix the damage.

sage:

The award for biggest not-so-smart person on Nairaland goes to Rossike for typing rubbish of the highest order.

The guy has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. I guess he must be joking or something


Let me set a few things straight here


1. There is NO such thing (and has never been any such thing) like a "black African gene" or any thing similar. It is only the worlds most silly people would even spout nonsense like that.

2. The Australasians are Asians, completely Asians. They have no connections to Africans whatsoever irrespective of their skin colour or hair. Science has proven that

3. Africa is a continent of diverse colours from time immemorial. Before somebody comes on here to talk nonsense, they should learn about the history of places like North Africa. Some people here dont know WTF they are talking about

Firstly the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. I'll leave you and your racist masters in Europe to distinguish what a ''pure black'' is from what a ''non-pure black'' is. References to ancient Egypt are references to a black African civilization. If you have a problem with that reference, start another thread on it.

The universities of Mali were black African established and run universities. Institutes like the Sankore University in Timbuktu educated thousands of Africans in various fields from law to religion, literature to medicine and the sciences.

See my post below on the Timbuktu Manuscripts, which you can google as well.

Which universities existed even DURING the time the Europeans ruled Nigeria? Which universities did THEY build in their 80 year rulership of Nigeria?

Answer? A big fat ZERO

It was only AFTER they were driven out, in 1960, that we, AFRICANS, began to build universities in Nigeria.

Today we've built over a hundred universities in Nigeria alone. So we have NOTHING to 'thank' them for since they did NOTHING.

Probably more than were educated by the time the Brits left 80 yrs later with our literacy rate at 5% at independence.

The reason Nigerians are educated today is because NIGERIANS are in power, who INVESTED HEAVILY in mass education from independence till date.

Tell that to your do-nothing oyibo looting masters.

Life doesn't work like that. A young and complex country like Nigeria with a turbulent history, which only got its first modern university in 1960, WILL HAVE TO go through decades of turmoil  and nation building before becoming a fully developed nation.

What is wrong with the behaviour of a Masai?

koruji:

@Blackteeth
You truly are ignorant. My stomach turns as I attempt to read the vomit proceeding from you.

Can you tell me your purpose for these things you are writing? It certainly not for enlightenment. Are you writing some kind of school paper? Are you engaged in a mind warping religious experiment? Are you drunk or on drugs? Are you depressed? Are you. . .?

I am fumbling for reasons on your behalf because it is hard to believe someone would keep insisting that he, his parents, his nation and his race are either DIVINELY CURSED or GENETICALLY DESIGNED TO BE DUMB.

koruji:

I think you meant to commend Rossike, at least on this thread, and disparage Brownteeth/Blackteeth/john_mace for the vomit that keeps coming from them. This is because most of what you wrote below actually agrees with what Rossike have being writing, except the Australasian thing. He is actually not saying they are Africans - but blacks. What genetic study suggests is that the Australian aboriginals were among the first set of people to leave the African continent 40-60 thousand years ago.

In essence, genetics is telling us that every human being is African - Africans dispersed by many factors through out the world over many thousands of years.

sage:

No I actually ment the guy I originally referenced
>>>Ok then. The guy doesn't seem to be complaining anyway.

The term "black" is a completely meaningless term to be honest. Australasians are connected to other Asians like Japanese people etc regardless of skin colour. genetic studies prove that. They are about the least connected to Africans of everybody on earth.
>>>The question is why is that so?
The answer actually bolsters the out-of-Africa hypothesis even more. Look at it like this: Who are the people likely to have the most distance in gene differentiation from those that remained on the African continent. That would be the group that split off first - at least among living humans. That would be who? The Australasians.

It is easy to equate black with Africa because that is the global interpretation. In essence, we (all humans) are all Africans, and the suggestion that "The Black African Gene" is somehow defective is plain crazy. Africa/Blacks have suffered, and continue to suffer, from external aggressors and internal traitors (these remains the biggest problems we currently face) - these are the things we need to get rid off, then we will blosom again.

Also with regards to North Africa, some people dont actually understand the history of that part of our continent. People need to do their research before they start speaking on what they dont know anything about. Not all Africans are dark skinned and the indigenous populations of North Africa is testament to a diverse continent.
>>>Hence, no fool should come here talking about a defective "Black African Gene"

Blackteeth:

Go through my posts and tell me where I have directly said Africans were genetically designed to be dumb. I am only asking if it is the likely situation of things.

I DON'T believe that whites are superior to the blacks. But what I believe is Africans weren't naturally made to be like the Europeans and have the same culture with them. In other words, before Africans can match the Europeans in brain contest, they have to be TRAINED to live like an European. If you send an African black baby to be raised in a 100% white European community, that African baby will grow up programmed to behave exactly like an European. And if you bring in a white baby into the Massai tribe of Kenya, that white baby will grow up to behave like a massai.

Blackteeth:

@Koruji. I still have to repeat that I never made a direct statement to say Africans were cursed. When I said only a revealation of a divine curse will explain the situation in Africa, I said it out of frustration because the economic and political reasons you mentioned as an excuse has not truly explained the situation in Africa. So what other cause is there again to hang on to?

koruji:

@Blackteeth
There are a 1001 ways to say the same thing, so you don't have to make a direct statement - but your statement actually came really close to being direct. [size=14pt]When you use the word ONLY in regard to a divine curse on Africans[/size] you rule out all other explanations. May be that is not what you wanted to say, but that is what you said!

You claim that "the economic and political reasons" has not truly explained the African situation. However, you reject them off-hand. Even if you are not convinced the best option is to engage in extensive reading - thank God we are living in this century where the truth about ancient Africa, and not the balderwash the racists wrote hundred of years ago, is being revealed with each passing day. On the other hand you "hang on to" a curse as the ONLY explanation? Are you already sure of that? Again, the best option is to read widely about the subject to enlighten yourself. Most of your explanations here are EXACTLY THE SALVE THOSE WHO DID US HARM APPLIED TO THEIR CONSCIENCES - First, it was that Africans were animals, oh wait they are not animals but cannibals, then it was that if they are people just like us their enslavement is justificed because Noah cursed Canaan in the Bible, they have the color of the devil, etc.

Imagine Haiti which gained independence in 1804, after over 200 years is still a poor country, infact haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere. What is indeed wrong with the black race?

@Rosike,
thank you for the enlightenment on the timbuktu manuscripts.
I however noticed that the oldest among those manuscripts were dated back to just 12th or 13th century AD and contains heavy arabic influence. If you will quickly go through arabic history,you will see that those timbuktu stuffs could not be called african civilization.they are arabic.

As far back as 6th century bc, europe already had very elaborate literary culture. The literary style of old testament of the Bible is a good example.

Nsibidi scripts is a very good eye opener for me and it really supports my position on the subject.

Firstly the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. I'll leave you and your racist masters in Europe to distinguish what a ''pure black'' is from what a ''non-pure black'' is. References to ancient Egypt are references to a black African civilization. If you have a problem with that reference, start another thread on it.

I don't know which ancient black Egyptians you are talking about because according to the investigation carried out on the Egyptian mummies together with pictorial evidence showed that the ancient Egyptians weren't accurately and exactly as black as we are. Even though they were Africans. My focus is on the Sub Saharan black man that we belong to. Saying the ancient Egyptians were black is an inaccurate form of description. The ancient Egyptians had black skin, but they are not the same stock with the sub Saharan black man.

This university you are talking about was clearly brought in by the Persian Arabs of that time. It's not like the Malians set up the universities without foreign input.

The fact that the university used  Arabic, a language owned by the Persians, simply showed that the visit by the Persian Arabs influenced the setting up of those universities. If the university was the original idea of the Malians, a Malian local language would have been used in those manuscripts.

Which universities existed even DURING the time the Europeans ruled Nigeria? Which universities did THEY build in their 80 year rulership of Nigeria?

Answer? A big fat ZERO

It was only AFTER they were driven out, in 1960, that we, AFRICANS, began to build universities in Nigeria.

Today we've built over a hundred universities in Nigeria alone. So we have NOTHING to 'thank' them for since they did NOTHING.

Your response is really funny indeed. YES no universities existed during the Europeans stay, but you failed to realize something. Don't you think that the coming of the Europeans opened our eyes and made us see what we were lacking and how far behind we were? The simple truth is that even though the Europeans did not establish any universities, they inspired us to do so after we interacted with them and saw for ourselves that we needed the kind of education they foreigners possessed. They fact that we copied some aspect of their university system is a proof of the influence. The truth remains that if Africa wasn't visited by the Europeans, Africa wouldn't have been what it is today. We would have been more backward than we are today. Believe it or not. AFRICA'S INTERACTION WITH THE EUROPEANS DID MORE GOOD TO US THAN BAD. open your eyes and realize it.

Probably more than were educated by the time the Brits left 80 yrs later with our literacy rate at 5% at independence.

The reason Nigerians are educated today is because NIGERIANS are in power, who INVESTED HEAVILY in mass education from independence till date.

Tell that to your do-nothing oyibo looting masters.


Who told you that? Weren't there high schools established by the English?

I have come across some secondary schools built around 1929 by the English men. Go and ask your father how the quality of education was under the English supervision. You have to understand that the English men started it first before we took over from where they stopped by establishing universities.

AFRICA'S INTERACTION WITH THE EUROPEANS DID MORE GOOD TO US THAN BAD. open your eyes and realize it.

A BLACK PERSON IS A BLACK PERSON. PERIOD.

This is a highly inaccurate reading of what transpired. Persian Arabs did not ''bring in'' the universities in Timbuktu any more than Irish Europeans ''brought in'' the University of Lagos.

Also, it is YOU who needs to open your eyes. You don't know how ''backward'' we would have been had European SLAVE SHIPS not arrived 500 years ago, turning everything upside down. Their ''visit'' did not start with colonialism. Their ''visit'' started with their slave ships berthing and threatening coastal village chiefs to sell their people or risk annihilation. This led to wars among ethnic groups and tribes, and a trade that disrupted African civilization like nothing else has, paving the way for colonisation.

How many?

2?

3?

20?

Stop deceiving yourself. Go and ask your father how many people were opportuned to enjoy education under colonial rule. I'll answer for you. Less than 7% of the population. The English left you after their 80 year rule with a 7% literacy rate. Today, that figure has jumped to 75% in only 50 years of Nigerian leadership.

oyinda.:

This is a most ridiculous comment. you need serious deliverance.

Horus:

Between 1804 and 1915[b], Haiti was one of the richest country in the western hemisphere before the American invasion and occupation of Haiti (1915-1934)[/b].  The Americans after killing more than 12.000 haitians liquidated the National Bank of Haiti, imposed forced labor on much of the population and prohibited Blacks from entering hotels and restaurants. With the pretext of protecting the Haitian gold reserves, they carried 100% of the gold off to strong boxes in New York. And you blame "The Black Gene" for this situation in Haiti?

Blackteeth:

Why didn't you prove me wrong rather than throwing a futile insulting statement and disappearing.

Are you meant to tell me that Haiti was relatively developed before 1915? can you really say that?

A BLACK PERSON IS A BLACK PERSON. PERIOD.

If that is what you are saying then we can safely conclude that a white person is a white person too. Anyone with a very fair skin is simply a white person. The Asians, Arabs, latinos and Africans with fair skins are whites as well. Are you now satisfied?

This is a highly inaccurate reading of what transpired. Persian Arabs did not ''bring in'' the universities in Timbuktu any more than Irish Europeans ''brought in'' the University of Lagos.

I think I may have used the wrong word ''brought in'' rather than saying influenced. This university you are talking about mainly taught Quranic principles.

Since the Quran/Islamic faith originated from the then Persia, it means that the setting up of the university was influenced by the Persians during the course of the interaction Mali had with the Arabs.

Also, it is YOU who needs to open your eyes. You don't know how ''backward'' we would have been had European SLAVE SHIPS not arrived 500 years ago, turning everything upside down. Their ''visit'' did not start with colonialism. Their ''visit'' started with their slave ships berthing and threatening coastal village chiefs to sell their people or risk annihilation. This led to wars among ethnic groups and tribes, and a trade that disrupted African civilization like nothing else has, paving the way for colonisation.

Then tell me why Africans were so weak that the Europeans came with their ships and cratered them away as easy as taking out chickens from the poultry? Why didn't the Europeans go to Asia and the middle east to get slaves? Weren't there human beings there?

How many?

2?

3?

20?

How do you expect the English men to set up 1000 schools for you at a go in place where a single school never existed?

oyinda.:

How can you say that  interaction with Europeans brought Africa more good than bad. You obviously do not know your history.
my opinion is that you will have to learn the hard way. you are best left to wallow in your inferiority complex.

Anyways, in my opinion, inferiority complex is one of the hindrances that have kept us from advancing.
how can one progress when he has internalized the idea that he is inferior to all of his peers?


You ask me to prove you wrong that blacks have a st[size=1pt].[/size]upid gene. are you kidding me? The "gene" theory has been  proved wrong and debunked a long time ago!!
the europeans came up with the "scientific fact" that blacks had smaller brains and silly genes etc. This racist pseudoscience was used  to justify a lot of the atrocities they committed against blacks, native americans and dark skinned people.
Even the nazis used the same argument on the jews. i.e pure aryan race.
And you are asking me, a black person, to agree with you that I have a st[size=1pt].[/size]upid gene. You are a fool for that. I will insult you. yes. because you have already insulted me with this topic and your racist posts about blacks.

Whites are Caucasians whose ancestral home is Europe. Blacks are Negroids whose ancestral home is Africa.

The ''university I am talking about''?  Mali had several universities (plural). They actually have NAMES, those universities, in case you didn't notice. And no, they did not ''teach mainly quranic principles''. Why don't you research what courses those universities specialised in? I even listed the courses above, yet that flew completely over your head. I think the problem is nothing to do with ''black people''. The problem is that YOU are not very bright.

I already explained to you the political circumstances in which the universities were established. Talking about this or that 'influence' is silly, because there is no part of the world that is not 'influenced' by the other. Europe itself is heavily influenced by what they learnt from Africa, Asia etc.

You might as well credit Africans for the cities you have in Europe today, plus all their buildings.

Is there any building in Europe as old as the Sudanese pyramids?

Both I and VALIDATOR have outlined in clear terms the factors militating against African development on this thread. Go back and read and stop repeating questions after they've been answered.

And Europe DID start their slave trade first with Asians, but this became uneconomical for them after the Asians proved too 'physically weak' for the task.

You are wrong to state 'a single school never existed'. Schools existed in the north, and in the south, artisan training schools, apprenticeships, and guilds existed. How else did we manage to train our blacksmiths, our gold miners, our textile makers, our sculptors, our carpenters, our farmers, our hunters, and our pastoralists?

Not a single one of those tasks can be performed without specialised training.

What you should say is that modern/western educational institutes were not in existence. And nothing stopped the English from setting up ''1000 schools''. They should have set up 5,000 in fact, considering the billions of dollars they made from exporting our resources. Instead, only a tiny, negligible minority was granted modern education. There is nothing to be ''grateful'' about THAT. What you SHOULD be grateful for is that NIGERIANS took over power, without which YOU would be a village peasant today, and an illiterate one at that.

Which would be probably no less than you deserve given the questionable use to which you've put your education around here.

Secondly, what do you think Nigeria/Africa would have been like if we were on a planet of our own and never came into contact with the Europeans? The Europeans brought in new knowledge to us including most of the things we use in our daily lives Today ranging from toothbrush to Cars and modern medicine . I doubt if Africans would have had this much knowledge and enjoying these wonders of  technology at the level of this present day if actually we were on different planet away from contact with the Europeans. I believe Africans may invent one or two on their own, but not close to the present day level of knowlegde.

john_blaze:

@blackteeth

I am quite impressed with your knowledge and background of the subject matter, you have really done your homework before coming on this thread. To say the least the average african lacks what is referred to as "auto-transcendence" that is to say to ability to move from one stage of civilisation to the next, we simply remained in our primitive state for thousands of years untill the Europeans(a more advanced civilisation) came and colonised us,teaching us pretty much everything we know today.

Another reason why I feel africa is so underdeveloped is because we ascribe so much to the spiritual,the average african is very spiritual and this prevents the development of free thought and expression, people who made remarks that was contrary to the status quo were killed or ostracised, but in other civilisation except african freedom of thought thrived and that in the sense broaden their civilsation.

we should learn to confront the truth which in most cases in very bitter, africa is simply a continent that has refused to develop.