BKayy:

No doubt, there is always a first.
But there is a high chance that names we know today are not actually the first or even humans.
Most are a reference, probably to what the place or people are known for (attitude or otherwise) eg Obi Ekwensu, Nkerehi, Ámá enyi, ogbu n'abalị in Ikwerre Rivers state Etc.
All these things you see on Wikipedia or one old man will wake up and start counting imaginary children of one mystical man as the founders of the community is fallacy.

Igboland has been in continuous inhabitation for thousands of years. Carbon dating of things excavated from there confirms it.

The Funniest ones are those that quote 15 century, 16 etc on their town and ascribe it to a mystical founder but can't explain why there are towns with related names in their zone.

When we are ready to be truthful to ourselves, we will come to the understanding that Eri is not the founder of Igbo. He is an Igbo man like everybody else.

Culture, Customs and Language is not something that be formed in an instant but evolves to attain climax after hundreds or thousands or years. That climax is what we call distinct ethnicity. No matter how much you try to erode it, it will still miraculously survive because it took time to be formed.
Igbo is one of it. Probably the oldest in Nigeria.

Ancient Igbo people the whites met placed little importance in it because like they told the whites "Igbo dị omimi" Meaning "Igbo is a mystery"
Then the whites saw it as lack of Knowledge but today they no longer classify towns or ascribe their history to a particular man if it was not recorded and if it is will be noted that it was just the name.

I know what you are talking about. You see, in my findings I have discovered that what we know as Igbo today was not Igbo like this thousands of years ago. In fact back then it wasn't Igbo, but a lot of it has been carried over to this later time, including language and some hardcore traditional African beliefs. Before Igbo we know now, there was a prehistoric time of existence of the people (perhaps this is where Igbo di omimi comes in). This prehistoric people were likely related by blood to the Yoruba, the Akans, Ewe, Ejagham etc etc eons ago. I called this years ago on this nairaland, a SUPER RACE.

Eri, in my knowledge and understanding was the first "Igbo" to be. Igbo here, describes the people as we know today. The coming of Eri and his group marked the closing of another previous age. This prehistoric people before Eri were not wholesomely "Igbo" as we know today and as you said may not even be wholly human. Hence this is the reason the Igbo history today begins with Eri. Not that culture did not exist before he came. There was culture. But that culture was not wholesomely "Igbo" as we know today. The coming of Eri marked a new beginning. That is it.

ScamHunter:


Unless you're claiming that our ancestor lied. Before the whiteman came, Ndigbo or Ndi gboo had clear oral tradition that was passed from generation to generation. Father to children. This is what we are talking about not some research. For instance, if you go to my village, every knowledgeable person will give you the same history. Compare to Konta Kinte of Roots that his American descendants traced their ancestry to the Gambia using exactly the same family tree. If it is not applicable in your part of Igbo, do not think that this oral tradition died off in all Ala Igbo.

I have an idea of what he's saying. What he is talking about goes beyond Eri. Your ancestors did not lie at all. Their accounts are in order.

ScamHunter:


I think you are right. He was the one that deforested the jungle we now call home. Must have been terrifying. One more thing I noticed about my ancestors is that they loved having neighbors. This means that people must have been few and dangers much. This is one of the resons why they welcomed migrants and made them feel at home and adopt our place. There is a common saying in my place that Gidigidi bu ugwu eze. They wanted more people around possible for company or to help ward off attacks. We may never know the main reason.

Thanks for understanding. Like I said, it is a family tree. I am glad you know yours.
Atleast some vultures won't wake up one day to tell you that you come from Bini or Igala because they have successfully manipulated the name of your town to point towards their direction or because one fool from your community fell in love with their culture and wanted to drag your whole town with him to them like Nnamdi Azikiwe tried to do with Onitsha.

Last but not the least. It is worthy to note that during the passage of time, a particular generation of the line of one's ancestor spends much of his time in a particular place before one leaves to go to another place of discover an inhabited place to flourish. That place the generation spent their time on could be referred to as their origin.
Please try to understand this

Let me explain it further. If peradventure, you decide to leave your particular hometown now to settle forever with your kids in somewhere in Europe or America. That your hometown you now left will be considered by your successive generation as your origin (because the culture you will pass on to them will be of that your hometown which is now part of you).
They will consider it as your origin if you did not point out the place your last ancestor that migrated came from, but even if you do, it will get to a place where there will be a dead end. That dead end is mostly considered as the origin.

Humans always migrate

BKayy:

That brings me to the question one elder asked one man quoting history of others that they come from one place or the other but maintained his own clan didn't come from any place.
It goes this way "onwe onye akọ na ala o puo Ome?" meaning, "is there anybody that was planted on the land and he germinated?"

What you just described is your people's modern history. I won't like to go deeper but one thing you have to keep in mind is that any history of a particular place in Igboland that starts with the man marrying one wife is a lie.

You insult others when you say their history is a lie. And by extension, with your logic all Igbo history is a lie.

ScamHunter:


I just love this. Just check those names and compare with what we bear these days. My first ancestor with English name also had Igbo name, Ejiemeni. I've not even heard that name any other place in Ala Igbo.

Yes, their names were peculiar. Sometimes when written I can't even tell the meaning.

SlayerForever:



I have an idea of what he's saying. What he is talking about goes beyond Eri. Your ancestors did not lie at all. Their accounts are in order.

Exactly.
Eri was not the first Igbo man. He wasn't even close to the 100th Generation of Igbo lineage.

When our people perfectly understand this, the inferiority complex of trying to justify what philosophers call Hamitic hypothesis of Eri coming from Israel will be dead and buried.
Those championing it will hide their heads in shame.

Ethnicities don't form out of the blue. It takes thousands of years.

BKayy:

Exactly.
Eri was not the first Igbo man. He wasn't even close to the 100th Generation of Igbo lineage.

When our people perfectly understand this, the inferiority complex of trying to justify what philosophers call Hamitic hypothesis of Eri coming from Israel will be dead and buried.
Those championing it will hide their heads in shame.

Ethnicities don't form out of the blue. It takes thousands of years.

Anything before Eri and Aro is lost in antiquity trust me. Igbo before Eri and Aro was not necessarily Igbo sef. It is not only in the Igbo race. With what I have read I can tell you every ethnicity on earth experienced this. An ethnicity's origin when told CAN NEVER start from the absolute beginning. There's no shame there. Digging is good but there's a limit to human knowledge. Anything beyond that limit enters the realms of esoterism.

SlayerForever:




You insult others when you say their history is a lie. And by extension, with your logic all Igbo history is a lie.

Any African history that starts with someone marrying one wife is a lie.

Let me tell you something. During my years of entertaining people's history, I noticed that most of them was to make the people that are narrating it to claim dominance over others (as an Igbo man, you can get the perfect picture without me mentioning names).

BKayy:

Any African history that starts with someone marrying one wife is a lie.

Let me tell you something. During my years of entertaining people's history, I noticed that most of them was to make the people that are narrating it to claim dominance over others (as an Igbo man, you can get the perfect picture without me mentioning names).

I understand. It's part of clan pride. But all that is being a bit left behind so as to form a tighter bond within the Igbo nation.

SlayerForever:



Anything before Eri and Aro is lost in antiquity trust me. Igbo before Eri and Aro was not necessarily Igbo sef. It is not only in the Igbo race. With what I have read I can tell you every ethnicity on earth experienced this. An ethnicity's origin when told CAN NEVER start from the absolute beginning. There's no shame there. Digging is good but there's a limit to human knowledge. Anything beyond that limit enters the realms of esoterism.

That is exactly what I am saying but please, it is not just Eri and Aro but there are many that make up this contemporary Igbo we know today and must preserve.

This is why I say that modern Igbo history has not started. It will start when we regain our political independence and shape our history how we like to enshrine unity and equity among every member of the great nation.

Wasn't it few years ago that Arabs tweaked their history to make it link to Ishmael as the founding father.
History are stories which if handled properly will maintain stability and unity among those that share it.

ScamHunter:


Could you mention a rare name that are no longer used these days that any of your ancestors bore.

people still answer the names but mostly old people e.g otu, ude

BKayy:

That is exactly what I am saying but please, it is not just Eri and Aro but there are many making up this contemporary Igbo we know today and must preserve.

This is why I saw that modern Igbo history has not started. It will start when we regain our political independence and shape our history how we like to enshrine unity and equity among every member of the great nation.

Wasn't it few years ago that Arabs tweaked their history to make it link to Ishmael as the founding father.
History are stories which if handled properly will maintain stability and unity among those that share it.

Okay, I'm just saying getting to that depth of "Igbo" history before Eri and the rest may not really be possible.

All in all, not a bad idea.

BKayy:

Any African history that starts with someone marrying one wife is a lie.

Let me tell you something. During my years of entertaining people's history, I noticed that most of them was to make the people that are narrating it to claim dominance over others (as an Igbo man, you can get the perfect picture without me mentioning names).

Igbo are patri-linear so you wouldn't expect them to highlight women even in oral tradition. What we do know is that in those days, having many children was top priority and barrenness a taboo. That was why men marries as many wives as they could even up till old age. Also the need to have many other humans around was responsible for this. Having more people obviously helped in defending the homesteads.

BKayy:

No community in Igboland is founded by one person.
Most of the names Igbo communities bear is not even human names.
Some are like the 10th or 4th name of the particular community (eg Opobo).

If everybody on earth is biblically descended from Adam, then it is conceivable that some communities are descended from one ancestor.

But it is impossible to enumerate ones ancestors all the way to your original town ancestor, because our forefathers kept no written records.

I can supposedly enumerate my ancestors up to my town's ancestor, but I know there must be huge holes in them. At best, I only have about 30% of those names.

The civilization I hail from predates the 8th century according to archaeological records, so I should have around 60 direct ancestors. But at the moment, I will be able to name about 20 of them

OfoIgbo:


If everybody on earth is biblically descended from Adam, then it is conceivable that some communities are descended from one ancestor.

But it is impossible to enumerate ones ancestors all the way to your original town ancestor, because our forefathers kept no written records.

I can supposedly enumerate my ancestors up to my town's ancestor, but I know there must be huge holes in them. At best, I only have about 30% of those names.

The civilization I hail from predates the 8th century according to archaeological records, so I should have around 60 direct ancestors. But at the moment, I will be able to name about 20 of them

No my dear.
Adam and Abrahamic ancestry are folklore of Semitic people. It doesn't include us at all.

The same way we have our indigenous different folklores like Eri, Oduduwa etc is the same way the Jews have for Adam. It was recently that Arabs tweaked their to fit into it with Ishmael now serving as their own ancestor.

Adam might have existed, the same as Eri and Oduduwa but one thing is certain, he was never the first man. It is only logical if Jewish civilization can be ascribed to him as Ndigbo are ascribing their to Eri, the same as Yorubas to Oduduwa.

And please, Bible is the combination of Jewish folklore, customs and history exclusively about them and for them alone

SlayerForever:



Okay, I'm just saying getting to that depth of "Igbo" history before Eri and the rest may not really be possible.

All in all, not a bad idea.

My dear, nothing is impossible. That is where archeology comes in.
With the establishment of Igbo country, a lot will be spent regarding the aspect of archeology. Maybe I might be alive then to be part of the team that will make vital discoveries.

That aside, I am very happy that many Igbo people are taking history serious. Seeing Igbo people like Scamhunter tracing their family trees is a thing of joy to me.

I agree with Bkayy points here.
No Igbo town was found by a single man and his wives.
Every Igbo town is formed by migrant usually unrelated Igbo groups living close to each other and then merging to form a town.
Usually the one who convince the independent communities to merge as one town/clan is recorded as the founder of the town/clan, and then origin history is created to unite everyone as being decendants of this one uniting figure.
So yes! Most Oral histories in Igboland, especially one that speaks of a founder with wives are all false.

He is also right in wondering why some names keep popping up as name of independent villages making up towns far away from each other in Igboland.

Take for instance, we have "Ire village" as one of the 9 villages in Ogidi and we have Ire in Obosi, Ire in Ojoto, and "Ire villages in "other places. Common sense tells me these were same people who wandered away from each other and became United with their new neighbors, forging new identities with them.

Yet we are supposed to believe that all these Ire villages are not related, we are supposed to accept that Ogidi was a man who was a son of a man called Inwelle, who was a son of another man called Ezechumagha, who well, no one knows where he came from.

Reason also the fact that in Ogbaru, we have an Akili-Ogidi, but they are not supposed to be related to Ogidi.
We have Aboh-Ogidi as one of the villages in Ogidi, but they are not supposed to be related to all the other Aboh scattered all over Igboland, since Aboh in Ogidi is supposed to be one of the sons of a mythical figure called Ogidi.

You look at it, and you see the oral stories we were handed down to was distorted from it's very source.

What Happened is that once these group of unrelated Igbo migrants living close to each other unite to found a town, the villages severe ties with their distant relatives elsewhere and pursue unity with their new neighbors who they merged with to form a new town.
To consolidate this new formed Town Unity, an oral history that claims that all members of the new town are sons of one single ancestor and hence siblings are forged to ensure kinship and unity.
That's what I made of it all.

When we are ready to reason well, we will all sit down and realize this too, and then throw away the distorted irrational oral stories that served the ancestors who forged them, but no longer serve us today that we need a bigger unity.

IamWonderful:
So you are now tracing your generation when BBC burst your bubble of Israel lineage attachment

I tire for the scammers oh!!! Exposed globally as fraudsters!!!

Such a pity!!!