Here’s a bold statement to begin: much of what you think you know about African History is plain wrong. Until relatively recently, the written history of Africa was largely influenced by colonial narratives of the nineteenth century. These sources were inevitably biased, and depicted Africa as a primitive continent which was only improved by the kindness of colonial overlords (who simultaneously made a pretty penny out of plundering its natural resources). Nineteenth-century historians justified the terrible human cost of the age of Empires through this effective whitewashing of history, and only now are people seeing through the veil.

But now historians and archaeologists specialising in Africa are revealing incredible facts about what was far from a backward place, finally giving a voice to the long-dead whose stories and remarkable achievements have been ignored for too long. Ignorance about African history is not just detrimental to our understanding of the continent’s past, but the history of the world at large. Read on to learn about the richest man in history, the invention of art and mathematics, and some of the wonders of the ancient world




1. Mansa Musa, the Emperor of Mali, was the richest man in history

The great Mali Empire (c.1235-1670) became extremely wealthy due to its gold deposits, bounty of salt (once more valuable than gold in Africa) and heavy taxation on trade in West Africa. At the height of its size and wealth, Mali was ruled by the emperor Mansa Musa I (c.1280-c.1337), who was the wealthiest man in the history of the world. As the picture above shows, Mansa Musa’s prosperity was well-known in Europe. On a famous pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, he took a caravan of 60,000 men (including 12, 000 personal slaves) all clad in the finest garments.



His baggage train for this trip consisted of 80 camels, each laden with 300lbs of gold, which he had his retinue casually distribute amongst the poor along the way. This generosity was a double-edged sword in Cairo, where gold prics plummeted and took years to recover. Arab chroniclers who witnessed this astonishing caravan said that Mansa Musa even put the sun of Africa to shame. Despite his great wealth, Mansa Musa was a very devout Muslim, and his single-minded intent to reach Mecca and pay his respects meant that he made several diplomatic faux pas along the way.

2. The mighty Kingdom of Benin was known for its fabulous art
Until the late nineteenth century, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the great powers on the continent of Africa. Also known as the Edo Empire, this mighty kingdom in what is now Southern Nigeria flourished from 1440, and at its peak dominated trade from Lagos to modern day Ghana. Crucial to this dominance was the kingdom’s good relations with European nations, especially Portugal, and owing to its convenient coastline Benin more or less controlled trade between other African nations and Europe. Fantastically wealthy, the Kingdom of Benin came to be known worldwide for its superlative works of art.

Benin artists worked chiefly in cast bronze and carved ivory. The empire was ruled over by the Oba, a semi-divine figure, and much of the kingdom’s art was made to celebrate him or to adorn his palaces. Secular Benin art (artefacts not depicting the Oba or anything of religious importance) was purchased by the Portuguese and traded in Europe, where it attracted tidy sums of money. Benin was conquered by the British in 1897, who stole the jaw-dropping art adorning the Oba’s palaces. When the plundered art arrived in London, few believed that Africans could have possibly produced it.

3. Carthage was so powerful that it rivaled Rome and Greece

If you’ve been (un)fortunate enough to study Latin or Classics at school, you’ll know that the greatest rival to Rome and Greece for many years was the kingdom of Carthage. But did you know that Carthage was an African Kingdom? Carthage was founded by the Phoenicians in the 8th century BC, and is now a suburb of Tunis, the capital of Tunisia. Its site was no accident: Carthage offered good access to the Gulf of Tunis and the Mediterranean Sea, and was easily to defend against attack. Carthage grew wealthy through conquering other nations and controlling North African trade


Ancient sources tell us that Carthage became the wealthiest city in the world, helped in no small part by its aggressive policy of sinking ships belonging to rival nations and expanding its commercial interests by sending explorers to the coast of Spain and Morocco. Unlike the later Kingdom of Benin (above), Carthage did not spend so much on fine art, but invested its wealth in maintaining a vast army of mercenaries. Carthage’s iron-grip in trade and military strength inevitably put it into conflict with Rome, and thus the three bloody Punic Wars erupted between 264 and 146 BC.

4.
Mathematics began in Africa with the Lebombo Bone.


The ability to count and quantify the world around us is fundamental to human civilisation. This particular innovation all began in Africa during the Upper Paleolithic Era, and the earliest evidence for people adding-up comes from the Lebombo Bone. Named after the Lebombo Mountain range where it was found, this baboon fibula is marked by 29 notches along its length which most archaeologists have interpreted as tally-marks. Radiocarbon dating gives an age somewhere between 44, 200 and 43, 000 years ago. Debate about the object’s purpose only concerns whether the bone is a tally-chart or an astronomical calendar



Much younger, but almost as impressive, is the Ishango Bone (c.20, 000 BC). Found in DR Congo in 1960 by Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt, a Belgian geologist, the Ishango Bone is the fibula of a Baboon, and whilst its precise use remains a mystery, experts are near-unanimous that it shows evidence for arithmetic. For like the Lebombo Bone, along the length of the bone run deep scratches, which seem to be an ancient tally chart, showing that arithmetic was widespread in ancient Africa. The oldest non-African tally stick, from Czechoslovakia, is a mere 30, 000 years old.

5. Ancient Kushite Civilisation built more pyramids than the Egyptians
Did you know that there are pyramids outside Egypt and Las Vegas? The undisputed kings of the pyramid-building world, in number at least, were the Kush Empire. This civilisation arose after the fall of the 24th Dynasty of Egypt in c.1000 BC, and ruled much of the country until they were expelled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kushites eventually moved their capital to Meroë (modern Sudan) in their remaining territory. Though they had left Egypt, Egypt had not left them, for they set about building hundreds of pyramids around their new capital, 350 of which have been discovered to date.



These pyramids are grouped across five sites, and were built as funeral monuments to great people and rulers. Though they are smaller than their Egyptian forebears, the Nubian Pyramids, as they are commonly referred to, are testament to a mighty empire with copious wealth. In the 1st Century BC, Kush fought against Rome, and though the European nation was victorious, Kush was never conquered. The empire ended when its traditional industries of pottery and iron tools, dating back to Ancient Egypt, declined, and Christianity took hold of the region. Kush was formally dissolved in the 6th Century AD.

6 .

Thebes was once the largest city in the world.


At the height of Ancient Egypt, its bustling capital was Thebes, 419 miles south of Cairo where the modern settlement of Luxor now stands. Known to the Egyptians as Wase (‘City of the Sceptre’) or Nowe (‘City of Amon [an important god]’), Thebes was founded around 4, 000 BC. Long-associated with royalty, Thebes blossomed into a sprawling metropolis during the Eleventh Dynasty (2081-1938 BC), when its proximity to the Nile and the Red Sea was exploited for trade. Book IX of The Iliad, from Ancient Greece, describes how ‘in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes





In about 1500 BC, Thebes had a population of 75, 000, making it the largest city in the world, a title it held for the next 600 years. Although the Pharaohs moved their capital elsewhere on several occasions, Thebes remained an important city throughout the Ancient Egyptian period, and today it is best known for its stunning archaeological remains. The second-largest religious building in history, the Temple of Amun, was built there over the course of 2, 000 years, and Pharaohs, including Tutankhamun, were buried at the famous Valley of the Kings in spectacular tombs for over 500 years.

7.

Africans were seafaring before anyone else
An obvious fact, if you read the first item on this list, but still an astonishing thing to bear in mind. Having evolved in Africa, ancient hominids appear to have been struck by wanderlust, and began taking their ships beyond local rivers to the great blue sea. Stone tools found on the Philippine island of Luzon suggest that the journey of around 10, 000 miles was made as early as 777, 000 years ago. The mind boggles as to how ancestors of Homo sapiens could have made a trip which is extremely difficult even today in such rudimentary vessels.

Ancestors of Homo sapiens reached Crete in the Mediterranean on rafts at least 130, 000 years ago, and left behind stone axes which were found in 2010. Although it is possible that they were simply blown off course, the Luzon evidence suggests it could well have been a deliberate voyage. History’s most famous African seafarers were the Ancient Egyptians. They built advanced vessels complete with rudders and sails, knowledge that was vital to the expansion and flourishing of their civilisation. They also built warships big enough to transport whole armies, which enabled them to attack and conquer surrounding territories.

8.


Autopsies and Caesarean-sections were carried out in Uganda long before the arrival .
An important part of colonial propaganda was the idea that Africans were living in appallingly primitive conditions that were only lifted when European settlers arrived. Crucial to the idea of a primitive Africa improved by kindly colonial overlords was the claim that local medicine was brutal and ineffective. People who arrived with this narrative in mind were thus shocked to see medical procedures successfully carried out. In 1879, for instance, the British explorer R. W. Felkin arrived at an isolated village in Uganda where he saw a pregnant woman give birth, assisted by a healer.


The healer first washed his hands and the woman’s abdomen, anaesthetised her with banana wine, removed the baby and stitched the mother back up. She made a full recovery, and Felkin was shocked to report that the practice appeared to be familiar and long-established from the healer’s manner. Other explorers in Uganda witnessed autopsies being carried out to determine the cause of a person’s death, a crucial weapon against disease and infection. Given what we have already learned about the intellectual tradition of but one African city, Timbuktu, medical knowledge amongst ordinary people should come as no surprise.

Steel was produced in East Africa 2, 000 years ago.

The Haya people of Tanzania can lay claim to an incredible discovery, centuries before many allegedly more-advanced Europeans caught up with them. That discovery was how to make steel, using only what they found lying around them. The Haya made kilns out of the mud from termite mounds, which they fashioned into a cone, roughly five feet high, and packed the kiln’s bed with charred swamp reeds, charcoal and iron ore. Eight men pumped air into the device with hand-operated bellows, and the temperature inside rose high enough to raise its carbon content, and voila! Steel was made.


This process was so effective that it hardly changed until the mid-twentieth century, when cheap foreign kilns became available in Tanzania. Although other countries produced steel at an earlier date, the Haya made the discovery entirely independently of these other nations, which is a mightily impressive feat. As you doubtless know, steel is still a fundamentally important material to many industries today. Unlike iron, its base metal, steel is much lighter and ductile, meaning that it can be manipulated into a range of different items. Making the discovery so early gave the Haya a strategic advantage over their rivals.

9. The University of Al Quaraouiyine, Fez, is the oldest continually-run university in the world.



With its history of innovation and learning, it is no surprise to find that Africa is home to the oldest continually-run university in the world in Morocco. The University of Al Quaraouiyine, Fez, was founded way back in 859 AD by a Tunisian woman, Fatima al-Fihri. Al-Fihri spent her generous inheritance on building a huge mosque with an associated school (madrasa). The mosque, which has a capacity of 22, 000 worshippers, is still the largest in Africa, and the university is still going strong today, largely due to the generosity of some very wealthy people over the centuries.


The university attracted investment because of its tradition of high educational standards. Gifts from wealthy donors were spent on accumulating a huge collection of manuscripts, eventually housed in a library built by Sultan Abu Inan Faris in 1349. From an early date, the university’s expertise in secular subjects including rhetoric, grammar, mathematics, and astronomy saw it attract leading lights from beyond the Islamic world. In a model of religious tolerance and openness that we would do well to imitate today, the eventual Pope Sylvester II studied there in the late 10th century, and the Jewish philosopher Maimonides a century later

very Educative.

nice one bro

See first class original info!!...

Mods plz do the needful....

Nice thread. Africa does have a rich history and is also rich itself. I didn't forget 3 out of the ones you've posted sha and Carthage was a super important trade route.
I don't know you to create threads like this!
I have missed you sha, check your WhatsApp.

Very nice Raydos see your African heritage

theFilmtricsay

MJBOLT:

Don't forget the great wall of Benin that is believed to have been bigger than that of the great wall of China

Atheistandproud will say:

"Whatever the British couldn't steel, they destroyed".

They couldn't steal the Wall hence the destruction.

Dominique, TheSourcerer messaged me and asked that you please 'unban' him, he is truly sorry. He said he totally forgot to mention the source and won't do it again.

Please unban my padi ooo, na beg e dey beg abi make I attach receipt? Please be kind.

All these histories are nice and good to read, but my problem is, what happened, why can't all these feats be repeated again in Africa?
China was conquered and plundered by the same western people that dealt with Africa but they maintained their culture and we know where they are today, all there past feats are being repeated again in this modern world!

Very nice
Raydos see your African heritage
theFilmtricsay

sinkhole:
All these histories are nice and good to read, but my problem is, what happened, why can't all these feats be repeated again in Africa?
China was conquered and plundered by the same western people that dealt with Africa but they maintained their culture and we know where they are today, all there past feats are being repeated again in this modern world!

A question I've asked myself many times.

It's easy to blame the whites and say they are the ones holding us down, but the reality is the issue is not external, but internal.

There are pockets of African development and progress, but it's not enough, we think too small. Take a look at how retrded Nigerian politics is. Stop an average Nigerian man and ask them their ambitions, it will involve becoming wealthy, but nothing to do with creating wealth.

TheSourcerer:
5. Ancient Kushite Civilisation built more pyramids than the Egyptians
Did you know that there are pyramids outside Egypt and Las Vegas? The undisputed kings of the pyramid-building world, in number at least, were the Kush Empire. This civilisation arose after the fall of the 24th Dynasty of Egypt in c.1000 BC, and ruled much of the country until they were expelled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Kushites eventually moved their capital to Meroë (modern Sudan) in their remaining territory. Though they had left Egypt, Egypt had not left them, for they set about building hundreds of pyramids around their new capital, 350 of which have been discovered to date.



These pyramids are grouped across five sites, and were built as funeral monuments to great people and rulers. Though they are smaller than their Egyptian forebears, the Nubian Pyramids, as they are commonly referred to, are testament to a mighty empire with copious wealth. In the 1st Century BC, Kush fought against Rome, and though the European nation was victorious, Kush was never conquered. The empire ended when its traditional industries of pottery and iron tools, dating back to Ancient Egypt, declined, and Christianity took hold of the region. Kush was formally dissolved in the 6th Century AD.

Very true all of the Nubian/Kushite pyramids can be found in modern day Sudan.

Problem is, they are all mostly in a bad state. No thanks to pyramid robbers who attacked most of them around the early 1800s.

TheSourcerer:
8.


Autopsies and Caesarean-sections were carried out in Uganda long before the arrival .
An important part of colonial propaganda was the idea that Africans were living in appallingly primitive conditions that were only lifted when European settlers arrived. Crucial to the idea of a primitive Africa improved by kindly colonial overlords was the claim that local medicine was brutal and ineffective. People who arrived with this narrative in mind were thus shocked to see medical procedures successfully carried out. In 1879, for instance, the British explorer R. W. Felkin arrived at an isolated village in Uganda where he saw a pregnant woman give birth, assisted by a healer.


The healer first washed his hands and the woman’s abdomen, anaesthetised her with banana wine, removed the baby and stitched the mother back up. She made a full recovery, and Felkin was shocked to report that the practice appeared to be familiar and long-established from the healer’s manner. Other explorers in Uganda witnessed autopsies being carried out to determine the cause of a person’s death, a crucial weapon against disease and infection. Given what we have already learned about the intellectual tradition of but one African city, Timbuktu, medical knowledge amongst ordinary people should come as no surprise.

Heard this on a science programme on UNILAG FM some years ago... I was hugely impressed.

TheSourcerer:
Steel was produced in East Africa 2, 000 years ago.

The Haya people of Tanzania can lay claim to an incredible discovery, centuries before many allegedly more-advanced Europeans caught up with them. That discovery was how to make steel, using only what they found lying around them. The Haya made kilns out of the mud from termite mounds, which they fashioned into a cone, roughly five feet high, and packed the kiln’s bed with charred swamp reeds, charcoal and iron ore. Eight men pumped air into the device with hand-operated bellows, and the temperature inside rose high enough to raise its carbon content, and voila! Steel was made.


This process was so effective that it hardly changed until the mid-twentieth century, when cheap foreign kilns became available in Tanzania. Although other countries produced steel at an earlier date, the Haya made the discovery entirely independently of these other nations, which is a mightily impressive feat. As you doubtless know, steel is still a fundamentally important material to many industries today. Unlike iron, its base metal, steel is much lighter and ductile, meaning that it can be manipulated into a range of different items. Making the discovery so early gave the Haya a strategic advantage over their rivals.

And this too... Same science show.

10.


The Carthaginian General Hannibal took elephants across the Alps and occupied Italy for 15 years


Hannibal was the son of Hamilcar Barca, the great Carthaginian general, and was so impressive as an officer in the army that he was named commander in chief of Carthage’s entire military at the age of just 26. Unfortunately for Rome, Hannibal had sworn an oath of eternal hostility to the Republic on a trip to Spain as a youngster, and took the pledge very seriously. Almost immediately, he violated a peace treaty with Rome.


Having conquered parts of Spain which Carthage had sworn to avoid in the treaty, Hannibal brought about the Second Punic War, marching across Gaul with 90, 000 men and, most famously, 37 elephants. Amazingly, most of the animals made it through a series of ambushes and the chilly conditions to enter Italy. There, through a series of inspired military manoeuvres, he won several unexpected victories, and ruled much of the country for the next 15 years. Hannibal was forced to return to unsuccessfully defend Carthage from Roman attack, and was later betrayed and defiantly poisoned himself rather than be captured.

11.

The Ancient Egyptians were writing around 3100BC

The Ancient Sumerian civilisation in the Middle East developed writing around 3400 BC, and a few hundred years later the Egyptians were doing the same. The Egyptians may have developed their system of symbols independently of Sumeria, but it is ultimately impossible to say. Nonetheless, Hieroglyphics are a fascinating topic in themselves, and a mightily impressive feat. Hieroglyphics were pictorial representations of words, concepts, and sounds, which were used for an array of purposes. The earliest instances of hieroglyphic writing are found carved into pottery and ivory in important tombs from the end of the 4th Millenium BC.


Those capable of writing Hieroglyphics began training at around 6 years of age, and enjoyed a very privileged place in society, avoiding taxes and military conscription. Hieroglyphics as a system of writing operated in a very different manner from modern scripts: a single picture could mean a whole word or part of another, and some were phonetic, meaning that a picture of an animal could be a homonym. We are only able to decipher Hieroglyphics with a degree of accuracy because of the Rosetta Stone, an ancient crib-sheet which provides the Ancient Greek for religious and secular forms of Hieroglyphics

12.
The oldest art in the world comes from Africa

When you think of the oldest art in the world, naturally you think of prehistoric daubings on European caves, right? Wrong. The oldest art ever found is from the Blombos Cave, Blomboschfontein Nature Reserve, South Africa. There archaeologists found a piece of ochre, marked by a complex pattern of crossed lines, which is at least 77, 000 years old. The excavation’s leader, Christopher Henshilwood, described the rock as ‘a good indication of an ability to think in the abstract, to think in terms of the past, the present and the future, and that’s one of the hallmarks of modern behaviour

Interestingly, the date of the art makes it 30, 000 years older than the Lebombo Bone’s tally marks, which suggests the fundamentality of aesthetic experience to Homo sapiens, the species that made the ochre artefact and baboon fibula. Blombos Cave also seems to have been a centre of prehistoric art, long before the ochre carving. In 2008, two ochre-processing kits were found, consisting of bone, charcoal, ochre, grindstones, and hammer stones. The ochre produced was found stored in sea-snail shells. These kits were dated to roughly 100, 000 years ago. Blombos Cave is truly the genesis of art.

The Aksumite Empire was one of the most powerful in the world.


Whilst the Roman Empire was just getting started, another powerful civilisation was beginning to flex its muscles in what is now Ethiopia: the Aksumite Empire. And whilst the name may not be familiar to you, it certainly was to the European civilisations. In 1 AD, the Periplus of the Red Sea, a Greco-Roman text describing navigation and trading opportunities, praised the city of Aksum as one of the most important places for ivory. Between this date and its approximate end in 940 AD, the Aksumite Empire grew to encompass, at its height, much of North Africa and even Saudi Arabia.


Aksum’s wealth was based on trade. Much of its produce was agricultural, but also included gold and iron, and was traded as far away as India and the Mediterranean. Its great wealth was spent on wonderful buildings, such as King Ezana’s Stela (below), an elaborate obelisk, and many palaces. The largest of these palaces that we know about is Ta’akha Maryam, which is 120 by 80 metres in area, but experts believe that others (which are now lost) were even bigger. Like all empires, the Aksumite declined, as other world powers encroached on its trading routes and provided insurmountable competition

The Great Zimbabwe is a mighty ruined city in the modern country


Colonial historians would have us believe that Africa was a backward and brutish continent before the arrival of the Europeans (notwithstanding the Egyptians). However, as long ago as 1000 AD Sub-Saharan Africans were building impressive cities out of stone, none more so than the Great Zimbabwe. The Great Zimbabwe was a vast palace and fortress complex, its 200 acres in area surrounded by 11-metre high walls, and formerly home to between 10 and 20, 000 people. The name ‘Zimbabwe’ is a Bantu word meaning ‘stone houses’, and it was this ancient stronghold that gave the modern country its name.

It is churlish to make reference to what the rest of the world was up to at the same time, but it is worth mentioning that there is no comparable contemporary stone structure from England, and that most European settlements of the turn of the first millennium were largely built of wood. But, then, Great Zimbabwe was the beating heart of a great trading empire that took gold to the coast of the Indian Ocean, and was extremely wealthy. Great Zimbabwe was abandoned in the 15th century, possibly when gold supplies were depleted or due to water shortages.

The Great Walls of Benin

Maybe not as famous as the Great Wall of China, but it was at one time in history the largest man-made structure in the world.

Constructed over a period of 600 years, the Great Walls of Benin was located at the southern border of the defunct Benin Kingdom, which was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in West Africa.

For the over 400 years the Walls existed, it protected the inhabitants of the kingdom, particularly, the traditions and civilisations of the Edo people, until it was ravaged in 1897 by the British.



What else is there to know about this amazing structure?

The walls, which are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, are a combination of strong materials like ramparts and moats, which predated the use of modern earth-moving equipment and technology, and were used for defensive purposes.

Construction work on the wall began around 800 AD and ended mid-1400.

Archaeologists say it took an estimated 150 million hours of digging by local people to construct the wall and the structure is considered as the largest single archaeological phenomenon on earth.

The Great Walls of Benin was estimated to extend for about 16,000 km in length; both the exterior and interior walls.

It occupied a land mass of 6,500 km2, which is about 37 percent of the present land mass of Edo State.
Less than 500 years after the completion of the Great Wall, the British ravaged the walls in what has come to be known as the Punitive Expedition. This expedition was said to have destroyed more than a thousand years of Benin history and one of the earliest evidence of African civilization.

Currently, scattered pieces of the structure remain in Edo, with locals using some of these pieces for building purposes.

Parts of the walls are also being torn down for real estate developments.

In 1995, the historical structure was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in the cultural category.

Though in ruins now, its existence continues to evoke memories of the once wealthy, powerful and industrious kingdoms that ever lived in African history.

Timbuktu was once one of the world’s most important centres of learning
If you wanted a cutting-edge education between the 1400s and about 1593, there was one place that stood head-and-shoulders above its rivals. Timbuktu in Mali had its humble origins in about 1100 BC, when it was founded as a seasonal camp by Tuareg nomads. However, its location just on the edge of a desert meant that it became an important trading capital, and by the 14th century it was fundamental to the salt and gold trade. Its educational tradition dates back to its 13th-century incorporation into the Mali Empire, where the dominant religion was Islam, and several mosques were founded

The Islamic scholars at these mosques had terrific libraries, owing to the city’s wealth. Their reputation for learning meant that a university was founded, and soon people were flocking from far and wide to study with them. In 1450, there were around 25, 000 scholars in Timbuktu, roughly a quarter of the city’s population. Timbuktu’s status as a centre of education ended with Morocco conquering the city in 1591, arresting most of the scholars in 1593 and leaving the city to the mercy of attacking rivals. Today, about 70, 000 manuscripts on all manner of subjects from Timbuktu survive