PhysicsHD: The google books link preview page that you posted isn't showing up for me. It says "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book" so clearly those pages are unavailable. However I did scroll down to p. 217 of the book, which is actually visible to me, and I started reading from down there. I read the claims put forward by the author about strong cultural similarities or connections between Africa and Indonesia and I was amused because they were all extremely superficial connections that do not in any way require direct contact to arise in different and distant human populations. The author (Arthur Morris Jones) of that 'Africa and Indonesia' book was basically grasping desperately for the slightest similarities and using these to infer deeper cultural or historic connections than actually existed.

The article by Blench I've seen and read before and I have to point out that

a) Blench is primarily a linguist, and he is definitely not an expert on the issue of West African art and its origins, the casting techniques used in that art, or the relationship between West African art traditions and the cultures that they are found in. Not surprisingly therefore, he is only putting forward a theory of there being evidence for ancient contact between southeast Asia and West Africa, not claiming that the inspiration of the Ife art is by ancient Indonesian migrations into West Africa.

Now in the part of the paper where he talks about elephantiasis and the supposed depiction of elephantiasis in some of the Nok art (which assumes that the art is depicting a real disease, and is not just deliberate exaggeration for some other reason) as mentioned by Willett in his 1967 book, the mistake there is that Blench's claim is simply incorrect - it is not necessary for the disease to have been transmitted by people migrating into West Africa from Southeast Asia.

First, elephantiasis (swelling and thickening of the lower limbs) can be caused by podoconiosis, which is simply caused by irritant soils in an environment and occurs in other areas of Africa without any interaction with non-Africans and without parasites being involved. In light of this, if one assumes that the figures in the Nok art are real depictions of people with diseased limbs or geni.tals, who is to say that podoconiosis or a similar disease to podoconiosis might not have affected the population in the Nok area, resulting in the depictions of swollen body parts in some of the art?

Second, assuming that there was elephantiasis caused by filariasis (caused by parasites), rather than podoconiasis, in central Nigeria, this disease could simply have reached other parts of Africa (such as East Africa) in ancient times (after those areas had had contact with people from Southeast Asia) and the disease could have been transmitted by migrants or traders from other parts of Africa, not directly from Southeast Asian migrants. The assumption that because there is "no continuous zone of infection from East Africa to West Africa" today it would have to have been transmitted directly from Southeast Asia to West Africa ignores the possibility that there could have been a continuous zone of infection in the past, before later population movements occurred in central Africa, and also ignores the possibility of the spread of the disease by long distance traders or through migrations or back-migrations from Eastern Africa to Western Africa in the past.

And of course, as Blench admits in his paper, even if there was direct contact, the dates of the Nok art are too early to suggest direct Indonesian - central Nigerian contact, anyway. So assuming that it was depicted in the Nok art, direct contact is not a good explanation of the elephantiasis.

b) Apart from the "elephantiasis in central Nigeria (the area of the Nok culture" there is nothing else in the rest of Blench's article that could really imply a possible connection of Ife to Indonesia, so it is not necessary to comment on the rest of the article.

c) As I said earlier, the people in the art are clearly black. They don't even look mixed. The only way one could think that they have Asian eyes or "Asian nasal bridges" is if one doesn't know what black people and Indonesians look like, or if one somehow doesn't think that black people can have thin almond shaped eyes. There is nothing about their noses that looks non-black and the eyes don't actually look Asian.

d) When the art of Ife was first "discovered" by Westerners, all sorts of theories were put forward linking the origin of the culture and the art to the ancient Mediterranean. These kinds of claims have long been discredited by later researchers. The new focus of African and non-African people who want to link the origin of the art to another area today is North Africa (which is close to the Mediterranean) and the Middle East, but they aren't having much success. These external origin theories don't really have much going for them.

e) Most importantly, Indonesian art is just nothing like this art (or the Nok art, for that matter). There are basically no similarities.

PhysicsHD: The google books link preview page that you posted isn't showing up for me. It says "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book" so clearly those pages are unavailable. However I did scroll down to p. 217 of the book, which is actually visible to me, and I started reading down from there. I read the claims put forward by the author about strong cultural similarities or connections between Africa and Indonesia and I was amused because they were all extremely superficial connections that do not in any way require direct contact for those cultural practices and aspects to arise in different and distant human populations. The author (Arthur Morris Jones) of that 'Africa and Indonesia' book was basically grasping desperately for the slightest similarities and using these to infer deeper cultural or historic connections than actually existed.

The article by Blench I've seen and read before and I have to point out that

a) Blench is primarily a linguist, and he is definitely not an expert on the issue of West African art and its origins, the casting techniques used in that art, or the relationship between West African art traditions and the cultures that they are found in. Not surprisingly therefore, he is only putting forward a theory of there being evidence for ancient contact between southeast Asia and West Africa, not claiming that the inspiration of the Ife art is by ancient Indonesian migrations into West Africa.

Now in the part of the paper where he talks about elephantiasis and the supposed depiction of elephantiasis in some of the Nok art (which assumes that the art is depicting a real disease, and is not just deliberate exaggeration for some other reason) as mentioned by Willett in his 1967 book, the mistake there is that Blench's claim is simply incorrect - it is not necessary for the disease to have been transmitted by people migrating into West Africa from Southeast Asia.

First, elephantiasis (swelling and thickening of the lower limbs) can be caused by podoconiosis, which is simply caused by irritant soils in an environment and occurs in other areas of Africa without any interaction with non-Africans and without parasites being involved. In light of this, if one assumes that the figures in the Nok art are real depictions of people with diseased limbs or geni.tals, who is to say that podoconiosis or a similar disease to podoconiosis might not have affected the population in the Nok area, resulting in the depictions of swollen body parts in some of the art?

Second, assuming that there was elephantiasis caused by filariasis (caused by parasites), rather than podoconiasis, in central Nigeria, this disease could simply have reached other parts of Africa (such as East Africa) in ancient times (after those areas had had contact with people from Southeast Asia) and the disease could have been transmitted by migrants or traders from other parts of Africa, not directly from Southeast Asian migrants. The assumption that because there is "no continuous zone of infection from East Africa to West Africa" today it would have to have been transmitted directly from Southeast Asia to West Africa ignores the possibility that there could have been a continuous zone of infection in the past, before later population movements occurred in central Africa, and also ignores the possibility of the spread of the disease by long distance traders or through migrations or back-migrations from Eastern Africa to Western Africa in the past.

And of course, as Blench admits in his paper, the dates of the Nok art are too early to suggest direct Indonesian - Nigerian contact, anyway. So assuming that it was depicted in the Nok art, direct contact is not a good explanation of the elephantiasis.

b) Apart from the "elephantiasis in central Nigeria (the area of the Nok culture)" claim there is nothing else in the rest of Blench's article that could really imply a possible connection of Ife to Indonesia, so it is not necessary to comment on the rest of the article.

c) As I said earlier, the people in the art are clearly black. They don't even look mixed. The only way one could think that they have Asian eyes or "Asian nasal bridges" is if one doesn't know what black people and Indonesians look like, or if one somehow doesn't think that black people can have thin almond shaped eyes. There is nothing about their noses that looks non-black and the eyes don't actually look Asian.

d) When the art of Ife was first "discovered" by Westerners, all sorts of theories were put forward linking the origin of the culture and the art to the ancient Mediterranean. These kinds of claims have long been discredited by later researchers. The new focus of African and non-African people who want to link the origin of the art to another area today is North Africa (which is close to the Mediterranean) and the Middle East, but they aren't having much success. These external origin theories don't really have much going for them.

e) Most importantly, Indonesian art is just nothing like this art (or the Nok art, for that matter). There are basically no similarities.

anonymous6: thank you for the videos

taharqa2: Great thread...

PeterKbaba:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeqOR3vqzw



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg8yQmfQsyc

PAPA AFRICA: what do you think of some who link ile ife and lost wax casting to Indonesians? i think they mostly think so because of the non "negroid" features you find of the brass castings, the asian shaped eyes and the bridge of the noses. i never understood why their features are the way they are though.

tpia@:


those are also black features but more commonly associated with non-blacks, for some reason.

why do you think they're non-negroid?

blacks are a very diverse race.

what i mean is seeing such features in blacks does not automatically translate to non-negroid, true, mixed may be a factor but not always.

the same features in others, could be from blacks.

superduperjay:
very very beautiful. lovely thread op. culture and history is really deep.

lakal:


No real knowledge from me on either -- here is a small quote about Osangangan being a deity. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=zMiV__25izEC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=osangangan+deity&source=bl&ots=NVRn_EDOHT&sig=y_Kh9UD7T92X2rS0dgSjezOuaHQ&hl=en&ei=-uS_TpmRHIfj0QGbg_T0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The worship of noon, sun, moon, mountains, rivers, etc are all representative of an animistic religion.  Every natural feature in Yorubaland could be traditionally revered as a deity.


However I do know that the expression "osangangan" is used among Yorubas to refer to both the high noon time, as well as a climatic point. "Aiye l'a ba Ifa, Aiye l'a ba Imale, Osan gangan ni Igbagbo wole."   (Ifa existed before us, Islam existed before us, Afternoon is when Christianity came)

lakal:


No real knowledge from me on either -- here is a small quote about Osangangan being a deity. 

http://books.google.com/books?id=zMiV__25izEC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=osangangan+deity&source=bl&ots=NVRn_EDOHT&sig=y_Kh9UD7T92X2rS0dgSjezOuaHQ&hl=en&ei=-uS_TpmRHIfj0QGbg_T0BA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CB8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

The worship of noon, sun, moon, mountains, rivers, etc are all representative of an animistic religion.  Every natural feature in Yorubaland could be traditionally revered as a deity.


However I do know that the expression "osangangan" is used among Yorubas to refer to both the high noon time, as well as a climatic point. "Aiye l'a ba Ifa, Aiye l'a ba Imale, Osan gangan ni Igbagbo wole."   (Ifa existed before us, Islam existed before us, Afternoon is when Christianity came)

TerraCotta:
The last image is really interesting since there aren't a lot of images of the decorative terracotta tiling/potsherd pavements I've mentioned on the Internet. This is one of the most distinguishing features of Ife-related cultures. Check out the damaged head in the other image; there are sometimes dozens of fragments that have to be painstakingly reassembled by experts:

NegroNtns:
Here is a very good figure to show that Yoruba was a powerful civilization in AfroAsia. Compare to Biblical customs instructing High Priests to dress in exact same manner as shown in this figure.

Contrary to the label in Andrea Jemolo's site that places this figure, found in Jebba,  as an archer, he was in fact a priest as indicated by the adornment of his robe, breastplate, sash and ornamental bells in fron of him and the peyot attached to his hair, covered by the headgear. 

Note:   From a mystical perspective, peyot separate between the front part of the brain which is used for abstract thought that can be used for holiness, and the back part of the brain that governs the body.

YonkijiSappo:
Read from page to page.
Intriguing.

Rgp92:
Very beautiful art. Made by Yoruba! We really are special to Africa