Interesting.

pleep:
I know that black Africans built structures. However, referencing the fact that we did is a terrible way to argue against the suggestion that black people are unintelligent. The two issues are unrelated. If they were related, and if the quality of buildings historically built in an area were a measure of intelligence of its people the black race would be much stupider than even I believe. Buildings built in the west were infinitely superior objectively speaking.

What I meant to point out is basically this:

At every stage of history, from ancient to "medieval" times, up until about the late 19th century, there was some African polity that had great architecture that could compete favorably in aesthetic quality and visual appeal with buildings from anywhere else around the world - that is what the surviving written and archaeological evidence about various African states strongly suggests.

The relative lack of sophistication in African architecture was the result of an environment not conducive to sophisticated building. Basically the "Guns Germs and Steel" argument; lack of the required types of stone/other materials and lack of 'civilizational' development caused by lack of surplus producing crops (cassava was not even introduced to the region until the 1600's).

Comparing historical African buildings to European buildings is like comparing apples to oranges. Kingston was retarded enough to make that comparison so i was forced to show him how stupid it was. This is why I have very little patience to talk to these types of people without insulting them.

The areas that the best of African architecture lagged behind in when compared to the best of Asian or European architecture was not in aesthetic quality or visual appeal but mostly in technical aspects. I am not denying that the absence of better building materials throughout much of the continent was an issue - it definitely was an issue, and the technical advantages that some non-African architectures enjoyed over many African architectures outside of the areas of Kush/Nubia and Ethiopia are not something I would deny. But to pretend that there was a lack of sophistication in the best of African architecture in terms of aesthetics would be to deny what the written sources state.

To give one example from the 19th century of aesthetic appeal, the palace of the ruler of Ilesha, in the southwestern part of Nigeria, was described by the American missionary W.H. Clarke, who saw it in 1856: "As I approached the residence of the king, its size, fine appearance and beautiful location satisfied me that this was the royal palace. . ." He also described the building as "truly impressive and interesting", remarked that "some of the pillars and timbers of this building are quite massive for the management of the people who know nothing of the mechanical arts and labour-saving machines" and noted that the interior of the building had a "fine court" that was 80 by 160 feet in area. (The source for these quotes is Clarke's book Travels and Discoveries in Yorubaland 1854–1858).

Needless to say, there is not a single surviving sketch or photograph of this building when it actually existed in the condition Clarke saw it in.

Another example, also from the beginning of the 20th century is Lord Lugard's reaction upon seeing the Kano city walls when the British invaded:

"The force reached Kano, where the extent and formidable nature of fortifications
surpassed the best-informed anticipation of our officers. Needless to say, I have never
seen, or imagined, anything like this in Africa. The wall was 11 miles in perimeter, with
13 gates all newly built. Subsequent measurement at several points by the Public Works
Department proved the walls to be from 30 to 50 ft high and about 40 ft thick at the base,
with a double ditch in front. . ."

The battered remnants of the Kano walls today are in a state of complete and utter decay.


Yet another example. Consider the "royal road" of Dahomey:

"Nineteenth-century European visitors to the kingdom of Dahomey
were not easily impressed, certainly not by any infrastructural refinement.
So when one after another perceived grandeur in the
Cana-Abomey road, it was no small compliment. For French travelers
the road was "magnifique," "superbe," a "merveille," "fort
belle," "vraiment belle," or "des plus belles."1 For British travelers
"splendid" or - perhaps the ultimate accolade - as broad as any
thoroughfare in England.2
This remarkable road was the last leg of the regular route from
Dahomey's Atlantic port of Whydah to the royal capital at Abomey.
Its basic purpose was not to impress foreigners on their approach
to the capital, as one might imagine, but to allow the kings of
Dahomey to travel to and from Cana in style."


"Besides the road's width, Europeans were most impressed by the
trees that lined it. Fraser says that in places the trees were "apparently
equidistant," but at any rate they were planted close enough
to each other to provide frequent shade.2" By the mid-nineteenth
century some were very big. Beecroft (1850) saw "large majestic
Trees, towering over the heads of quantities of the beautiful Palm
Trees interspersed under their lofty Protection [sic] branches. "29 In
1863 Borghero said the road was bordered by "gigantic trees" that
gave it "an imposing look."30 Burton (1864) remarked that many
trees along the road were pollarded to increase the shade.3' By the
early 1890s the whole length was said to be shaded by "splendid
arches of verdure."32 Lissner said some trees were so huge "their
branches alone are as thick as the trunks of European forest veterans."


"Fraser rated the royal road environs "by far the prettiest part of the
journey" from the coast."4 Bouit called the countryside "extremely
beautiful," with "pretty dwellings [and] rich croplands extending as
far as one could see on both sides of the route.""4 Repin said the lay
of the land favored the traveler with "views both varied and pleasant;
it's a sort of kitchen garden supplying grain and vegetables."42
For Burton, the land from Cana to Abomey was "emphatically the
garden of Dahome, showing a wondrous soft and pleasant aspect...
a succession of palm orchards and grain fields... [with] frequent villages
that stud the fair champaign."43


These three quotes are from:

"Dahomey's Royal Road"
Author: Stanley B. Alpern
Source: History in Africa, Vol. 26 (1999), pp. 11-24
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3172135


Of course, neither the remnants of that road nor the fine countryside and decorations that surrounded it are visible today and I have yet to hear or read of a road in the present Republic of Benin, where Dahomey was located, being described with such enthusiasm by foreign tourists.

These three examples are all from around the 19th century. And there are still other 19th century examples that I could provide of ruins or still standing structures that visitors to areas in Africa besides Nubia, Egypt, or Ethiopia found impressive.

pleep:

As for African buildings being more sophisticated than is commonly assumed, I agree. However, In the scheme of things I don't see these buildings as an achievement, they are just examples of people making the most out of a bad environment.
We cannot hold the opinion that African Architecture was objectively good compared to other societies without first rejecting the Guns Germs and Steel theory. Do you reject that theory?

I do not reject the idea that environment had a huge influence on the differences between much of African architecture and architecture from other parts of the world. I also do not deny that there were some technical/engineering aspects that some Africans were bested in by other parts of the world in terms of architecture.

But it cannot be denied that visitors from outside of Africa do provide unambiguous written evidence of the existence of structures that they thought were impressive and which they compared favorably to that of their own societies at the time of their writing. You can say that kingston is being sentimental and devoid of objectivity or that I am being sentimental and devoid of objectivity on this issue because we are black, but I doubt you could explain away the numerous positive descriptions of various structures throughout Africa that one finds in written records from non-black people as just being centuries and centuries of sentimentality and a lack of objectivity on the part of complete strangers to Africa.

I do have two questions of my own that I would ask before I leave the board for a while. I'll answer your own questions when I come back. As I said earlier, I'll probably want to go with a different line of argument from anything I said in the first eugenics thread, since I wasn't really able to convince you of anything in that thread.

1. I recall a while ago you had a "final nail in the coffin" thread to try and prove that black people were inherently more aggressive because of a supposed connection between melanin and adrenaline. Now while I did not see anything you had posted at the time in that thread that really suggested that what you were claiming was correct, one thing I came across later (after the thread was already dead), which, while it was not about melanin or adrenaline, does seem generally related to your overall idea: I came across some information on research into ethnic differences in variants of the so-called "warrior gene" (https://scientiasalon./2014/07/31/the-extreme-warrior-gene-a-reality-check/), MAOA. Since engaging in any amateurish speculation about the significance of the MAOA gene itself (neither of us are biologists, if I recall) or its relationship to ethnicity would be pointless, I won't comment on it directly right now. One thing that occurred to me after looking at your recent posts is this: what if there are certain things you cannot change through eugenics? What if, after the huge eugenic program is carried out, you still have some behaviors or traits in the resulting higher IQ population that just do not go away, despite the increase in IQ? Some sort of permanent or persistent behavior that cannot be removed just by crude methods like selective breeding alone?

NB: I am not saying I admit that the majority of the significant problems that exist now (aggression, corruption, thuggery, etc.) among some black populations worldwide are actually solely or even mostly due to genetics or IQ, rather than environment/culture/history/poverty/etc. I am saying that if these problems among a population were in fact due to genetics and IQ, and you managed to modify the target population's genes and IQ over time through a eugenics program, but simply were not able to eliminate the prevalence of some undesirable gene or set of behaviors through your methods, what would you do then? If it all turns out to be a waste of time (and lives)?


2. Pleep, you are probably aware that there is an idea that has been brought up repeatedly in the IQ debate, originating from statistics, called regression to the mean, which is emphasized especially by some of those who promote these same IQ claims you have repeated on the forum. The idea basically implies that there is no practical way to substantially raise the IQ of large populations through "positive" eugenics (selective breeding of smart people) alone, since, according to this idea high IQ parents will usually have children who are less intelligent than their (high IQ) parents while low IQ parents will have children who are more intelligent than their (low IQ) parents, essentially leading to a population with an average IQ that was little different from whatever average the population started with. Now if one removes the low IQ parents as a factor (through whatever means - I get the impression from your posts that you actually want to sterilize low IQ people, which I consider extremely unethical, as you probably already know) then one will only have average IQ and high IQ people, but the implication of the regression to the mean idea, if it is actually completely true (and not just uncertain theory), is that the gain in average IQ of the population will never be substantial at all unless one removes an enormous amount - perhaps the entirety - of the below average to low IQ population so that the value of the average IQ of the population is boosted significantly. If that were done - and only if that were done - over time (and we don't know how long a period of time, but it could take several generations, and not by any means be an overnight improvement), the mean to which the children of two high IQ parents (or one high IQ + one average IQ) would eventually regress may actually be significantly higher than it originally would have been. According to this theory, 1) if you hitch two ~130 IQ people together, and they have a child and this child's IQ regresses towards the mean (setting the mean = 100), yielding an IQ of ~115 by the time he or she is mature, and 2) at the same time this is happening, two ~70 IQ people hook up, have a child, and this child's IQ regresses toward the mean, yielding an IQ of ~85 by maturity, and 3) all the average IQ people in the population are hooking up and mostly giving birth to average IQ children, with some bright ones and some not-so-bright ones here and there, as expected, then:

You've done nothing to improve the average IQ of the population. It's pretty much guaranteed to be the same.

Basically, if this view of things (the regression to the mean) is completely accurate, then unless you are willing to literally stop people who do not meet your IQ cutoff mark from reproducing - and prevent the existence of the descendants of not just a few of them, but basically a huge portion of those on the left of the bell curve for the target population - then whatever eugenic program you carry out will likely have little effect. And if you were to do this, and carry out that extremely immoral sterilization program, you would not even get the results you seek until some generations down the line as the genetic history of the population won't have automatically changed the minute you sterilize the millions of people you plan on eliminating from the gene pool.

Feel free to take your time to respond in detail if you need to since I won't be back on the forum for several days.

pleep:
I didnt say Europeans built that building, i said that building is not impressive.

Its a nice thatched roof house form the late 1800's or early 1900's, a time when the west already had steamships, machine guns and telegram wires. Is that how low your standards are? Really brother, black people can do better than this. Abandon the false pride, stop thinking about white people for a second and turn inwards. The black race has failed, we were defeated because we were backwards.

Does a thatched roof house really compare to:

Though it may be hard to believe now, black Africans did build structures, some of which, even in the 19th century, the same Europeans (who did indeed have steamships, machine guns, telegraphy, etc.) found impressive. This comes through more clearly in written sources. Another thing that becomes more obvious when one reads more descriptions is that the surviving images we have of important buildings from historical African states are not really the best ones that would have conveyed how impressive these kingdoms were when they were thriving. Of course, that is mostly our (Africans') fault for not keeping a better record of things, but it is something to keep in mind when using the limited catalog of images we do have to try to get an idea of what those kingdoms built in the past.

I don't have much time right now to discuss the general idea of this thread in great detail, but I probably will near the end of December or the beginning of January. Also, after reading most of the thread, I think if I did join the discussion we might just go over most of the same ground we did in that eugenics thread from before. I'll come back to the thread later with a different line of argument later though.

pleep:
PhysicsQED!
long time

Yeah, it's been a while. I've been trying to ease out of nairaland by visiting/posting/reading less often so that I spend my time much more productively. So far it's mostly been a success. But I will still post on here for a while longer, as there are still some threads I meant to get around to responding to and finishing posting on.

Nice to see that you're still around somewhat, still creating controversy.

The original pioneers of Afrocentrism weren't actually like this at all, but now it's become something else entirely, and these traits/behaviors you mentioned are indeed common among some of them.

scholes0:


Trust me, I would have loved to make such a list, I have even tried looking for recent comprehensive data, but it is very tedious, and not much information is out there.

I see. Thanks.

tpiander:


Esan means revenge in Yoruba.

E sa means you ran. Sa is to run.

The interpretation of Esan as E san fi a or Esan fua, implies the same thing as the Yoruba E sa fun wa.

"E san fua" is not so likely as the phrase, since, as I said, "fua" refers to releasing something in Edo (Bini).

Differences in dialectal languages might move the n to the last phoneme

So, what would these differences be? And if I'm interpreting this right, you believe the "n" would be moved from "fun" and placed after "sa", basically? Is there some linguistic rule that you're basing this idea on?

although why the f was removed might also be explained by the same perhaps.

So "sa fun" was changed to "san" after a shift of n from "fun" to "sa" and an f was dropped?

How do you pronounce sa and san in Bini?

Sa is pronounced basically how it looks when typed ('sa').

San has the a lasting longer ('saan', basically two a sounds).

For sa if the "a" is longer lasting (sounds like 'saa') it has different meanings than when it's not (just 'sa'), but all the meanings (weave, bite, collect, burst/explode) are different than the meaning of san.

If san means run and sa means something else, then I see your point.

Sa does mean something else, not related in meaning to san.

Pleep, I read the description from the scienceblogs link, since the in depth explanation does not seem to be available, and I believe that I understand what you're arguing for here.

So my next question is what evidence is there that for humans, adrenaline production shares a biochemical pathway with melanin production?

I would think melanin production in humans just varies with environment, not as a result of levels of adrenaline production. Or do you know of some research which shows melanin production and adrenaline production being coupled for humans?

tpiander:
What are Esan people called in Bini language or tradition?

Esan.

tpiander:

The dialectal importance of n as per placement, would be the Edoid dialects, not Yoruba ones.


If you have another meaning for Esan which doesn't reflect Yoruba, then you can share it.

However, point to note is having Yoruboid place names doesn't automatically mean people are Yoruba, it just means the place names are. It may show Yoruba contact however.

If "Edoid dialects" were a factor, I don't see how there wouldn't be a conflict with the fact that "sa" as you defined it in Yoruba conflicts with the meanings of "sa" in the actual "Edoid dialect" in question (Bini/Edo). Perhaps you could explain what you think an n being added to sa would mean.

I don't see "Esan" as a Yoruboid place name really (well, I mean that I don't see it as exclusively Yoruboid, since it seems to have its own meaning in Yoruba) in this case. Since the (Edoid) group some of their traditions claim gave them the name could clearly use a phrase that actually has "E san" directly in the phrase, it seems the name is more likely Edoid here.

tpiander:
Fia in Yoruba means quick or quickly. ( eg O sa fia or o sa fiam).

Fu a/fun wa/fun a means with us or because of us.

When fun a follows a verb such as we see in E sa fun a, then it means you ran from us, in this instance.

Thanks for the explanation.

Assuming the name does derive from a statement about them leaving Benin as the currently believed etymology claims, I would still lean more towards one with the name (Esan) already explicitly in the statement so I think the currently known etymology is closer to the mark.

Any list of the manufactured products produced by each state?

tpiander:



Seems the phrase is either E san fua or Esan fia.


Either way, the meaning is the same as E sa fua, E sa fun wa, E sa fun a in Yoruba which means you fled from us, they fled from us, you ran from us, you fled from us, etc.

Esan by itself (depending on pronounciation) would mean you/they ran in Yoruba.

The additional n could be a dialectal difference.

"Fua" is probably not the word assuming the phrase is Bini like the Esan traditions C.G. Okojie relied upon said. It would be "Fia." ('cut off' or 'loose'). "Fua" means to release something in Bini ('kua' has essentially the same meaning).

"Sa" and "San" in Edo have different meanings.

"San" means jump/jumped (depending on the usage it may not be meant exactly literally) and is not the same as "Sa", which can mean different things such as "cast" (in metal), "collect", "weave" or "bite" depending on the pronunciation.

No Bini traditions that I know of claim that "Esan" comes from a Bini phrase about them leaving Benin, but apparently Esan traditions do make that claim, so it's possible that it does derive from such a phrase.

Is there a Yoruba dialect where "san" is used in place of "sa"?

pleep:
The correlation with melanin and adrenaline. The final nail in the coffin of human racial equality.

(For the record im not saying any race is inferior, just that unique biological characteristics create unique challenges and obstacles to be overcome) We wont get anyway pretending that every race is exactly the same mentally.

In depth explanation of the study
http://webs.wofford.edu/moellerjf/Animal%20Behavior%202011/Russian_J_of_Gen_Review_Article_on_Domes_Fox.pdf

Abridged version for dumb people
http://scienceblogs.com/thoughtfulanimal/2010/06/14/monday-pets-the-russian-fox-st/
http://www.animals-zone.com/silver-fox

The link to the paper giving an in depth explanation of the study seems to no longer be available.

Radoillo:
Is it usual for Esan parents to give their children Yoruba first names? I noticed two of the Esan notables whose names appear in the list above have Yoruba first names.

Anthony Okogie and Ambrose Alli both had Yoruba mothers, so that could explain it, if those are the two you names you had in mind.

tpiander:



it's a Yoruba phrase, probably Yoruba was spoken in Bini at the time.

E sa fun wa.

I believe the idea that the name "Esan" derives from a Bini phrase about them leaving Benin comes from the work of the Esan scholar C.G. Okojie on Esan traditions.

Do you think "E sa fun wa" is actually closer to "Esan" than "E san fia" which literally has "E san" right there in the sentence? I would take "E san fia" as "they jumped loose" if I were looking for its literal meaning. What does "E sa fun wa" mean and why do you think Yoruba was spoken in "Bini" at the time?

Not really that "epic" at all. He gives them too much respect and legitimacy in his letter.

Actually it's just unfortunate that somebody educated and accomplished should even be in that kind of situation. We're talking about a country, Spain, where the people had to be taught to bathe themselves regularly by Moors (before which they went around smelling and unwashed nearly all the time), where buffoons run from bulls in the streets and occasionally get gored in the stomach and legs yet pretend that this is a modern sporting event, a country which is just living off immense colonial plunder and the exploitation of millions of indigenous peoples from their various colonies, which was never an industrial power, and which was never in any way in the position it was in due to actual hard work.

PabloAfricanus:

Are you aware of the history of Idu monarchs being crowned by Nri?

Benin monarchs were crowned by the Oliha of Benin historically.

The only stake I have in this story....is HISTORICAL ACCURACY. I am a student of history...and I know the claims and counter claims by the Ikas will haunt them in the coming years. I do not mean that in a derogatory sense...just pointing out the dividends of identity crises left unresolved.
Ever wondered what the Binis actually think the Ikas and their claims to Bini origins?

I doubt anyone could find out what all modern Bini people today think about the Ika claims of Bini origins, but some Bini people in the past did seem to think they were of Bini origin (just letting you know since you're interested in accuracy and are a student of history).

ChinenyeN:
Not to derail your thread, OboloMan, but I've always found it interesting how Obolo could have such a collection of bronze and brass works, without any casting traditions. The Lower Niger Bronze/Brass industry must have been a very lucrative one.

Radoillo:
To my non-expert eyes, the face of the 'Bronze Image of an Obolo King' looks very much like how they would make it in precolonial Benin.

I wonder if there was a connection between both schools of bronze/brass art - the Bini School and the Lower Niger School.

OboloMAN:


Most likely there's a connection between the two schools (Benin bronzes and lower niger bronzes)

My take Benin empire was a large one and most likely many other Lower niger tribes may have interacted with them and learnt the art of casting.

The Benin court art had a distinctive style, which this has some similarities to, but does not really seem exactly the same with to me. My eyes are no better trained than anyone else's but I can see some difference compared to what I'm used to seeing in the Benin art.

I suspect that some people outside the political control of courts in southern Nigeria may have been bronze/brass casters, and that could also explain the lower Niger bronzes. That is a merely a conjecture on my part but it's just what I see as a possible explanation. Despite casting being a complex process and the necessary material not being easy to acquire there might still have been such people around - perhaps people who left royal courts during periods of internal conflict in a kingdom. Some Obolo people could have gone to one of these non-court casters and learned the techniques and then made their own bronze works to honor their deities and kings.

And if there were not an organization in place among a people to keep an oral record of very specific historical details such as the general time when certain items - such as bronze works - were made, then traditions about learning how to cast and when such castings were made might have been largely forgotten. I don't know enough about Obolo to know whether or not they had people dedicated to keeping a record of those kind of specific historical details though they probably had many people who knew other aspects, general and specific, of their people's history. If they didn't have some organization in place that would remember very specific details about bronze works it's possible they could have been forgotten.

Also, instead of contacting a bronze caster possibly operating outside the control of a royal court or some other centralized casting location, they could have first obtained some bronzes through trade as some other Ijaw communities did, before they made their own. This article below by E.J. Alagoa mentions (pp. 415-416) how some bronzes wound up being dispersed in Ijaw areas through trade:

"Oral Tradition among the Ijo of the Niger Delta"
http://www.jstor.org/stable/180110

Some of these would likely have been related to the Benin types if we go by what is stated in the article. Referring to of a group of bronzes found among the Mein group of the Ijaw, Alagoa's article states:

"The Mein bronzes are connected with Benin by tradition, and Horton sees some stylistic affinity also in some of the pieces. He believes the other examples in Mein and other areas belong to different styles. There are, however, no recorded traditions of either local manufacture or of importation, their origin being invariably ascribed to the water spirits. The investigation of these metal artifacts as well as of the centres of dispersal indicated by the traditions require the attention of archaeologists. "

He is referring to Robin Horton's 1965 article on some bronzes found in the Niger delta, as can be seen from the note in the article at the bottom of page 416. I haven't read Horton's article so I can't comment on it but it would probably have some additional detailed information about the actual bronzes found in the Niger delta.

My own guess is that the bronze pieces from Obolo and some others in the Ijaw areas were manufactured by people who had learned casting from someone who had left the control of royal courts or other centralized centers of casting and this explains the difference in style from other bronze works in Nigeria, while the lack of a tradition of casting could be explained by the absence of a long lasting guild of specialists that would have kept oral traditions giving specific details about the casting of the bronze pieces.

scholes0:


She never said the Benin's engaged in Cannibalism... read the text properly.

I read the text properly. I don't know how you're reading it but it clearly implies to me that the "tribes" she mentions engage in the practices she mentioned, as she claimed it was "common" to them. But since you claim she was only referring to certain ones, list them and explain how it's clear from the text that she only refers to those ones.

Flora Shaw was not an expert on Southern Nigeria, Middle-Belters, or the Annang.

Shaw referenced Benin, yet even in 1903, before she published those statements, other European writers had concluded that Benin did not engage in cannibalism. There are quotes from observers to this effect - that the people of Benin did not practice cannibalism - in H.L. Roth's book Great Benin. If she could not get it right on Benin, even with the more numerous sources available to peruse through before writing those comments, why should I believe she got it right on the other peoples that she mentioned (on which less information, and probably less unbiased and reliable information may have been available) either?

And the other examples you gave don't mention any specifics and proof of the actual cannibalism.

I have not seen any definite proof of Igbo cannibalism either. I get how the cannibalism claim by some people can be annoying, but saying that so many others were cannibals based on very thin speculation by colonial authors isn't really the best way to go about countering it.

So what relationship does Messi have with Gabon anyway?

This story has been confusing from the first time I read it and I still don't understand what he was there for other than laying some foundation stone for a building. But even that doesn't make much sense, since I can't see why someone would fly halfway around the world just to lay a stone for a building in a country that person has no real relationship with.

tpiadotcom:
what is the significance of having the chain on the upper part of the body as opposed to the feet, culturally speaking?

the Oba smiles and looks more relaxed when the chains are in the former position, compared to the latter.


in most Bini sculptures, the feet are small compared to the rest of the body- is there a traditional meaning to this?

I don't know what significance the chain on the upper body could have. It doesn't look like it would even prevent a person from doing anything the way chains restricting movement of other parts of the body would. It seems like it is being worn in a similar manner to the way the coral or jasper bead necklaces were worn. Not sure that that really means anything though.


I believe I read something a long time ago about the lower body of a person in a particular piece of Benin art that was being analyzed being less emphasized than the upper body to emphasize power, but I do not remember the source for that now unfortunately. That may not even be an exactly accurate summary of what I read, but it was something along those lines.

tpiadotcom:
it was probably used in the same context as web, or trickster.

the meaning would depend on the pronunciation of sere.

Oh, that's interesting. I have read where the title was used in some Yoruba areas, but those were areas that were using it in the same way as at Benin. I didn't know it was a proper term (apart from the plant reference I just found) in other parts of Nigeria besides its historical use as a title.

the fleur de lis is on the lower right corner:

I see it. No definite idea why it is there but I will venture a guess. Oba Ovonramwen was on good terms with European visitors prior to right before the invasion so there is a possibility that it was a gift from such a visitor. Another possibility is that some weavers liked the look of the fleur de lis design they had seen on trade objects or foreign cloth obtained through trade and incorporated it into the clothing they made for the king.

There is a possibility that it was made from cloth/clothing given specifically to the palace by an earlier French visitor. Legroing, Balon, Jean-Francois Landolphe, or some other French visitors to Benin may have presented robes or fancy cloths as a gift (with fleur de lis on them) to another king of Benin in the 1700s and it is possible that some of these cloths that were not used by an earlier king could have been kept in storage somewhere in the palace and then worn by later kings.

That is just speculation as to a possible explanation for this particular piece of clothing of course, but we do know from written sources of gifts being presented to the palace by visiting envoys and traders.

^
(Assuming that book is accurate, that is.)

I found through Google that ologbosere in Yoruba refers to a specific plant:

https://books.google.com/books?id=6YIJqE3Qep0C&pg=PA948

So I guess that answers what it means in Yoruba.

tpiadotcom:



Ologbosere itself is a yoruba word.

What does it mean in bini?

In addition, the Oba wore a fleur de lis pattern in one picture.

Any idea why?

Ologbosere just means the Iyase's (Iyasere's) cat (ologbo). It was used as a kind of derogatory or deprecating name at first. The explanation of the origin of the name is given in A Short History of Benin by Jacob Egharevba. The personal name of the Ologbosere at the time of the British invasion was Irabor.

I guess your question arises from the idea that the 'ologbo' in the name is exclusively Yoruba. That is one school of thought. However the word was more widely spread in southern Nigeria. I know it was also used by the Urhobo, for example. In fact Bolaji Aremo, in his 2012 book on how the divergence of the Yoruba and Igbo languages occurred, includes a lengthy note on this word ologbo/onogbo (on page 52) where he argues that it is not actually clear that even the use of it among the Igbo was due to borrowing.

What would that name (Ologbosere) mean if it were read as Yoruba?

As for a "fleur de lis" pattern, perhaps you mean the quatrefoil leaf looking pattern seen on some of the art. Or can you post the specific photograph you are referring to?

Iguodala's father is Bini and his mother is African American. The person who made that comment, in addition to not being willing to carry out basic research on the actual ancestry of the person he's using as an example, also probably has no idea what the "typical West African" looks like anyway, and I doubt he's ever been to west Africa. Why don't such people focus on determining the "typical" characteristics of their own groups and leave Africans alone?

Some of the people in the comments section losing their minds over Chisala's article are just desperate for a way to hold on to their beliefs. I saw so much misinformation and conjecture on there that it would take hours if not days to counter it all. HBD blogs and websites are usually trash in general and filled with mediocre minds so it's no surprise to even find people trying to claim any group of black people is mixed (even with no evidence at all provided) once their performance runs contrary to whatever stereotypes they believe about black people.

anodaBanDotCom:
now you see the effect of pouting lips.

yahayya1a:
Hehehe can't STOP laughing.. it's the girl's fault, see the way she do her nose like something is seriously smelling (wawuyar yarinya kawai)

Stylz69:
Probably if she kept a normal face; it wouldn't have done that. That duck lip pout didn't do her any favors... I'm just saying Should have tagged her as duck

No. She was actually still tagged the same way in other pictures where she was not making such a face. That is explained in this article, among others:

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/gorillas-google-photos-uses-racist-tag-on-black-friends-provoking-backlash-20150701-gi31y6.html

The fault lies in their software.

Sounds like a scene from a movie.