₦airaland Forum

erico2k2:
What a bunch of craaap How big is Edo state let alone Benin city, the Benin wall covers present day Benin capital of Edo State, Im from Delta state so dont go all Guns blazing as if I aint got a clue, we all use to be Bendel state.I have given you reference to citations as to China wall, I challenge you to give me reference to Wall of benin,

oh you think Benin empire is just present day edo? below are the guardian reports

erico2k2:
The wall of china is 21,000km long built over 2000 years.
13,170 miles (21,196 kilometers)

The total length of the Great Wall of China building in different dynasties is 13,170.69 miles (21,196.18 kilometers), announced by China's State Administration of Cultural Relics in 2012. The length of the Great Wall of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) was 5,500.3 miles (8,851.8 kilometers) from Hushan in Liaoning to Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu on April 18 in 2009.
https://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/facts/how-long.htm

And Bini wall was estimated to 16,000km
Estimated (obviously exaggerated)

The moats were to cover a single city
Benin city is not particularly large

macof:
Prove it.. provide the length of the wall of China and that of the Bini moat

even on Wikipedia it is written below that the current china wall undergoes remodelling , rebuilding and elongation to it's current size of 21000km while the benin wall destroyed since 1874 stood at a length of 16000km making it the longest man made structure at that time. Imagine if that empire exist today , the size it will be to accommodate for growth and population expansion .

AmoryBlacq:
One thing I love about the benin Kingdom is their rich cultural heritage

So many other ethnic groups today have their roots to the binis or once being ruled by the binis

Yoruba for instance, no matter how they try to deny it.

Benin was the first city visited in Nigeria by the europeans

Ruy de Sequeira 1472

and later Affonso de Aviero 1484

so sad their powers could not withstand the crown firing arms in 1897


long live the great Oba of Benin

Benin (Bini) is metamorphic pronunciation from Yoruba word Ibinu. Benin was referred to as Ilè Ìbínu (the land of anger) which was part of Yoruba anyway. If you got your name from Yoruba word, your schooled logic should tell you Yoruba didnt originate from Benin, its the other way round!

Secondly, Oba ha T'ho kpee (Oba ke pee in Yoruba) is only metamorphic pronunciation of words which over time and distance gets metamorphosed. As people migrate away from original tongues, words, alphabets or consonants go extinct while dialects are formed. Most of these phonyms are slightly different but convey in most times same meaning.

I could go on and on...but there are other more productive activities begging for attention.

You're​ free to exalt your Homeland, everyone is entitled to whatever...But you don't have to speak ill or denigrate 'another' homeland to pass your message across, and that goes for other aspects of life. It's a display of Compensatory Mechanism

Stop dislaying half-witted knowledge. Do research.

It is a big shame that Nigeria do not teach history in schools and this present generation are doomed for it, imagine a Nigerian not knowing that Benin city had street lights albeit being lit with palm oil which was the technology of that time when must part of the world was still in darkness, Benin city streets were being swept daily before must cities in world adopted same. As far back as 1485 early Europeans referred to Benin as a city, no where else in Africa has that appellation.

EdoNation:
The Greatness cannot be over emphasized my brother...... Oba GHA to kpe e

Babe! Your pride in the Edo Kingdom is unimaginable. Wow!

This is the story of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.

The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.

Barely any trace of these walls exist today.

Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.

Advertisement

When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, at a time when there were hardly any other places in Africa the Europeans acknowledged as a city. Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.

In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”

In contrast, London at the same time is described by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the quick blade or picking a pocket”.

African fractals
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”

A plaque showing an entrance to the palace of the Oba of Benin.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
A plaque showing an entrance to the palace of the Oba of Benin. Photograph: Alamy
At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them. In the middle of the streets were turf on which animals fed.

“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”

Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.

Family houses were divided into three sections: the central part was the husband’s quarters, looking towards the road; to the left the wives’ quarters (oderie), and to the right the young men’s quarters (yekogbe).

Daily street life in Benin City might have consisted of large crowds going though even larger streets, with people colourfully dressed – some in white, others in yellow, blue or green – and the city captains acting as judges to resolve lawsuits, moderating debates in the numerous galleries, and arbitrating petty conflicts in the markets.

The early foreign explorers’ descriptions of Benin City portrayed it as a place free of crime and hunger, with large streets and houses kept clean; a city filled with courteous, honest people, and run by a centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy.

What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city
The city was split into 11 divisions, each a smaller replication of the king’s court, comprising a sprawling series of compounds containing accommodation, workshops and public buildings – interconnected by innumerable doors and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that made Benin famous. The city was literally covered in it.

The exterior walls of the courts and compounds were decorated with horizontal ridge designs (agben) and clay carvings portraying animals, warriors and other symbols of power – the carvings would create contrasting patterns in the strong sunlight. Natural objects (pebbles or pieces of mica) were also pressed into the wet clay, while in the palaces, pillars were covered with bronze plaques illustrating the victories and deeds of former kings and nobles.

At the height of its greatness in the 12th century – well before the start of the European Renaissance – the kings and nobles of Benin City patronised craftsmen and lavished them with gifts and wealth, in return for their depiction of the kings’ and dignitaries’ great exploits in intricate bronze sculptures.

“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan, formerly of the Berlin Ethnological Museum. “Benvenuto Celini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him. Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

A drawing of Benin City made by a British officer in 1897.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
A drawing of Benin City made by a British officer in 1897. Illustration: akg-images
What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city. Immediately European nations saw the opportunity to develop trade with the wealthy kingdom, importing ivory, palm oil and pepper – and exporting guns. At the beginning of the 16th century, word quickly spread around Europe about the beautiful African city, and new visitors flocked in from all parts of Europe, with ever glowing testimonies, recorded in numerous voyage notes and illustrations.

Lost world
Advertisement

Now, however, the great Benin City is lost to history. Its decline began in the 15th century, sparked by internal conflicts linked to the increasing European intrusion and slavery trade at the borders of the Benin empire.

Then in 1897, the city was destroyed by British soldiers – looted, blown up and burnt to the ground. My great grandparents were among the many who fled following the sacking of the city; they were members of the elite corps of the king’s doctors.

Nowadays, while a modern Benin City has risen on the same plain, the ruins of its former, grander namesake are not mentioned in any tourist guidebook to the area. They have not been preserved, nor has a miniature city or touristic replica been made to keep alive the memory of this great ancient city.

A house composed of a courtyard in Obasagbon, known as Chief Enogie Aikoriogie’s house – probably built in the second half of the 19th century – is considered the only vestige that survives from Benin City. The house possesses features that match the horizontally fluted walls, pillars, central impluvium and carved decorations observed in the architecture of ancient Benin.


Story of cities #4: Beijing and the earliest planning document in history
Read more
Curious tourists visiting Edo state in Nigeria are often shown places that might once have been part of the ancient city – but its walls and moats are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps a section of the great city wall, one of the world’s largest man-made monuments, now lies bruised and battered, neglected and forgotten in the Nigerian bush.

A discontented Nigerian puts it this way: “Imagine if this monument was in England, USA, Germany, Canada or India? It would be the most visited place on earth, and a tourist mecca for millions of the world’s people. A money-spinner worth countless billions in annual tourist revenue.”

Instead, if you wish to get a glimpse into the glorious past of the ancient Benin kingdom – and a better understanding of this groundbreaking city – you are better off visiting the Benin Bronze Sculptures section of the British Museum in central London.

mars123:
even on Wikipedia it is written below that the current china wall undergoes remodelling , rebuilding and elongation to it's current size of 21000km while the benin wall destroyed since 1874 stood at a length of 16000km making it the longest man made structure at that time. Imagine if that empire exist today , the size it will be to accommodate for growth and population expansion .

so do the maths 21k and 16k which is greater? as a matter of fact how old are you?

erico2k2:
so do the maths 21k and 16k which is greater? as a matter of fact how old are you?

you must be very silly. because I took it upon myself this evening to educate an ignorant simpleton like you've proven yourself to be?

I maintain that the great Benin wall is the largest singular earth work ever done and not the join-join piece which is the China wall.

This is the end of our conversation.

mars123:
you must be very silly. because I took it upon myself this evening to educate an ignorant simpleton like you've proven yourself to be?

I maintain that the great Benin wall is the largest singular earth work ever done and not the join-join piece which is the China wall.

This is the end of our conversation.

E pain am

erico2k2:
E 5 am

TRASH

Did these guys not read the below from my submission above?

The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.

samuk:
Did these guys not read the below from my submission above?

The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.

Plz educate me on when the mechanical era began.The Benin wall was circa 800 while the wall of china was 200.You can prove me wrong if you want

KingOvoramwen1:
TRASH

Bring your own argument to the table with your own reference,no point hiding under insults

kids will throw insults

mars123:
even on Wikipedia it is written below that the current china wall undergoes remodelling , rebuilding and elongation to it's current size of 21000km while the benin wall destroyed since 1874 stood at a length of 16000km making it the longest man made structure at that time. Imagine if that empire exist today , the size it will be to accommodate for growth and population expansion .

And it's impossible because the wall only covered bini city , a 16,000km length is far outrageous for a small city like bini city

At the 19th century, we had no figure for the length of the bini wall.
The 16,000km is only suggested, a suggestion based on no concrete theory

Basically the doubters are arguing that the Guinness Book of Records don't know what they are talking about, I don't blame you guys because in Nigeria anything goes without verification, for your information Guinness Book of Records will not put anything down in their records without some form of verification.

samuk:
Basically the doubters are arguing that the Guinness Book of Records don't know what they are talking about, I don't blame you guys because in Nigeria anything goes without verification, for your information Guinness Book of Records will not put anything down in their records without some form of verification.

No problem have you seen it in the Guinness Book of records?

samuk:
Basically the doubters are arguing that the Guinness Book of Records don't know what they are talking about, I don't blame you guys because in Nigeria anything goes without verification, for your information Guinness Book of Records will not put anything down in their records without some form of verification.

FOr your personal Education without insults,Plz tell others as well.This is a direct link to Guinness Book of record

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-wall

So plz stop this talk.

People wearing black are not allowed in the palace? Yet one of the pictures shows a man in the palace wearing a black suit.

Too much superstitious beliefs in that Kingdom. Totally unnecessary and useless.

samuk:
Basically the doubters are arguing that the Guinness Book of Records don't know what they are talking about, I don't blame you guys because in Nigeria anything goes without verification, for your information Guinness Book of Records will not put anything down in their records without some form of verification.

Prove this please

Cus I have not come across any Guinness world record on Bini wall

I hate hypocrisy. You cannot say I'm talking without verification when you are the only one without verification

macof:
Prove this please

Cus I have not come across any Guinness world record on Bini wall

I hate hypocrisy. You cannot say I'm talking without verification when you are the only one without verification

Bro dont mind these guys, they have seen teh records and mute here is the official website of Guinness book of records for longest wall
http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-wall

This is why they are throwing empty post at us.mayB They mean Gulder Book of records.

AmoryBlacq:
One thing I love about the benin Kingdom is their rich cultural heritage

So many other ethnic groups today have their roots to the binis or once being ruled by the binis

Yoruba for instance, no matter how they try to deny it

Benin was the first city visited in Nigeria by the europeans

Ruy de Sequeira 1472

and later Affonso de Aviero 1484

so sad their powers could not withstand the crown firing arms in 1897


long live the great Oba of Benin

Stop deceiving yourself.

We know where your first oba came from.


Don't you people have othet names apart from yoruba name?

GQman:
Deny it all you want.
Bury your head in the sand!
Africa has had homosexual Kings in the past, and this story just raises my antenna.
Cultivating young boys (your very title says virgin boys) and men for the King?
Can they say no to the King if he wants to satisfy his unnatural desires on them.
It seems to me like this needs to be properly investigated.
There may be child abuse going on there.
I don't care what happened in the past. Such rubbish should not go on in this day and age.
The catholic church is paying millions now for the same thing.
If catholic priests can do it, I dare say the Oba is not holier than a catholic priest.

From your post:
Meeting an Omueda.
He smiled a lot and even tolerated all of our foolish questions. Let's call him Osaro.
Like why he decided to spend over 11 years of his life in the palace.
“I am proud to serve my kingdom” he said with so much ease.
He wore a light brown sleeveless shirt and matching shorts. Around his neck were tiny white beads, and on his ankles were metal bangles.He hasn't been outside the palace since he signed up 9 years ago.

That sounds like a sex slave to me.

it does to you because the subconscious part of your mind thrives in the cesspit of immorality

mars123:
I don't blame you, I blame the education Nigeria offered you. For your information, the Benin wall was 4 times longer.

ah ahn!

BraniacX:
ah ahn!

we have seen evidence of his own education!

mars123:
you fit reply me but you no fit Google the thing sharp sharp. Well, go home and read about the great Benin kingdom. You'll truly be amazed.

my brother! Benin moat longer than the great wall? haha!

BraniacX:
my brother! Benin moat longer than the great wall? haha!