Chapter 2: Charity Begins on the Home Coast

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION

Existing religious creationism and evolutionary theories versus the Negro delta/Slave Coast as the true Garden of Eden

Hominids left the mangrove swamps of the Niger (Negro) delta on the West African coast to live on the dry ground of the world’s most fertile rainforest. They picked palm nuts and gathered yams and fruits from the true Garden of Eden, the Land of Love, the last place in the world that will ever experience drought. It was from the Niger Delta that the ancestors of modern man accumulated, differentiated and radiated to East Africa and across the world. It is generally agreed that migration bottlenecks and probably genetic differentiation were tied to climatic factors. It has also been argued that there was a megdrought in East Africa between 135,000 and 75,000 years ago1, and soon afterwards the Toba Supereruption in Indonesia, around 73,000 years ago, wiped out most life in the Asian monsoon area where East African rains also originate. Therefore it defies logic that humans could have accumulated in Eastern Africa, and radiated out to Western/Central Africa and Asia after the superdrought. All non-African ethnic groups belong to mtDNA haplogroups, M and N, daughters of haplogroup L3 that are found only in Africa. Haplogroup L0 is the mother African haplogroup group with six branches L1 to L6. L3 was calculated to have differentiated from L0 around 60,000 years ago2 (Soares et al 2011) and its largest Africa populations are in Nigeria/Central Africa. L3 differentiated into haplogroups M and N 60,000 years ago in enroute or in Eurasia3. Also, Africans differentiated into the Original African (Bantu) and Pgymy stock from the same ancestor around 60,000

1 Scholz CA, Johnson TC, Cohen AS, et al. (19 co-authors). 2007. East African megadroughts between 135 and 75 thousands years ago and bearing on early-modern human origins. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 104:16416–16421. 2 Soares P, Alshamali F, Pereira JB, et al (12 co-authors) 2011 The Expansion of mtDNA Haplogroup L3 within and out of Africa Molecular Biology and Evolution online (http://www.mbe.oxfordjournals.org/ doi:10.1093/molbev/msr245 3 Soares P, Ermini L, Thomson N, Mormina M, Rito T, Ro¨hl A, Salas A, Oppenheimer S, Macaulay V, Richards MB. 2009. Correcting for purifying selection: an improved human mitochondrial molecular clock. Am J Hum Genet. 84:740–759. 32

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION years1. Therefore, since most of the differentiations and spread occurred around the same period, it is more likely that human beings accumulated and differentiated in the rich ecosystem of the Niger Delta during the Afro- Asian monsoon drought and Toba supereruption, after which part of L3 migrated to ‘recovering’ East Africa and onto Arabia peninsula and Eurasia, where they diverged into M and N, as modern day Asians. There are questions on whether the single ancestor was a small stature Pymgy or full bodied African, and whether the categorization is genetic or merely based on social patterns of hunter-gatherers versus farmers. There is still a large proportion of small-sized Yorubas and other Southern Nigerians that could pass for Pgymies and the traditional differentiation is along the lines of being a hunter-gatherer, an Egbere, or being part of the normal sedentary society. It appears that we all descended from the Pgymies from genetic evidence and Yoruba folklore.Yoruba history ties prosperity to ‘gba eni lowo egbere’ taking the mat from Pgymies, which could be translated to taking the land to settle down. Still held in high spiritual reverence, Egbere in Yoruba means to ‘go missing forever’ in the ancestoral forests. Those in Nigeria have been widely assimilated and speak the same Niger-Congo languages, but the evidence of intermarrying can be seen from Original Africans that have inherited their protruding buttocks – which Europeans derogatively call a medical condition known as Steatogyia. Original Africans and Pgymy staple diets of Yams, flying termites, Palm kennels and oil remain the same. Contrary to widespread beliefs that Pygmy’s are continuously migrating, they set up camps of huts for several months during which they pick wild yams before moving on to fresh territory. Original Africans also have a similar practice called shifting cultivation whereby they rotate farms and crops but not homes. Yams are about the easiest plants to cultivate by sticking the end bit of the yam back into the ground. Therefore it is illogical to claim that yam agriculture did not start till 3,500 years ago, 50,000 years afrter the separation into hunter gatherers and farming populations. Especially with archaeological evidence of blades used to ring-back and cut trees were in common use 80,000 to 90,000 years ago in present-day southern Nigeria

1 Patin E, Laval G, Barreiro LB, Salas A, Semino O, et al. (2009) Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter–Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set. PLoS Genet 5(4): e1000448. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000448 33

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION Genetic evidence proves that Western and East Pygmies differentiated around 20,000 years ago, probably in Central Africa. From the unmixed Pgymies that led the migration across Africa, it appears that they spoke the same language since there are still linguistic and cultural similarities between Central African pgymies and those that migrated to South and East Africa. There is also the question that if Bantus/Original Africans differentiated from Pygmies around 60,000 years and Pgymies migrated and differentiated into Western and Eastern Pgymies, why did Bantus not follow the same pattern sooner than 3,500years ago? It is believed that genetic analysis was inferred from wrong grottochronology that underestimates the age of Niger- Congo languages, based on the faster rate of change of Indo-european languages. And also because, as stated that ‘the great age of L3BCD and its wide distribution across Africa makes phylogeographic inferences difficult… Furthermore L3C is extremely rare… L3B and L3D most likely began to diversify in Central/West Africa, representing the earliest major spread of L3 lineages within Africa that we were able to detect1’. Unlike archaeology permanently stuck with an East African origin due to West African acidic soils poor showing of skeletons, hopefully in the near future, with a fuller genomewide sequencing of West/Central African groups, paleoanthropologists and the Western academia will catch up with the logic of a West African origin.

Yam was at the root of human evolution and still central to the culture of Yoruba, Igbo and many others in Central/West Africa. One of the arguments advanced against a rainforest evolution and development was that it was not possible to survive mainly on yams in the rainforest, without having to rely on grassland cultivation during the dry season and early raining season. From my personal experience, I know that not only will you survive but live a very comfortably self sufficient lifestyle. One person consumes 1.5kg of Yam a day. With a yam patch producing 100 yams (300kg of tubers), and

1 Soares P, Alshamali F, Pereira JB, et al (12 co-authors) 2011 The Expansion of mtDNA Haplogroup L3 within and out of Africa Pg920 Molecular Biology and Evolution online (http://www.mbe.oxfordjournals.org/ doi:10.1093/molbev/msr245

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION a clan of fifty people with an average of 96 patches of over 15 species of Yam, survival was guaranteed. In a study of whether forest hunter-gatherers, Baka (Pygmies), in Southwest Cameroun could survive solely on yams (Yasuoka 2013)1, it was proven with the above figures that sufficient wild yams were available throughout the year. Hirokazu Yasuoka observed that merely discarding the unedible end of yam tubers propagate new yams more than planting the seeds of certain yam species. As Pgymies led in the migration along rivers, Yorubas, Igbos and other Bantus followed, ‘picking up their mats’ of yam for permanent settlement. Yams and palm oil were a staple diet with snails, flying termites (esunsun) and small animals. Abundant palm trees, an important fuel for evolution, became fuel for civilisation and society as man adapted his most important resource. At an early stage, he used palm trees leaves to protect himself from the torrential rain and insects, and the practice evolved into breaking off branches to build huts. From the palm tree, they also made fire, soap, food, wine, brooms, clothing etc. Yoruba penchant for urban settings dictated the culture of women maintaining a small farm of yams, vegetables and plantain around the house, while the men cultivated various yam patches in the forest, where they practiced shift cultivation. The Igbos prefered smaller descentralised settings, villages, but still engaged int the same gender related farming practices. This initially brought about matriarchy and later polygamy, with the emphasis of getting enough labour to harvest natures heavy bounty. In Yoruba, Igbo, Igala and Nupe cultures, the society was organized around yams and the most important festivals were the New Yam festivals. Yam and palm oil are main chracters in Igbo mythology of its evolution. In Yoruba and Igbo culture, the first sons inherited the land while others migrated for fresh lands for hunting, picking, and farming. This might partly account for the time and distance gained by the Pygmies constantly pushing the frontiers and disturbing the forests as they went spread throughout Africa. In their quest for food, Pgymies/forest gatherer-hunters moved upstream along the banks of the outlets of the Negro delta to its sources and across the world. Although the majority of Bantus eventually migrate, the need to

1 Hirokazu Yasuoka 2103 Dense Wild Yam Patches Established by Hunter-Gatherer Camps: Beyond the Wild Yam Question, Toward the Historical Ecology of Rainforests Hum Ecol (2013) 41:465–475 DOI 10.1007/s10745-013-9574-z 35

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION adapt to survive harder conditions kept their numbers small compared to those who stayed behind and gradually coalesced into hamlets and villages around the fertile Niger delta. Africans, Bantu and Pgymies, that migrated ended up filling the Earth, like the early hominds that migrated across the world according to archaeological findings. The series of megadroughts in the Asian-East African monsoon rain catchment area, the last of which was brought about by the Toba supereruption, had killed all the previous migrants – probably with the exception of a few Neanthatals in the Eurasian mountain caves who some scholars claim modern Africans impregnated to breed the White race. Apart from food, the L3 haplogroup might have had to migrate for health reasons or die if they did not have the sickle cell gene to protect them against the rich insect life that included malaria giving mosquitoes, sleeping sickness tse-tse flies and river blindness. The Bible states that Adam and Eve were sent out of the Garden of Eden because of sin, and God blocked their reentry from the east—and only the east—with a cherubim and burning swords.1 This is interesting because most of those leaving the Lower Niger to populate Europe-Asia went east along the Benue River or the Lake Chad basin to the Nile via some river systems in South Sudan and Central African Republic. Due to the lack of the sickle-cell gene, Eurasians were naturally blocked from returning to the Garden by the tsetse fly zone on its northern borders and dangerous insects. Some religious theorists claim that Adam’s sin was tied to sex, which resulted in his and other whites’ ‘genetic nakedness’ or lack of color. This warranted migration from the hot African sun and malaria, until Eurasians were able to come from the west and south through the Atlantic Ocean. The east route was (and still is) plagued with insects detrimental to whites and their horses. Rather than migrating out of Africa as albinos or Caucasians due to the conditions (leaving unexplainable how they exited the tsetse fly zone in the first place), it is logical to assume that they migrated out of Africa to Europe as blacks and lost their color due to intermarriage with Neanthatals or because of having to adapt to the conditions faced in Eurasia, especially during its coldest epoch. Africans migrated out of North East African used Sinai out of Egypt into Arabia or the Horn into south Arabia, present day Yemen2. They kept to the coast1 into Indus Valley and the

1 Genesis 3:24. 2 Derricourt R. 2005. Getting ‘‘Out of Africa’’: sea crossings, landcrossings and culture in the hominin migrations. J World Prehist.19:119–132. 36

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION earliest date of settlement in South East Asia is 50,0002 years ago while reaching Australia by 48,000 years ago3.

The migrations to different environments across the world led to the creation of races. Those that remained behind in the delta became darker from the sun as they built their collective knowledge and genetic resistance to indigenous illnesses caused by the rich insect life. For tens of thousands of years, those who migrated out of the Yam Belt wandered across the planet for food in hot and freezing wildernesses, and because they weren’t settled in one place, the knowledge brought along from Niger Delta couldn’t be effectively built upon and passed down through generations. Western scholars used to claim that civilisation started fewer than ten thousand years ago in Mesopotamia and Egypt, where humans came together (after the invention of pottery and cooking) to form agricultural societies, to plant, and to process grains. This would have been a laborious process, because it required the invention of pottery and the forceful coercion of other people and animals around what initially would have been an outlandish idea. This was unlike the social and agricultural evolution of the people of the Yam Belt as outlined above. Contrary to some historical accounts, agriculture was not introduced from Egypt, or anywhere else, to the Niger delta but the other way round. The diet of most civilisations across the world center around carbohydrate staples, mainly grains and tubers, and the Lower Niger was blessed with the best and biggest common tuber in the world. Yams grew in the wild in West Africa and did not require extensive clearings, which was mandatory for grains and potatoes in Eurasia (Homo erectus might have been the first to roast yams without using a container). The black African woman easily adopted yam as a staple food without external knowledge. There wasn’t much a latter-day grain or potato planter could tell a yam planter, who, with

1 Forster P. 2004. Ice ages and the mitochondrial DNA chronology of human dispersals: a review. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci.359:255–264. 2 Barker G, Barton H, Bird M, et al. (27 co-authors). 2007. The ‘‘human revolution’’ in lowland tropical Southeast Asia: the antiquity and behavior of anatomically modern humans at Niah Cave (Sarawak, Borneo). J Hum Evol. 52:243–261. 3 Turney CSM, Kershaw AP, Moss P, Bird MI, Fifield LK, Cresswell RG, Santos GM, Tada MLD, Hausladen PA, Zhou Y. 2001. Redating the onset of burning at Lynch’s Crater (North Queensland): implications for human settlement in Australia. J Quat Sci. 16:767–771. 37

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION little effort, used one yam to feed three men, while three potatoes couldn’t feed one man. Having the best diet in the world, the black Africans in the Niger delta, who spoke the same language, began to fill the Niger-Benue areas that were served by dense and complicated river networks. The clans became villages and towns. The melting pot of the early human race lived in peace with their environment and developed a strong, naturalistic culture. With nature supplying their every need, the undifferentiated forest people created a complex societal system geared towards brotherhood and a solution based system known as the African Information Retrieval System. They would rather share their yams with men than with ravenous insects; food couldn’t be stored for long. It was this natural and peaceful coexistence that brought about human civilisation and not the forceful model portrayed by Western scholars (‘the gangster paradise’). With sources of food more stable than the rest of the world and a peaceful society, the population increased, and villages spread along the migration routes of the Niger and the Benue River into the Lake Chad region. Individuals and clan-groups migrated along the Benue towards the Nile. The grassland Africans on the fringes of the Yam Belt (the latter-day Mande and Hausa), substituted cattle and milk for the small, protein-laden animals/insects and fruits diet of their forestland cousins. In addition to cattle rearing, the grassland Africans were the ones most likely to develop grains to supplement their supply of poor-quality and low-quantity yams. The Sape/Mande people at the source of the Niger and the Senegal River, in present-day Guinea, were reported by George Murdock in his book Africa: Its People and Culture to have independently developed ‘grassland agriculture’ around 5000 BC. He went on to say, ‘This was, moreover, a genuine invention, not a borrowing from another people. Furthermore, the assemblage of cultivated plants ennobled from wild forms in Negro Africa ranks it as one of the four major agricultural complexes evolved in the entire course of human history’.1 Blades used to ring-back and cut trees of Yoruba and Igbo forestlands were in common use 80,000 to 90,000 years ago, long before Africans migrated with their tools to Eurasia. Not only were tools passed on to the outside world, but the savannah people developed sorghum, millet, and

1 Ivan Van Sertima, They Came Before Columbus (Random, 1976), 188.

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION barley to supplement the carbohydrates that yams provided. Pastoralism, in which animal milk was used to supplement the high-protein content of rainforest insects and small animals, helped to diversify the nutritional content of their diet. The first evidence of milking in the world is seen on Saharan rock art, and it is believed to have preceded grassland agriculture. Excavations in the western Sudan and Sahara show agriculture and pastoralism as far back as 7000 BC, which precedes the cultural complexes of the Egyptians. However, grains and animal milk were poor nutritional substitutes that the forest people never accepted. If all black Africans migrated into the forest from a Garden of Eden in a savannah-like environment, their first food would have been milk, and they wouldn’t be lactose intolerant today. Milk still makes black Africans in West Africa and the Americas sick. Africans spread pastoral and sedentary agricultural practices into Mesopotamia, India, and beyond, but the adopted palms and smaller tubers of cocoyam and potato resulted in lower nutrition. Nevertheless, the date palm became the most important plant in the arid North African and Asian plains. Egypt followed in agriculture but was not able to fulfill its potential until a black African called Menes, probably from the Niger delta, arrived in 4000 BC with the construction knowledge required to divert the Nile and the technological expertise to advance agricultural practices. The diversion of the Nile and the creation of a fertile delta were skills that could have been learnt only in the Niger delta, the land of a thousand rivers. Black Afro-Asians now called Negroids built the foundations of Asian civilizations including that of the Harrappan Indus Valley, Southern China and Oceania.

In the lower Niger region, black Africans developed socially and productively, creating a system of loose organisation through religious sects that protected the secrets of agriculture, trade and politics in the African Information Retrieval System. Forced labour and tyrants were uncommon, because people could easily move out of an area to another riverbank and continue eating yams, palm products, and flying termites. Two significant forest mountain ranges in southern Nigeria affected the dispersal of people from the coast. The first was the mountain range from Ilesa to Akure, which was an effective migration barrier. On the mountain 39

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION side of the thick forests facing the coast was Isharun, Akureland, the oldest settlement in black Africa, and a lot of history is mostly likely buried there. It was the defining line between Ekitiland, Ijesland, and Akureland, and people could have migrated through its occasional breaks to Ekiti, especially from the Akure-Edo lands (not the other way around, towards the coast, as ascribed by academicians). The second natural barrier is the mountain range that runs from south to north on the eastern lower Niger area, Aba to Enugu, as well as the lower Niger forests on both sides of the Niger. These obviously affected the dispersal of the Igbo, as we see a greater concentration of settlements that appear to have spread from Aguleri to Owerri and environs. The clans coalesced into villages, and the first major conglomeration in the lower Niger to become a town and empire was present-day Edo (Benin City), whose sixteen-thousand-kilometer moat/wall was longer than the Great Wall of China. The Yoruba Ijebu to the west of the Benin kingdom built a rampart around Ijebuland. The Ndigbo to the immediate east of Edo congregated into 2,240 densely populated village groups, more than anything the One-River Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations could boast during their long histories. The Lower Niger peoples had advanced cultures also tied to iron production and farming. Carbon-dating of iron slags from ancient furnances like those of Lejja, Nsukka date to over 2000BC, which attests to the fact that Southern Nigerians had moved into the Iron Age while the world was still coming out the Late Stone and Bronze Ages. However, unlike the ancient Egyptians, who stored millennia of history in their desert pyramids, Yoruba Ife preeminence can only be archaeologically traced to the first millennium AD due to acidic soils, while the Igbo pictogram writing called Nsibidi was not used to store history. The most effective store of history and culture due to the soils was the African Information Retrieval System. Obatala is undoubtedly the Yoruba’s earliest distinguishable deity, tied to the drying up of the marshes. Their earliest account of other people is Moremi’s sacrifice of her child to ward off opposition from the eastern forests, which signified the differentiation between the Yoruba and their eastern Igbo-like cousins. Care has to be taken not to confuse the history of kings and their dynasties with those of the initial settlers, who had inhabited the land thousands of years before the creation of power structures. The mainstream Yoruba is only willing to trace their history to the 1141AD beginning of the present Ife Oduduwa dynasty, whose descendants 40

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION are kings in various Yoruba city-states, including Benin/Bini. They claim that the world was created by Oduduwa and thus negate any history before him, but recent scholars claim that there is a mix up between Oduduwa and Orunmila due to what they call Ife-centrism. Yoruba Ife centrists appear to be complicit in the conspiracy to keep the history of the largest Original African group a mystery, thus preventing a concise history of the black race. It is difficult to go against the current Yoruba political disposition, but if we don’t leave selfish personal and ethnic considerations aside, the black race will unable to decipher its collective history and identity and unite towards global socioeconomic ascendancy. Unfortunately, with its power relations in present political and academic circles, the current ruling dynasty appears to be paranoid that revealing the power source it overthrew will lead to being undermined politically. The ethnic pride and political settings across Yorubaland prevent a proper analysis of claims and counterclaims that question 1141 as the start of the largest Original African group. The Edo kingdom claimed that Oduduwa was a prince of Bini called Ekaladerhan and the only son of the last Ogiso called Owodo, contrary to Ife’s claim that Oduduwa dropped from heaven or was a prince from Mecca, the son of Lamurudu (the biblical Nimrod). The Edo vividly recount thirty kings/dynasties known as Ogisos that ruled their kingdom, formerly known as Idu (Igodomigodo), for more than a thousand years before Oranmiyan became king and the kingdom name was changed to Bini. The Edo say that Oduduwa fled Bini (Ile Binu, Land of Anger), escaping being put to death at the orders of his father. He was said to have arrived in Ife (Ile Ife, Land of Love), which at the time was ruled by a king from the coastal Ilaje kingdom of Ugbo. Being a knowledgeable but humble medicine man and royalty who provided medical and spiritual help for free, Oduduwa was loved by the locals. The people were to revolt against their Ugbo rulers who they sent packing to the Ugbo, while enthroning Oduduwa. However, when his father, Ogiso Owodo, died, being the heir apparent, the Bini asked Prince Ekaladerhan (now known as Oduduwa), to take up the throne, but he was believed to have refused to return to Bini due to old age and poor health. Despite huge disagreements between Ife and Edo historians on whether Oduduwa came from Bini or Mecca, as some Ife historians claim, the Edo claim that he offered to send his son, Oranmiyan, tallies with the famous Yoruba mythology that Oduduwa sent his son Oranmiyan to rule Benin. He first made sure that his son would be treated well by sending lice

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION that the Bini fattened up as big as cows. Oranmiyan didn’t stay long in Bini, but his son, born in Benin, became the first oba called Eweka the First. The Edo logically point out that the enthronement of Oduduwa’s descendants in Bini was not out of pity but a fulfillment of an obligation. Oduduwa, being the only surviving royal blood, refused a recall and sent his son, Oranmiyan. They question why Bini, a major town at the time, would request a ruler from a smaller town if there were no blood ties. The new Oduduwa dynasty in Ife couldn’t have acquired a reputation throughout the land of being so special as to warrant such a request from an established entity like Bini, nor was there any conquest of Bini by Ife. Regardless of whether or not the Yoruba mainstream accepts that Oduduwa came from Bini, the fact remains that they can’t recount any history before 1140AD, which is several thousands of years after the creation of the Ifa divination system or the time in which science has proven that people and structures existed in Yorubaland. On the other hand, the Edo provide names of kings and towns stretching back a thousand years before the Oduduwa dynasty now ruling in Bini and across Yorubaland, which though better than what Ife historians can come up with, still falls short of what is expected regarding the origin of the black race. The names of the first two Ogisos, Igodo and Ere, are still borne by the Ijaw on the coast, which backs the belief that the Original people spread from the coast and the known dynasties, wherever the leaders came from, and they came to dominate the indigenous people who inhabited the territory. Instead of digging deeper, Edo historians lazily fall for the fallacy of linking everything before the Ogisos to their fabled migration from ancient Egypt. This contradicts scientific evidence. Although a few rulers might have returned from the Middle East due to upheaval, the DNA from the average person in the area shows that the majority never left the Garden of Eden where they evolved in the lower Niger basin! It would appear, as in the Ijebu oral history that follows, that the current ruling class in Yorubaland would rather tie itself to faraway, Eurasian power centers than with obvious, local blood ties. This is another symptom of the ‘racial inferiority complex’ that pervades the black race, both in Africa and the Americas! One can’t but demand a better attitude from the ruling class and divulge information about previous dynasties, confident that such information will strengthen them in the global community, especially in the black African race.

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION Yorubaland Figure 8

The creation of similar divination systems gives credibility to the Edo oral history. The Yoruba attribute the introduction of Ifa to the Oduduwa, while the Edo not only date its creation further back but appear to have a more complex system. From antiquity to the present day, the Edo practiced Ifa (called Iha in Edo) more fervently as individuals and as an institution. We still see the monk-like practitioners in Edoland. Moreover, the African 43

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION Information Retrieval System called Ifa in Yorubaland is replicated across most of Africa but Oduduwa is mentioned only in the Ife version. Because it has been shown in this book that all Original African groups diverged from each other in situ, it is likely that Edo region, especially its coastal environs is where the Yoruba diverged from the Igbo. The Edo language appears to be a composite of both languages. The word oduduwa (the name of the mythological creator of the Yoruba) has no direct translation in Yoruba, but in Igbo, it means ‘leader or guide of the world’ (odu, leader/guide; uwa, world).

Another good example is the oral history of the Deji (king) of Akure and Akureland, the oldest scientifically proven settlement and oldest surviving palace in black Africa. Located between Ilesaland, ruled by descendants of Oduduwa’s first son, Owa Obokun, and Edoland, ruled by his last son, legend has it that the deji of Akure was the son of an Akure woman and Owa Obokun, the king of Ilesa, on a visit to Benin via Akure (akun re means ‘the (hand) chain broke or cut’). From the history, it is obvious that a woman lived there before the advent of Owa Obokun. What is most profound, but meaningless to today’s casual observer, is the long-held cultural funeral rites of the Deji of Akure. The king of Isharun, a suburb of Akureland, is the first person summoned to the palace when the Deji dies. The Isharun monarch sneaks through the back entrance to ridicule the deji’s dead body before dressing it and taking his best possessions. After that, the public could be notified, and the women do a ceremonial tongue-lashing of the king as he exits from the front of the Akure palace. Although many might disagree within my extended family, this signifies that there were kings in the area before Oduduwa’s descendants unified and took over the land, as demonstrated by the ceremonial show of discontent by the lower king. Some scholars postulate that Oba-Ile is older than the present Akure dynasty! Unfortunately, with the advent of the Europeans, areas formerly subservient to the Bini and other local powers rebelled and denied the course of history. In some areas where the Muslims infiltrated, the elite tried to tie their history to the northeast African Islamic power centers! To the west of Benin, the Ijebu Muslim elite bastardised and discarded their history by neglecting the simple logic that Obanta, the king from outside the Ijebu Eredo ring, was probably from Whydah (on the nearby coast of Benin /Togo Republic) instead of a small, Sudanese town bearing a similar name, Wadai. 44

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION The Ijebu were the cowrie (shell money) and salt merchants of Yorubaland, and, being effective bankers, they held sway over the area. They traded gold from their secret gold mines in Ghana until the advent of the Europeans. The surrounding Eredo earthworks, visible from outer space, are indestructible. They comprised a wall and ditch measuring 14 meters high and 160 kilometers long. Though it can’t be dated, the existence of Eredo attests to the fact that the area had an early civilisation and large population, because it required more labour than the largest pyramids in Egypt. An estimated 3.5 million cubic meters of soil were shifted to build the Eredo monument, a million cubic meters more than it took to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt. Thick forest now covers most of the earthworks. As time went on, the flourishing coastal trade compelled the western Yoruba (Ijebu, Ketu, and Awori) to build coastal cities outside the Eredo earthworks ring. They took advantage of the increase in coastal maritime business between Ivory Coast and Angola along the naturally shielded waterways and lagoons. It wouldn’t have been farfetched, during social unrest, to seek an arbitrator prince from the same Ijebu royalty bloodline, Omo Obanta (son of the outside king) from their satellite town, Whydah, on the frontier of the Ijebu sphere of influence. The prince was to unite the Ijebu kingdom, especially with his famed exposure and ability to settle quarrels, and made Ijebu-Ode the capital city of the Ijebu. Unfortunately, this information is a generation away from being lost as Muslim elites have changed the official version of their history to suit new religious and political alliances. These were the same type of Islamic alliances that ultimately destroyed the Yoruba frontline city-states, Ilorin and the Oyo kingdom, to the northwest of the Ijebu, which was believed to have been created by Oranmiyan. The Oyo Muslim elite present since the 1500s Nupe/Borgu jihadist attack are mainly responsible for the misrepresentation that the Yoruba migrated from Mecca through Lamurudu; this is an unfounded assertion. The Oyo and the Egba were the middlemen between the Ijebu gold miners, the Hausa, and other Trans-Saharan gold merchants. Oyo-Ile, created by Oduduwa’s youngest son Oranmiyan, extended across the Niger. It was the Yoruba frontier grassland empire and best known, but it was razed with all its history in 1800s by Fulani jihadists. After the second jihadist destruction, the Alaafin (king) of Oyo relocated the Oyo court in the 1830s to the present Oyo. The town was rebuilt within the confines of the 45

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION forest but devoid of true history apart from the stories of Islamised historians. Bordering Oyo to the southwest at Otun Ekiti was Ekitiland. It had numerous towns and villages that extended to the border of Akureland at Ikere, and it had mainly agriculturists with linguistic and historic traits similar to the Akure and Edo. Akure was regarded as part of Ekiti until my grandfather, Prince Adelola Faloye (the first Akure local government chairman, and other patriarchs, with the support of the ruling Deji) removed Akure from the Ekiti Parapo (Ekiti United Council). From personal observation, the Edo language appears to be a mix of Ijebu and Ekiti dialects, or the dialects were condensed from Edo. Some scholars claim that stronger age-group work relationships and linguistic evidence show that the more southern and eastern Yoruba, Ekiti/Akure, and Ijebu towards Benin, are older than the central and eastern Yorubalands of Oyo, Egba, and Igbomina. This observation tallies with the oral history that Oranmiyan left Benin to go and create Oyo to the north and west. Benin/Edo tradition shows that the previous Ogiso dynasty included more than thirty kings, who ruled for millennia before the present Oranmiyan dynasty. The pre-Ogiso dynasty relates to a time when the marshes hadn’t fully dried out and when the Yoruba, Edo, Igbo, and Ijaw were not fully differentiated. Due to the lack of early external distortions, some glottochronologists grossly underestimate the time of dispersal as just over five thousand years. If it takes five thousand years to forcefully diverge Indo-European languages, it might take fifteen thousand years in a peaceful forest Africa environment with no culture shocks or imperialism. The Ogboni secret cult in Yorubaland and the Igbos Nri cult relate to an earlier period of social development, while the Ijesa of Central Yorubaland link the Ogboni to the thicker, eastern forests on the way to Akure/Benin. Akure is not only the geographical midpoint between Ife and Benin, but it has the unique characteristic in Yorubaland of having ‘Yoruba’ and ‘Edo’ sections. As one moved along the coast eastward, there were few towns with the notable exception of the Ugbo kingdom, which claimed that the Ife Odudwua dynasty replaced it in Ife. It appears that it has a closer and older relationship with the Benin-Edo sphere, but which came first is unclear. The Original African group initially spread inland from the coast, so it is possible that it was the first settlement before Bini, although another ruling class from Benin or those sacked from Ife went to take over rulership of the coastal kingdoms. 46

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION It is recounted that when Oduduwa was blind and at the point of death, he sent his son, Owa of Ijeshaland, to the ocean near Ugbo for medicinal ocean water. This action ties to the fact that Oduduwa had knowledge of Ugbo and its environs. Oduduwa died before Owa’s return, which enabled his herbalist, who was not a royal blood, to assume the throne. This is a thorny issue to this day, because many Yoruba royalists and purists claim that the Ooni lineage is not a true Oduduwa bloodline. The issue was vehemently raised during my visit to the Edo palace, especially during my lengthy discussion with the chief priest of Benin.

Because the Igbo are the second-largest Original African group and have the third highest effective perentage proven by genetics of being the ancestral home, and especially since the Bantus evolved from other groups to the east of the Niger and spread to Central and South Africa, the question is which side of the Niger delta man evolved from, if the Niger delta had fully developed before the split. The Igbo point to Aguleri in northern Igboland as their ancestral home, which is far from a coastal evolution site. The Ijaw who lived on the coast and had links with the three inland ethnic groups claimed to have moved from the west to the central and later the eastern part of the delta. There is no continuous divergence from the Ijaw into the southern Igbo, who would have spread north to Aguleri. Moreover, the northern Igbo appear to be older than the southern Igbo near the Port Harcourt coast. Igbo divergence from or into other cultures across the Niger appears to have occurred around the northern, not the southern, crossing, because there is a continuous formation of settlements from Onitsha to Benin via Asaba. The eastern spread from Benin takes a more inland route to Igboland along which there are numerous tales of Bini royalty who organised and led in Esan and western Igbo lands. The Igboland and culture spread from/into the western side of the Niger. We see how Edo/Yoruba culture diverges into Igbo through the Ika and Aniochi clans from the midpoint between Benin and Asaba on the Niger riverbank. Opposite Asaba, on the other bank of the Niger is Onitsha, a major Igbo town that some scholars have stated is derived from orisha, the name for Yoruba and Edo deities. The river is also called the Orunmili, a corruption of Orunmila, one of the highest Yoruba orishas.

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Igboland Figure 9

Onitsha’s origin is traced to the first king, Eze Chima, a rebel Edo Bini prince. Onitsha is slightly south of Aguleri, which the Ndigbo claim as their origin. To the southwest of Onitsha is Nnewi and the Anaedo kingdom, whose supreme deity is Edo. Next to Nnewi is Awka Etiti and Igbo-Ukwu. Considering the terrain and natural distribution of people, because the 48

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION majority of Ndigbo towns are in the Onitsha-Owerri-Aba-Enugu triangle, it would appear that the Igbo migrated across the Niger to Onitsha or Aguleri and spread out. They were constrained in the west by the Niger (and the thick, lower Niger forests on both sides of the river) and in the east by the mountain range that ran from around Aba to Enugu. It is highly unlikely that they spread northward from a coastal evolution point or crossed over the Niger south of the lower Niger forests, via the Ughelli route, without leaving a continuous, significant Ndigbo community presence until they arrived at Aba/Owerri. Towards the central Niger delta, land settlements thin out, especially after Warri/Sapele, which used to be Bini/Edo territory. There are significant settlements of Ijaw and other riverine people living on the lagoons. The coastal peoples were the earliest conglomeration of people but also appeared to have mixed histories with the Yoruba, Igbo, and Edo. While they appeared to be the majority and rulers of Benin and Yoruba kingdoms before the Ogiso and Oduduwa dynasties, there is also evidence that the Yoruba/Edo dynasties ruled the coast. Two of Oduduwa’s sons are said to have migrated westward to lead Ketu, Sabe, and lands towards the Volta River, which includes the Yoruba’s close cousins, the Aja, Ewe, Dangme, and Ga. Atlantic slavery greatly depleted the large population that filled the short savannah between Yorubaland and the Volta River basin, leaving substantial earthworks at Tado that attest to lost civilisations. The Upper Volta groups, like the Mossi in the grasslands, were Islamised and mostly lost their Original African history like the Hausa. The Original African Akan and Bia, whose languages still closely resemble Yoruba and Nigeria’s Middle Belt languages like Nupe and Gwari, relocated farther into the forest to establish new political structures. A few coastal groups migrated west along the West African coast to Senegambia, but the rest of West Africa was mostly filled by migration along the Niger to its Guinea highlands source onto the Senegambia delta. The Dogon, around the Niger bend in Mali, have an ancient but advanced knowledge base that proves the antiquity of the Upper Niger basin. The Trans-Saharan invasions led to the majority moving into the forest towards the coast in Guinea or becoming Islamised in Mali and Senegambia. Ethnic groups that migrated north of Edo and Yoruba became the Gwari, Nupe, and Igbira. They were broken up and made to move towards Cameroon or became Islamised by the Trans-Saharan traders and colonists in West Africa. 49

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION The man-made monuments of the ancient kingdoms didn’t survive, except in places like Esie in northern Yorubaland that protrudes into drier, wooded grasslands, the 295 monoliths in Upper Cross River on the eastern outskirts of Igboland, and the substantial Tado earthworks in the narrow, western Aja savannah, next to the Ijebu earthworks. Esie has hundreds of stone carvings that have been dated to around the time when the Yoruba capital moved northwards to Oyo-Ile in the first millennium. The Igbo had the stepped Nsude pyramids that resembled earlier pyramids in the Sudan and Egypt but were much smaller. The Lower Niger ancient African societies, the Yoruba and Igbo, couldn’t build huge monuments that would stand the test of time and the moist rainforest climate and that did not, ultimately, fit into a naturalistic environment that prevented the excesses of human architectural accomplishment.

Despite the lack of huge physical monuments, the advanced social systems attest to the age and development of the people. Between 10,000 BC and 6000 BC, Africans used their knowledge to develop the stellar (lunar) calendar based on female principles. Around 4000 BC, the solar calendar was developed, marking an era of male dominance that involved building pyramids. The African Information Retrieval system based on the four-day week shows that this system was in operation before the 4000BC evolution of the seven day solar calendar. The Igbos system called Aha still operates on the four by four strings, unlike many others that tie all the strings/Opele to make 16 cowries. Instead of a four-day week and a seven-week month, the new solar calendar was based on a seven-day week, a four-week month, and a twelve- month year, based on the twelve months (moons) required for a complete revolution of the sun.The Ifa calendar was based on a four-day week (Ose) and a ninety-one-week year. The days were named after deities. The first day of the week was Ojo (day) Obatala, the second was Ojo Orunmila, the third was Ojo Ogun, and the fourth was Ojo Shango. Converted to the solar year, the Yoruba year started on June 3 and ended on June 2. The Yoruba year in 2008 was 10,050. The Igbo calendar was also based on a four-day week but had a seven- week month and a thirteen-month year, with an extra day added in the last month. The ubochi (days) were known as Eke, Orie, Afo, and Nkwo. The year began in late February and ended in early February, as follows: 50

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION Onwa Mbu—Third week of February Onwa Abuo—March Onwa Ife Eke—April Onwa Ano—May Onwa Agwu—June Onwa Ifejioku – July Onwa Alom Chi—August to early September Onwa Ilo Mnuo—Late September Onwa Ana—October Onwa Okike—Early November Onwa Ajana—Late November Onwa Ede Ajana—Late December to early January Onwa Uzo Alusi—Late January to early February

Original Africans inhabiting the Niger-Kongo riverbasin developed complex social systems, especially the world’s first religion and a complex divination system called Ifa by the Yoruba, Iha in Bini, Aha in Igbo and Ewe etc. The foundation of Ifa was laid more than ten thousand years ago and built on a binary code of 256 (16 x 16) outcomes. The divination system could be advanced to have 256 x 256 outcomes (Odu Ifa) or as many outcomes as it was possible to count. It became a gigantic memory bank of words on all sorts of events that one can ever contemplate which are tied to all outcomes possible since the bank was continuously replenished. This was the first systematic, knowledge-based system, but it had no written scripts and was recited orally to keep it secret. Its library of wisdom, called the Odu Ifa, consisted of 16 major chapters of 240 minor categories. These had to be memorised, and the outcomes identified as the opele (divination chain, nuts) fell during divination on the opon Ifa (divination board). The names given to the odus gradually changed with the divergence of languages, but the principles behind them largely remained the same. Its intelligent outline of knowledge transferred across the world to aid in developing other divination systems and lines of study. Ifa was advanced enough to postulate abstract structures of the natural world, including elementary particle physics, cosmology, quantum consciousness and physics, voodoo physics, and maths. Its knowledge base was so advanced that technology inventors adopted its 256 dimensional structure for the 256- bit motherboard in computers.

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Similarities and differences of 9 local variations westward from Fon in Benin Republic to Idoma in Eastern Nigeria

FON- NW NE Nupe Edo W Nri Igbo Igala Idoma GBE Yoruba Yoruba Igbo ◇◇ Gbe Ogbe Osika Sikan Ogbi Ogbi Obi Ebi Ebi ◇◇ ◆◆ Yeku Oyeku Oyeku Eyako Ako Akwu Ahwu Akwu Akwu ◆◆ ◆◇ Woli Iwori Ogori Gori Oghoi Ogoli Ogori Ogoli Ogoli ◇◆ ◇◆ Di Odi Oji Eji Odin Odi Odi Odi Oji ◆◇ ◇◆ Abala Obara Obara Bara Ovba Obai Obala Obara Obla ◆◆ ◆◆ Akana Okanran Okona Kana Okan Okai Okala Okono Okla ◆◇ ◇◇ Loso Irosun Orosun Rusu Oruuhu Ulushu Ururu Oloru Olo ◆◆ ◆◆ Wolin Oworin Oga Ega Oghae Ogali Agari Egali Egali ◇◇ ◇◇ Guda Ogunda Ogunta Guta Ighitan Ejite Ijite Ogwute Ejita ◇◆ ◆◇ Sa Osa Osa Esa Oha Osha Ora Ora Ola ◇◇ ◇◇ Lete Irete Irete Etia Ete Ete Eke Olete Ete ◆◇ ◇◆ Tula Otura Otura Turia Eture Etule Oture Otula Otle ◇◇ ◆◆ Trukpe Oturupon Otaru RakpanErhoxuaAtukpaAturukpaAtunukpaEtrukpa ◇◆ ◆◇ Ka Ika Oyinkan Yikan Eka Aka Aka Eka Eka ◆◆ ◇◆ Che Ose Okin Arikin Ose Ose Ose Oche Oche ◇◆ ◆◇ Fu Ofun Ofun Efu Ohun Ofu Ohu Ofu Ofu ◆◇ Excerpted from people.bu.edu/manfredi/4bitArraySpreadsheet.pdf. As discussed elsewhere(Manfredi 2009a, §4.3)

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A Yoruba interpretation of the sixteen odus follows. The number before each odu represents the binary number corresponding to the pattern:

0 Ogbe: Light, birth of Orunmila (wisdom) 1 Osa: Overcome fear 2 Otura: Govern wisely 3 Owonrin: Weather storms 4 Irete: If you refuse to sacrifice something, you might lose it anyway 5 Ofun: Olodumare creates earth, the sixteen odus, orishas, and humans 6 Edi: Watch out for obstacles 7 Okanran: Follow plans 8 Ogunda: Ogun, use technology wisely 9 Iwori: Ask diviner for advice 10 Ose: Truth protects good, destroys evil 11 Oturopon: Raise children well 12 Irosun: Crouch, wait, and plan 13 Ika: You reap what you sow 14 Obara: Cooperate, each hand washes the other 15 Oyeku: Dark, Olodumare’s earthly creations

Ifa transferred to the Indus Valley 5,300 years ago, and from it, latter day Indians established Buddhism. The African Information Retrieval System introduced to South China was also fundamental to the creation of I Ching with sixty-four dimensions or outcomes. It also helped the tarot system of seventy-eight outcomes. Ancient Egyptians adopted the oracle through the worship of the Goddess Wadjet, the grand patron of Ancient Egypt. Wadjet like the Yoruba Osunmare was a rainbow snake goddess that brought fertility and prosperity. Wadjet later spread to Greece where she was called Buto and brought about divination skills to Europe. Ifa was adopted by Arabs who called it ilm al-raml (‘science of the and’) or khatt al-raml (‘lines in the sand’). The divination involved calculating outcomes in the sand poured onto the divination board. It was identified with the prophet Idris, and after the Muslim invasion of Spain around 711, Ifa was brought to medieval Europe but was confused with Western astrology. It is much more advanced than Western astrology, but the major Ifa orishas are identified as follows.

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House Astrological Ruling Yoruba Effect Sign Planet Ruling Orisha 1 Aries Mars Ogun War, iron technology, assertive and aggressive self 2 Taurus Venus Oshun Love, fertility, wealth, joy 3 Gemini Mercury Esu/Ibeji Information and duality, yin and yang 4 Cancer Moon Yemoja Ocean, moods, maternal protective nurturing and instinct 5 Leo Sun Orunmila Destiny, creativity 6 Virgo Mercury Esu Information systems and prophets like Jesus 7 Libra Venus Oshun Love, fertility, balance, and harmony 8 Scorpio Pluto Oya Storms and hurricanes, transformation, death, reincarnation/regeneration 9 Sagittarius Jupiter Obatala Higher education, religion, philosophy, wisdom, good fortune and intelligence 10 Capricorn Saturn Babalu-Aiye Structure, career status, patience and discipline 11 Aquarius Uranus Shango Upheaval, rebellion for justice/humanitarian ideals 12 Pisces Neptune Olokun Seclusion, spirituality, secrecy of ocean floor

To become a babalawo (a graduate practitioner in Ifa) was no easy feat. Training began between the age of seven and ten and lasted for twelve years. The progress between training grades was slow and laborious, as trainees were subjected to intensive memory and bodily tests. Every outcome of the divination system was tied to an event, name, place, and many other things or words ranging from the historic to the scientific, cosmic, and proverbial. An awo (obos in Edo) or practitioner had to memorise it all and be able to recognise the 16 major signs and the 240 minor ones as they fell during divination. 54

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION Contrary to the Christian or Islamic dogma of Esu’s knowledge base being satanic, Original Africans like the Yoruba and Ndigbo developed naturalist religions that reflected philosophies represented by common, important natural objects. They were based on natural laws of retributive justice and karma (known as Esan in Yoruba, Ofo and Ogu in Igbo), which ensured the personal responsibility necessary for peaceful coexistence. The Igbo religion, also known as Odinani or Odinala, was based on a central figure and almighty god called Chukwu. Odinani was the ancient Igbo traditional religion that connected Mmadu (humans) to Chukwu (God) through one’s chi (personal soul). As in the Yoruba culture, Chukwu was best approached through the Alusi/Arushi (orishas) who represented specific aspects of nature. The top alusis were as follows: Ala, the earth goddess, represented by the moon, the first and most important alusi, was responsible for fertility and morality; Amadioha/Amadiora (‘free will of the people’) was the alusi of thunder and lightning, the god of justice and represented by the sun; Anyanwu (‘the eye of the sun’) was also seen as a goddess of justice with an all-knowing eye that resides in the sun; Ikenga (‘place of strength’) was a horned alusi represented by Mars and known as the god of human endeavour, assertiveness, success, and victory; Ekwensu was the god of bargains and trade like Esu but not the devil as misconceptualised by Christian dogma. One’s chi chose whether or not to desecrate ala (earth), while the goddess Ala, Mother Earth, the alusi of morality, judged how one’s chi found its way back to the chi ukwu – soul collective – supreme god (Chukwu). The Igbo believed that Ofo and Ogu were rendered with thunder by Amadiora, the god of the sky and husband of the goddess Ala, who fed her with rains.

Covering all aspects of life, an African’s religion connected his heartbeat (the engine of his soul) with his environment through singing and dancing to drumbeats that reflected spiritual emotion and appreciation. The physical appreciation of the environment was expressed through art, expressive of all nature forms. Every torque of the drum was to convey messages to the orishas. Through his religion, the African appreciated the wide range of nature’s gifts, from paintings on his body to paintings on the rocks and molding wood, metals, and fabric, which he wore as clothing in all the colors that nature provided. 55

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION The fertile environment inspired a live-and-let-live atmosphere. Without food shortages or other restrictions, the Yam Belt was holy land, thus allowing a polytheistic environment. Everybody was allowed to participate and came out to celebrate the gods and beliefs of other people. This practice spread to the Nile region and across the world after the Ice Age, but it was eventually halted and bastardised by the arid Middle East, because of the need to control scarce resources like water. This need for control brought about the later and more restrictive forms of monotheism with jealous gods. Until the turbulence of the Middle Ages split the Catholic Church, monotheism translated into power in the hands of a few people who had the power to forgive sins at the price they decided. In the Yam Belt, everyone initially had a voice in government and could voice their complaints in a daily, open court consisting of elders and priests and presided over by a king who did not possess absolute power. Knowledge was power, which was why the secrets of Ifa were never written down to try to prevent the abuse later witnessed in the Eurasian belief systems that evolved from excerpts of Ifa. In other civilisations, one man could amass a fortune of wheat or other grains that could be stored. The common Yoruba saying was that a single man could never eat alone all of what the area had to offer. Whoever cleared the land of trees owned the land, resulting in communal ownership of land, which extended to communal meals split among age and gender groups. This was the basis of the ancient African mentality of consensus as opposed to that of the majority or the strongest. While other races were migrating and trying to organise to survive in less favourable conditions, the Niger delta people were busy formulating strong societal norms and mores. Their gods didn’t require taking someone else’s land as part of one’s manifest destiny, as was the case in Christianity, Islam, and other religions of the naturally deprived. Under no circumstances was taking another man’s property accepted, especially under the authority of personal religious visions with no corroborative witnesses. Otherwise, it was believed that Shango/Amadiora, the god of justice and thunder, the provider of the rains of the rainforest, would strike offenders down while Oya would blow and carry them away. In Yoruba culture, the rhythmic language of Ifa and music encapsulated history and philosophy better than any other known means. The word ogun showed how one word could describe a whole philosophy. Ogun could be pronounced in five different tones, each with different meanings; Ogun meant war; Ogun was the god of iron, Ogun was biological and spiritual 56

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION poisons, Ogun meant sweat/assertive self, and Ogun meant inheritance/wealth. This encompassed a natural philosophy that stated that one could attain wealth only through laborious sweat (working/farming) or war (plundering), both of which were accomplished with iron tools/weapons or through spiritual and biological means. The choice of plundering was administered with the warning of the nature of Ogun, the god of war and iron. Praises sung of Ogun reflected his fierce character:1 Ogun kills on the right and destroys on the right, Ogun kills on the left and destroys on the left, Ogun kills suddenly in the house and suddenly in the fields, Ogun kills the child with the iron with which it plays, Ogun kills in silence.

In a rich mythology that also depicted Ogun as preferring a bath of blood to one of water, this was a societal warning against unrelenting wars for material gain. The worship of Ogun was a fraction of the Yoruba pantheon, although Ogun became more important with the arrival of iron- wrought guns borne by Europeans whose Ogun rage the Africans could not pacify. A seven-day Ogun festival in 1791 prompted the revolution that gave birth to Haiti, the first modern black nation.

Respect for elders and societal responsibility was at the core of the Yoruba tradition, despite their love for urban settings and gatherings. Prior to fluoride toothpaste, the West African chewing stick was the best dental cleaner, and black palm oil soap still has its advantages. African naturalist tendencies resulted in a pattern of dressing that was suitable to the environment and physical health, similar to the black hip-hop baggy dressing. No color was, and still is, too loud for African dress. In order not to interfere with nature, loose clothing was adopted, especially the trousers, which were loose in order to keep the male sex organs cool. Sperm is sensitive to high temperatures, and the body has a natural system of letting the scrotum fall away from the body; tight European clothing results in lower fertility. Modern-day black youth in loose, baggy trousers suffer abuse for dressing irresponsibly from a black middle class with a colonial mentality that thinks they should dress more like the repressed but ‘civilised’ Europeans.

1 Joseph M Murphy, Santeria: An African Religion in America (Beacon Press, 1988), 11. 57

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION In Africa, training was a lifetime societal responsibility, because people were born into occupational groups and houses that undertook their training in the necessary life skills. Those named with the Ifa (Ifa is knowledge) or Fa prefix were trained to be awos, like my name Faloye (knowledge is power/wisdom, a philosopher-king); those with an Ayan prefix were trained with drums and music; those with an Ade prefix were trained to be politicians/ruling houses. The Ogun prefix was for blacksmiths, Ode was for hunting, etc. Apart from biological and clan groups, a person belonged to an age group that was assigned a specific task in the existing social order. Young males kept the forest paths clear and charged tolls in Igboland, while older men often controlled politics and important rituals. African families were large, and distant relatives were welcome to contribute to the clan’s objectives. At a certain age, Igbo children were sent to successful relatives for indentured service, after which the role model set him or her up in a chosen career or business. This was a cultural trait that many have wrongly interpreted as being akin to slavery, and it probably contributed to the later acceleration of Muslim and European slavery. (The vast, thick vegetation that promoted easy habitation prevented harsh slavery regimes, because a slave could easily disappear into the rainforest.) To increase production, families invited the teenage children of relatives with poorer lands to live and work with them. Even enslaved prisoners of war were not treated much differently than the clan’s legitimate children, and they could even become chiefs. Production was sometimes organised by age and gender. Men of a certain age group came together to clear the forests and extend their yam farms, which were normally situated on the outskirts of their towns. They then returned for the socially enjoyable, communal meal. Women took care of the small vegetable farms within the compound, cooked, sewed, picked gold on riverbanks, and traded. An African woman often preempted her husband by choosing trusted junior wives to do certain tasks that she believed were beneath her in terms of age like cooking, collecting firewood, and sex. This was to prevent the arrival of an unknown rival who might seek to usurp her productive power within the family and clan. The economic system was embedded in the culture. As the importance of trade grew along with population, women became more visible outside the forest region as they traded their family wares over longer distances. This trait made outsiders conclude that women led African societies, but the point is that the African sense of wealth and belonging was 58

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION different.Through trade, a woman could accumulate and allocate wealth, but it was not hers or anybody’s to will or pass to anyone outside the family. When she died, her role was taken over and nothing else. An African’s life was one of communal enterprise in different gender and age groups. As children, they respected elders with the hope of one day becoming an elder, after which they died, joined those who had come before, and become a god. Only in death they became revered, or so it appeared, but while they were on earth, they had to enjoy elaborate burial and reburial parties of the dead every day.

There was a natural balance to everything as women and men worked with what nature provided. The African religion reflected the natural societal balance with both female and male gods. A complete lifecycle of life, death, and rebirth needed a female presence (unlike Christianity with a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost). Matriarchal worship of female ancestors came to an end, as seen in the Bible. The snake that was the symbol of the female and her curative powers, probably from the Egyptian snake Goddess Wadjet, was demonised when Adam ate from the Tree of Life (women) for knowledge and guidance. Medicine was equated with female curative powers as signified by the snakes on the emblem of the Hippocratic Oath/Rod of Asclepius. Archaeological findings show that Jews worshipped a female opposite of Yahweh called Asherah when they left black Egypt and arrived in Israel, but the male dominance in their production function based on wars eventually erased the female god. Female gods of fertility appeared redundant in the arid deserts. Eurasians eventually called their mothers ‘bitches’ while the opposite of God became a dog, man’s best friend, who wandered with him in the wilderness. Homosexuality rose in the ranks of the Eurasian nomads, and their women were left behind as exemplified in Greece, their first empire. This natural societal and sexual balance was reflected by forest- dwelling African unwavering taboo regarding homosexuality, which, at present, threatens to split African Anglican churches from Western Anglican churches. Homosexuality was believed to be a product of gender- unbalanced societies where migrant men lived in the arid environments, and the women couldn’t take significant roles in societal production because of warfare against other men and the environment. Homosexuality amounted

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION to selfish enjoyment as opposed to positive African communal leisure and the productive capacity of the continent’s forests. African laws on sex were formulated with the realisation that sex was the easiest way to destroy or build a society, and clearly defined roles were ascribed to remove any form of ambiguity. What was female was removed from a male child in his first week, while what was male was removed from a week-old female child. The male foreskin was believed to hold onto fluids and germs after sex, which could be easily passed to partners and result in sexually transmitted diseases. In modern times, some research has shown that uncircumcised men are more likely to spread HIV/AIDS. To protect against sexual laxity, sex was only for procreation, and therefore a woman’s clitoris was removed. The clitoris was viewed to be highly sensitive, like the male organ, but without any productive capacity. A corollary of the African belief was that sex for mere enjoyment led to sexual excess and homosexuality. Without a clitoris, oral sex and lesbianism were unattractive. In the interest of the community, to have more children, male promiscuity was encouraged, but female promiscuity was frowned upon. The reproduction rate was much higher than average because a man had to do more ‘rounds’ to satisfy a ‘clit-less’ woman, and the only way to arouse her was through internal erogenous spots, which increased the chances of conception. Circumcision was done early in life to prevent enforcing the societal norms on a grown adult. The environment prevented forceful doctrines and promoted tolerance among adults no matter their private beliefs.

With these societal norms in place, the Niger people lived in peace and prosperity in the Land of Love. As they spread, pressures upon the land brought about a culture whereby the first son inherited land while others migrated to the next plot. This was especially common among the Igbo and the Bantu who eventually inhabited the land to the far south of Africa. Without too much to bother about, black Africans concentrated on clothing, art, and music, and they produced the Nok and Ife terracotta, brass, and other artwork. They invented the talking drum, rhyming their words into music. There was also the Yoruba Ewi—it was like poetry with drums and a forum to recount history or make social criticism and praise, similar to modern-day rap.

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION The philosophy and practice of forest African religion did not concentrate on social organisation for production and ‘law and order’, because they weren’t constraining problems. Worship evolved as a means of meditation and healing. Dancing and music were means of cleansing, mediating, and rejuvenating the soul. They were also used to invoke the spirits of the dead whose specific influence was required.

The people left in the Niger-Benue basin could have anything, but they couldn’t keep records or accumulate wealth unnecessarily due to the humid climate. Trade for essential food like salt, peppers, palm products, and fruits developed between the Yam Belt and the outlying savannas, whose inhabitants tried to exchange grains and animals for the richer forest products. Rice, millet, and other grains never appealed to the forest people of the Yam Belt, who regarded them as bird food, while the forest people had abundant and better-tasting animals instead of tasteless cow meat. Forest Africans had their own dwarf cows that they reared for its tastier meat but not for its milk. Having so much time on their side, and fuller stomachs, the people of the Yam Belt made commercial artistic and decorative clothing and artworks. Starting with cloth made from palms, they tested and went onto other materials, like cotton, while experimenting with metals for artwork or to be sold unprocessed in the trade between the forest and savannah areas. This caused the savannah peoples to travel as far as Egypt and India in order to bring a better deal than grains and cows to the market. The forest people did not demand much for their goods, and in most cases, a rare item went a long way. International trade was unimportant to the common man, and subregional trade was based on items like salt for those living far from the sea. Rich forest dwellers often bought trade items, like grass, from an unknown land to thatch their roofs even though it was of an inferior quality. The entertainment capital of short-lived but exotic animals from other lands also appreciated. Horses were luxuries that normally lasted for a few months before falling prey to Africa’s rich insect life. On the other hand, many in the forest were enticed by the savannah traders with tall tales of exotic, faraway places. Black youth were the most impressionable. They felt overburdened by social responsibilities, were unable to accumulate wealth selfishly, and saw the fruits of their labors exchanged cheaply for exotic goods. From then on, forest people migrated 61

EVOLUTION TO REVOLUTION to distant lands only to be disappointed by their inability to assimilate. They returned home to continue the circle of fabled lands and disappointment. Peoples of the savannah and desert were increasingly identified by their darker complexion—jet black, ‘burnt’ due to the lack of cloud cover in the hot, arid regions (compared to their original habitat in the cloudy rainforest). Their languages changed as they dealt with Eurasians and their Afro-Asian offspring. The cultural mores and Ifa-based knowledge in the Niger delta diffused throughout the world, although the real messages from the Land of Love and the Land of the Gods were later lost. From antiquity to modernity, it is clear that as people moved farther away from the Yam Belt, the crops became smaller and less nutritional, requiring more organisation and land as well as stronger tools and animals for a lower quality of life. These typified, ironically, what were believed to be more technologically advanced civilisations.