"the left bank of the Niger developed heroic leaders. Operating from Kangaba, sometimes called Kanga, the capital of Manding, they made for themselves a place in history among the greatest rulers of their day" #BlackHistoryMonth#Day2
"This city has been the center of the Malinké, or Mandingo people...For several hundred years this city was the capital of one of the greatest empires ever developed in Africa and one of the most considerable that ever existed in the history of man" - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"The first time the outside world ever had a glimpse of this empire was about 1050, when one of its rulers, converted to Islam, made a pious pilgrimage to Mecca to bow at the tomb of the Prophet." - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"Mansa Musa. He brought the Manding to its apogee during his reign from 1307 to 1332. Building upon the conquest of his predecessors, Gonga-Musa expanded the Manding empire in all directions" - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"The administration of justice was an important concern of both the central and local authorities. In the judiciary were representative lawyers, judges, juriconsults, and the like" - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"The people were in good circumstance because of their trade and industry. They exported gold, ivory, skins, and kola nuts; and they exchanged cattle, durra, and cotton" - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"Signs of wealth were in evidence, and the people seemed happy. Towns, which flourished as an out let of what the people produced, introduced among them a. desire for imported luxuries for which these commodities were exchanged." - Dr. Carter G Woodson
"The army was organized on the same basis of efficiency. It was composed of both infantry and cavalry armed with bows and arrows, swords, and long and short spears. The army was divided into units under captains or commandants." - Dr. Carter G Woodson #BlackHistoryMonth#Day2
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Ancient Nigerians in Nsukka started smelting iron some time between 2631 - 2458 BCE, long before the arrival of Nok people
The dufuna canoe, Nok canoe art and Atlantic seashell terracotta may be evidence of Nok long distance trade with iron metallurgists, down the Niger River
"Some very early iron dates include 1895–1370 BCE at Tchire Ouma 147 in the Termit Massif region of Niger; 2631–2458 BCE at Lejja in Nsukka region, Nigeria"
- Foreman Bandama
"The beginning of iron production sometime between 750 and 550 BC"
- Louis Champion
"In Taruga he recovered terracotta fragments in context with iron-smelting furnaces. Radiocarbon measurements dated the site to the mid-first millennium BC"
- Dr. Nicole Rupp
Oral Tradition and Archeological Evidence For the Mande origin of the Ancient Tichitt Civilization
(THREAD)
"During this final phase the Dhar Tichitt-Walata counts 90 villages built...before settling again and forming the kingdom of Ghana"
- Professor Augustin Holl
"Neolithic sites there are attributed by the present nomadic population of the country to the Gangara, who were probably ancestors of the Soninke. Indeed, Azer, a Soninke dialect, is still spoken in Walata, Nema, Tichitt, and even in Shingit"
- Professor George E Brooks
"At some point before the coming of
Islam, however, the arrival of another discrete people from the north is attested by the oral traditions. These people are termed the "Nono" in the Tarikh as Sudan (Es-Sadi, AD 1650) and in numerous Mande oral tradition"
When most people think of ancient history, their mind usualy goes to the Romans or the Hebrews of biblical scripture but the Ancient West African Tichitt Civilization of Mauritania and Mali is older than both the Romans and the Hebrews. Beginning 2200 BCE
"Southern Mauritania have revealed a wealth of rather spectacular stone masonry villages which were occupied by prehistoric cultivators.... It is argued that the inhabitants of these villages were Negro and very probably Soninke"
- Professor Patrick J. Munson
"Striking resemblances between the prehistoric ceramics and the present Soninke pottery manufacture, Munson concluded that the present-day Soninke are descendents of early prehistoric inhabitants of the Dhar Tichitt region"
- Professor Augustin F.C. Holl
In 1595 an anonymous Spaniard living in Morocco wrote about how the Kanem empire acquired guns from Turkish soldiers. He mentions that this empire boarders a Kingdom of Black Christians converted by the Portuguese, referring to the Kongo.
Quote from: "Relation de la Jornada que El Rey Marruecos he hecho a la conquista del reyno de Gago" by an anonymous Spaniard, 1595
We can only imagine how differently history would've been recorded had the kingdoms of Kongo and Angola sought out a alliance with Kanem or at least created trade relationships with them.
Ruth B. Fisher, a British missionary wrote about the pre colonial African science and surgery of Uganda in 1911 :
"Vaccination for small-pox was known long before European influence reached them, as people were inoculated with the lymph taken from the arm of an affected person"
"knowledge of surgery....Possessing no surgical implements, they operated clumsily but often successfully with their ordinary septic belt knives"
- Twilight tales of the Black Baganda, Ruth B. Fisher, 1911
"In cases of comminuted fractures, which are frequent (as the people live in such close contact with wild animals), the custom has been to cut out the shattered pieces of bone and insert a piece freshly taken from an ox or goat, then bind the limb up"
- Ruth B. Fisher, 1911
"If there had not been an Nkrumah and his followers in Ghana, Ghana would still be a British colony"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
"Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first, that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it"
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr
"And if Nkrumah and the people of the Gold Coast had not stood up persistently, revolting against the system, it would still be a colony of the British Empire
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr