The African origin of civilization

Myth or Reality by Cheikh Anta Diop, a review.

I promised to do this at the earliest opportunity and so here we are. For the purposes of this review, we will not dwell on whether the Egyptians were a “black White people”, a “reddish brown white” or whatever other shade of white you can think of. All we will mention here that they depicted their god, Osiris, as black.

Diop argues that the only place or rather to the only people that circumcision/ excision made any sense were those of ancient Egypt. He argues, to these ancients, just as their gods were hermaphrodite, babies too were. So by removing a small part from the male or female organ, these children became male or female. Before circumcision, they were all like gods.

He says the evidence available to us shows the Egyptians were to pray to their gods at minimum 7 times a day. In this respect, the Mohammedians only sought to reduce the burden of the people by making the minimum number of prayer times 5.

He argues because of their settled lifestyle as a result of abundant food supplies along the Nile valley, they had the luxury to worship gods. He also argues these societies were matriarchal. And that patriarchy started with the nomads, that is, almost everyone else except the Egyptians.

From his works, one can arrive at the conclusion that the Bible/ Torah is legend based on the stories the Jews had heard laced with creative imagination.

It’s an easy to read book. Well written. He has attempted to provide documentary support for his many claims from Egyptian frescoes to statements from those who interacted with Ancient Egypt such as Herodotus. It’s a book I would recommend to anyone.

quotes

In a day or two I will write a review of The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Reality. While you wait for that, in referring to a seminal work, Race et Intelligence, he writes, quoting Jacquard

determining intelligence with IQ is as ridiculous as confusing rectal temperature with health. The real problem is to understand why some people pose this question. Their true aim is to justify social inequalities by means of alleged natural inequalities.

Diop,Cheikh Anta. Civilization or Barbarism, pg65

 

 

Resurrecting the dead

We interrupt our regular broadcast to bring this developing story.

on gods

In the beginning man created god. No. Diop didn’t write that. But he alludes to it in this passage

Because of the requirements of agricultural life, concepts such as matriarchy and totemism, the most perfect social organization and monotheistic religion were born. These engendered others; thus, circumcision resulted from monotheism; in fact, it was really the notion of a god, Amon, uncreated creator of all that exists, that led to the androgynous concept. Since Amon was not created and since he is the origin of all creation, there was a time when he was alone. To the archaic mentality, he must have contained within himself all the male and female principles necessary for procreation. That is why Aomn, the Negro god par excellence of the “Anglo-Egyptian” Sudan (Nubia) and all the rest of Black Africa, was to appear in Sudanese mythology as androgynous. Belief in this hermaphroditic ontology would produce circumcision and excision in the Black world.

[..]By contrast, the ferocity of nature in the Eurasian steppes, the barrenness of those regions, the overall circumstances of material conditions, were to create instincts necessary for survival in such an environment. Here, Nature left no illusion of kindliness; it was implacable and permitted no negligence; man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Above all, in the course of a long painful existence, he must learn to rely on himself alone, on his own possibilities. He could not indulge in the luxury of believing in a beneficent God who would shower down abundant means of gaining livelihood; instead he would conjure up deities maleficent and cruel, jealous and spiteful; Zeus, Yahweh, among others.[emphasis mine]

And elsewhere he writes about the human origins, he says

Although scientifically attractive, the hypothesis that man existed everywhere at the same time will remain inadmissible so long as we fail to find fossilized man in America, a continent not submerged during the fourth quaternary when man appeared and on which we have all the climatic zones from the South Pole to the North Pole

African origin of civilization

Myth or reality

After the brief interlude, we are back to Africa. There are still some commenters who have stuck to the line Africans as a whole are not intelligent. They insist this deficiency explains the problems facing Africa. As far as I can tell the source of this information is Rushton, a guy a friend of mine would do well to dip himself in a barrel full of acid. Enough of that for the moment.

I am on a journey. A journey through time. My interest is the history of the Luo/ Lwoo. I will look at what has been written on the contribution of Africans to civilization. I don’t think I will post a lot in between. 

I will be reading Dr. Diop about whom it was written by Immanuel Wallenstein thus

Perhaps the most ambitious attempt to reconstruct African history has been the numerous writings of Cheik Anta Diop. Diop has a theory that there is a basic global division of peoples into two kinds: the southerners(or negro-Africans) and the Aryans(a category covering all Caucasians, including Semites, Mongoloids, and American Indians). Each grouping has a cultural outlook based on response to climate, the difference between them being that the Aryans have had a harsher climate.

The Aryans have developed patriarchal systems characterized by the suppression of women and a propensity for war. Also associated with such societies are materialist religion, sin and guilt, xenophobia, the tragic drama, the city state, individualism, and pessimism. Southerners on the other hand are matriarchal. The women are free and the people peaceful; there is a Dionysian approach to life, religious idealism, and no concept of sin. With a matriarchal society come xenophilia, the tale as a literary form, the territorial state, social collectivism and optimism.

According to Diop’s theory, the ancient Egyptians, who were negroes, are the ancestors of the southerners. This bold hypothesis, which is not presented without supporting data, has the interesting effect of inverting Western cultural assumptions. For, Diop argues, if the ancient Egyptians were negroes, then European civilization is but a derivation of African achievement.

I think it will be an interesting read. Keep it here, don’t touch that button 🎼

musical interlude and a photo

First the song

then the photo

Sunset somewhere in Kajiado

well, does she need any introduction?

on Africa

Many of my friends might have found my last post offensive. I could have lost a few friends because of it. Some could be asking why I allowed a racist bigot to comment on it. I have little to no patience for bigots. I find it strange the lengths people can go to bolster their bigotry.

In almost a daily basis, I read about Africa this or that by some empty heads who would not know where Africa sits on the world map and it is tiring. And even when the reporting is done by Africans, it still leaves much to be desired.

This is one such article.

But I like this comment. It expresses my sentiments in a way I couldn’t articulate them

Considering Africa’s history and that many countries are a collection of dozens or hundreds of nation states, democracy in Africa will always be far more complex than it is in the much more homogeneous Western societies. African countries dominate the top positions in Greenberg’s Lingusitic Diversity Index.

Just like Africa’s true geographical size is misunderstood due to the Mercator projection, I don’t think many people in the West appreciate just how complex African countries are. And Western media (perhaps due to lack of time and space) condense African stories to very simplistic narratives that don’t fully capture wider realities.

Most European countries for instance are largely mono-cultural (other cultures are present but there is usually one overwhelmingly dominating culture and language). Compare the mono-lingual European countries with e.g. Nigeria with more than 500 languages, Congo with more than 200+, Tanzania with 100+ etc. Many European countries would struggle to manage the complex levers that running some African countries involves.

Look at France. It is supposed to be an advanced democracy but is clearly struggling with just 10% of its population being a different culture from the majority. Some of the laws being passed in France like the ban on the burkini would see acres of ‘Freedom and democracy is dead in Africa!’ headlines in the Economist and other mainstream Western publications if they were to be announced by an African government.

What about Belgium? Just a puny two-language problem sees it struggling to keep its panties on. Now multiply that 2-language division by 250 for Nigeria, 100 for DR Congo, 50 for Tanzania, 40 for Ghana, 35 [68 correction by Mak] for Kenya etc. America is still straining to treat its minorities as equal human beings decades after the civil rights movement.

I like that African countries such as Botswana have shown that simply taking Western democracy as is without local customization is foolish and unsustainable (its actually at the root of many democracy problems in Africa). With its steady progress, Botswana has shown that for democracy to succeed in Africa, it must be blended with local realities and accommodate existing traditional leadership structures.

It’s only idiots and bigots who would thing Africans are not doing anything to improve their countries. It is only idiots with a limited knowledge of history who do not that the policies of the Brenton Woods institutions, skewed trade and continued raping of our resources by the west and aid among other things keep Africa on its knees.

No African country even purports to advise the west on how to run their countries. Isn’t it time for Africa to be left to find it’s own solutions to governance. Africa is a large continent. It is diverse. And it is complex.

And finally if your response to this is going to be Africans are not intelligent, I am having none of it. I will delete your comment.

Race, genes and intelligence

In my previous post, we were discussing why there are no stable black nations. These black nations include those in Africa and the Caribbean.

One of the comments got me scouring the net on what has been said on race, genes and intelligence. The comment in part reads

There is (controversial but true) proof that Africans have a lower average IQ than most other groups of people on Earth (only the Aboriginal Australians have a lower average IQ) – although this is true, I find it hard to believe that a slightly lower IQ leads to horrible countries in Africa and such. But then again – the European Jews have the highest average IQ of all peoples on Earth, and they seem to have done very well for themselves.

Since we are trying to find an explanation for the seeming instability in black populations, lack of technological advancement and so on, this becomes a very interesting thing to look at.

To start us off, the statement of the US declaration of independence that

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

is untrue. We can agree on this because even at that particular point, there were slaves in America. They couldn’t have been equal.

Now to the more juicy stuff.

It’s time to prepare for the possibility that equality of intelligence, in the sense of racial averages on tests, will turn out not to be true. 

“I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all the other species of men … to be naturally inferior to whites. There never was a civilised nation of any other complexion than white … a position held by Hume and many other philosophers of the 18th century.

Estimating the average IQ of Sub-Saharan Africa

Low IQs are Africa’s curse

The black-white test score gap

Now that we have a few things to look at, I want to encourage my readers that all is not gloom.

The industrial revolution and technological advances we have seen in the last hundred years or so have made a lot of difference to our lives. Through advances in medicine, we now live longer. This means we have a larger ecological foot print. We destroy our environments to feed the growing population. Our weapons of war are very advanced, we can kill remotely. Communication is much easier now and we have thousands of friends. Industrial revolution has helped us to pollute our environment so well that in some places seeing the sun is a great pleasure.

And to cap it all, we have a short video

 

There are no successful black nations

There is an interesting article in FP that I think most of you will find interesting

Racism is not limited to the Unites States. There is no non-black nation, even among the most liberal ones, where the black man is dignified. History dealt us an unforgiving blow in the incursion of foreigners into black lands. The Arabs enslaved tribes and nations and then colonized and evangelized them. Then came the Europeans, who, persuaded the Africans were of an inferior race, divided up the continent over lunch in Berlin in 1884. They carted off a large population of its people — sometimes leaving entire villages almost empty — and brought those who remained on the continent under their rule. So complete was the transformation that no black nation retained its ancestral nationhood, national language, or national identity. And today we often hear of how China or India or some other nation is “taking over” Africa economically. There is almost no nation whose majority is of a different race that has not spat on the face of the black person, at one time or the other.

Atheism is a mental illness

If this idiot could be believed.

In arguing for his case, he ignores the terror activities in the last decade or so that have religion either at their core or among the contributing factors.

He also, like in this example,

The three men, who popularized atheism in the 19th Century, had almost the same experiences early in their lives, and there is a common psychological pattern evident in their later rebellion. Thomas Henry Huxley, Sigmund Freud and Friedrich Nietzsche all had psychological struggles in their early in their lives. 

engage in personal attacks instead of dealing with the content of the said authors.

And in a case of projection, he writes

Rationalization is an atheist’s favorite psychological defense mechanism. They rely on false reasoning that sounds logical to negate the reality of God

And one wonders whether they know any atheists.

To end this post, I will comment on this last one

There is enough proof that atheism is a personality disorder. Atheists have among the highest suicide rates in the world. 

What is wrong with suicide? If one finds their lives not worth continuing, they have a right to end it.