Africa Before the African American

February is Black History in the United States. The shortest month of the year is the time for Americans to celebrate and give tribute to the legacy and achievements of the African American.  Far too often, the memorial and recollection of historical facts of the African American start with the Transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery. Black History does not begin with slavery.  Black History commenced on the continent of origin for the African American - Africa!

Africa is an enormously large continent, not a single country. Before slavery, Africans had a rich and varied history and culture. Africa has and always had an immense municipality of political arrangements including kingdoms, city-states, each with specific and individualized languages and philosophies.

Harpoon Point

The arts, education, and technology flourished in Africa.  The skilled Africans were masters  of medicine, mathematics, and astronomy. They also made luxury items in bronze, ivory, gold, and terracotta (clay-based glazed or non-glazed ceramic). These items were used in daily life and were traded internationally.

Here are five historical facts of Africa and the African before for Transatlantic Slave trade:

1.      Africans were the first to organize fishing expeditions 90,000 years ago. At Katanda, a region in the Zaire (now Congo), historians discovered a finely built series of harpoon points, all elaborately polished and barbed. 

2.     West Africans built in stone by 1100 B.C. In the Tichitt-Walata region of Mauritania, archaeologists found “large stone masonry villages” that date back to 1100 B.C. The villages consisted of roughly circular compounds connected by “well- defined streets”.

Kanem Borno Court, circa 1700 A.D.

3.      Ngazargamu, the capital city of Kanem-Borno, became one of the largest cities in the seventeenth-century world. By 1658 A.D., the metropolis, according to an architectural scholar housed “about a quarter of a million people". It had 660 streets. Many were broad and unbending, reflective of city planning of today.

4.     Ruins of a 300 B.C. astronomical observatory were found at Namoratunga in Kenya. Africans were mapping the movements of stars such as Triangulum, Aldebaran, Bellatrix, Central Orion, as well as the moon, to create a 354-day lunar calendar.

Pillars are aligned with sevev star systems: Triangulum, Pleiades, Bellatrix, Aldebaran, Central Orion, Saiph, and Sirius

5.      Africans were the first to engage in mining 43,000 years ago. In 1964, a hematite mine was  found in Swaziland at Bonvu Ridge in the Ngwenya mountain range. Ultimately, 3,000 artifacts were recovered including thousands of stone-made mining tools. Adrian Boshier, one of the archaeologists on the site dated the mine to be a staggering 43,200 years old.

The history of the African American starts in Africa, not with slavery. The African continent was and still is a rising global economic oasis with endless possibilities.

When we begin to learn our history, no one can influence the importance or relevance of our existence. 

“History is a clock people use to tell their historical culture and political time of the day. It’s a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. The history tells them where they have been, where they are and what they are. But most importantly history tells a people where they still must go and what they still must be." 

– Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Please comment below and share your thoughts on Africa Before the African American. 

Research: Browder, Anthony Y. Nile Valley Contributions to Civilization Washington, DC: Institute of Karmic Guidance, 1992. Bennett, Lerone. Before the Mayflower: A History of Black America Harmondsworth: 1962 Jackson, John G. Introduction To African Civilizations Foreword by Runoko Rashidi. Introduction by John Henrik Clarke. New York: Citadel, 2001.