fyeahblackhistory:

AN EXAMPLE OF AFRICAN MEDICAL SCIENCE. ILLUSTRATION OF AFRICAN DOCTORS IN 19TH CENTURY (1879) KAHARA,UGANDA PERFORMING A CAESARIAN SECTION. THIS OPERATION WAS UNKNOWN IN EUROPE AT THE TIME.

Africans were performing many advanced medical procedures long before they had been conceived in Europe this is just one of many examples.

The British traveler R.W. Felkin who reported this noted that the healer used banana wine to semi-intoxicate the woman and to cleanse his hands and her abdomen prior to surgery. He used a midline incision and applied cautery to minimize hemorrhaging. He massaged the uterus to make it contract but did not suture it; the abdominal wound was pinned with iron needles and dressed with a paste prepared from roots. The patient recovered well, and Felkin concluded that this technique was well-developed and had clearly been employed for a long time. Similar reports come from Rwanda, where botanical preparations were also used to anesthetize the patient and promote wound healing.

Referece: “Notes on Labour in Central Africa” published in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, volume 20, April 1884, pages 922-930.

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fyeahblackhistory:

ourafrica:

HANNIBAL - RULER OF CARTHAGE (Mordern day Tunisia)
Regarded as one of the greatest generals of all time, Hannibal and his overpowering African armies conquered major portions of Spain and Italy and came close to defeating the mighty Roman Empire.

Born in the North African country of Carthage, Hannibal became general of the army at age twenty-five. His audacious moves-such as marching his army with African war elephants through the treacherous Alps to surprise and conquer Northern Italy-and his tactical genius, as illustrated by the Battle of Cannae where his seemingly trapped army cleverly surrounded and destroyed a much larger Roman force, won him recognition which has spanned more than 2004 years.

This is Africa, our Africa

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fyeahblackhistory:

Ruins of Gedi Kenya Mombasa

The ruins of Gedi  in the depths of the great Arabuko Sokoke forest Kenya. Is a place of great mystery, an archaeological puzzle that continues to engender debate among historians. built during the 14th century AD, and later abandoned in the early 16th century.

From the 13th or 14th to 17th centuries, Gedi was a thriving community along the jungle coast of East Africa. Although no written record exists of this town, excavations between 1948 and 1958 revealed that the inhabitants traded with people from all over the world. Some of the findings included beads from Venice, coins and a Ming vase from China, an iron lamp from India, and scissors from Spain. The population was estimated to exceed at least 2500 people. These items can be found in the museum in the complex which was opened in 2000.

To this day, despite extensive research and exploration, nobody is really sure what happened to the town of Gedi and its peoples. This once great civilization was a powerful and complex Swahili settlement with a population of over 2500, built during the 13th century. The ruins of Gedi include many houses, mansions, mosques and elaborate tombs and cemeteries.

These houses were complex for their time, with bathrooms with drains and overhead basins to flush toilets. The city’s streets were laid out at right angles and had drainage gutters. There are also wells which supplied water to the community. The material used to construct the buildings was made from coral reef from the nearby ocean.

Despite the size and complexity of this large (at least 45 acre) settlement, it is never mentioned in any historic writings or local recorded history.

fyeahblackhistory:

Memnon (2nd century, C.E.) & Memnon from the Trojan War

Memnon was one of several protégés of the wealthy Athenian businessman and philosopher Herodes Atticus. His name was probably inspired by Memnon, the Ethiopian ally of Troy as described in Homer’s Iliad. Although few details of his life are known, his origins as a black African are established by a surviving portrait head. This, as well as his connections with Greek philosophy, attest to the high intellectual status sometimes achieved by Africans in the ancient Mediterranean world.

In Greek mythology, Memnon (Greek: Mέμνων) was an Ethiopian king and son of Tithonus and Eos. As a warrior he was considered to be almost Achilles’ equal in skill. During the Trojan War, he brought an army to Troy’s defense. The death of Memnon echoes that of Hector, another defender of Troy whom Achilles also killed out of revenge for a fallen comrade, Patroclus. After Memnon’s death, Zeus was moved by Eos’ tears and granted him immortality. Memnon’s death is related at length in the lost epic Aethiopis, composed after The Iliad circa the 7th century BC. Quintus of Smyrna records Memnon’s death in Posthomerica.

Literary accounts of the Trojan war, as well as numerous Roman authors, consistently describe Memnon with African characteristics as an Ethiopian from Sudan and Egypt.

Black people from #Somalia in the zoo of Basel, 1930

Black people – and sometimes American natives – were brought since the 16th century by the explorers from the new continents to Europe where they belonged, together with exotic creatures, monkeys, lamas, parrots, to the spectacles of princely courts.

The 1870s onwards when, with the emancipation of the bourgeoise, museums of natural history and zoos were opened across Europe as intellectual heirs of the princely cabinets de curiosités,it was considered self-evident that the presentation of exotic fauna also includes black people.

At the turn of the century already the zoos in fifteen European cities – including London, Berlin, Basel, Antwerp, and even the Russian Warsaw – offered this attraction.

The inhabitants of the African colonies were first exposed in cages, and later in “ethnographic villages” where whole families lived their “traditional form of life” before the eyes of white visitors.

 (via Poemas del río Wang: Black people in the zoo)

And this, dear friends, is part of the reason why I HATE the word exotic being used to describe human beings.

fyeahblackhistory:

The above image depicts the eroded remnants of Western Deffufa ancient Kerma’s main temple built around 2000 BC.

kushite:

The Ancient kingdom of Kerma one of Africa’s oldest Kingdoms

Generally called Ta-Seti, encompassed the territory of the northern Sudan and the southern portion of Egypt. It is sometimes been referred to as Ancient Ethiopia in some literature, and as Cush (or Kush) in other literature.The first kings of Ta-Seti may well have ruled about 5900 BC. During the time of the fifth generation of their rulers, Upper (ie, southern) Egypt may have united and became a greater threat to Ta-Seti.

Swiss archaeologists, Professor Charles Bonnet and Dr. Matthieu Honegger – have been revealing a royal palace, temples, extraordinary tombs and a massive ancient city on the banks of the Nile in Northern Sudan. Academics have been speculating over whether this long-lost civilisation may have been the precursor of the famous biblical Kingdom of Kush, which was alluded to in the Book of Genesis. As a direct result of these and other excavations, Sudan is emerging as one of the most significant archaeological regions in the world. Due to the country’s superbly preserved archaeology, it has yielded evidence of early cattle domestication that pre-dates any in Egypt’s Nile Valley. What’s more, the earliest Sudanese civilisation – known as Ta-Sety (“the Land of the Archers’ Bow”) to the ancient Egyptians and Kerma to modern archaeologists – is the most ancient African urban culture outside the Land of the Pharaohs. It flourished as a totally independent political entity for at least 15 centuries – until finally, around 1500 B.C., it was conquered by the Pharaohs of Egypt. This ancient Sudanese civilisation appears to have been ruled by a series of extraordinarily powerful kings – perhaps even emperors. Several of the royal tombs were spectacular man-made hills, 30 metres wide and up to 15 metres high. To underline their power in this life (and the next), the rulers of Kerma seem to have had the unsettling habit of taking all their retainers and many of their relatives with them to the afterlife! One tomb held 400 skeletons. Even before these kings began taking human escorts with them to eternity, their funerals had still been massive ritual events in which their imperial power over vast areas of territory was symbolically demonstrated. Indeed, excavations and subsequent scientific investigations over the last few years have revealed that some of the kings had themselves buried alongside the remains of literally thousands of cattle. In front of one royal grave, the king’s retainers had sacrificed 4,500 of the animals – arranging their skulls in a huge, horn-shaped crescent in front of the tomb. But of greatest significance was the chemical analysis of the horns, which revealed that the cattle had been reared in different environments and been brought to the funeral from the length and breadth of the kingdom. What’s clear is that Kerma’s civilisation emerged out of an ancient pastoral culture that had flourished in that part of Sudan since at least 7000 B.C. when the first settlements were established. Nearby Kerma archaeologists have discovered one of the two oldest cemeteries ever found in Africa – dating back to 7500 B.C. – and the oldest evidence of cattle domestication ever found in Sudan or, indeed, in the Egyptian Nile Valley. Around 3000 BC a town grew up not far from the Neolithic dwellings place. The economic basis of both of the pre-urban and urban cultures of ancient Kerma was cattle. The people themselves seem to have come from two distinct areas and may originally have belonged to two tribal groups. Excavations last winter revealed how, for the first 100 years of Kerma’s existence, these two peoples continued to preserve their distinct cultural traditions while living in the same city. Although the distinctions may have been tribal in origin, they also reflected differences in wealth and possibly social status. Kerma was an extraordinarily prosperous empire. It was an advanced African state which established itself very successfully as a middle-man between the rest of Africa and Egypt

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masteradept:

razycrandomgirl:

wordsarenotneeded:

I just read a book about Africa and Lalibela in Ethiopia. This is church made in solid rock. There are 12 such churches there.

Did you hear that Aliens did it? TROLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Yea…aliens are the excuse for anything that non whites did in ancient times.

elleaimevoyager:

sadityblackgirl:

theblacknationalist:

konsciousmoor:

No other cultural sculptures had the noses removed time and time again by those who took that area over. It ain’t some “The nose was the easiest thing to steal” bs either.

more like, we don’t want you to know how wide that nose was…

^^^My father always says that too

The majority of the Egyptian artifacts in the British Museum that include human faces have their noses removed. The few that remain are more “European” for the most part, and there is one (just one) where the nose is distinctly, undeniably, unabashedly African and is still connected to the face.

rhamphotheca:

fairy-wren:  lilac breasted roller  (photo by conrad tan)