IS AFRICA BY DESIGN MANKIND’S LAST CIVILIZATION?

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

        Why was Africa the last continent to be developed? Wait a minute, you ask, who said that Africa was the last continent to be developed? Haven’t you (that is, I) heard of the great Egyptian, Nubian and Ethiopian civilizations, were they not African civilizations?  Haven’t you heard of Ghana , Mali , Songhai , Congo , Ashanti , Oyo , Dahomey , Benin , Buganda and other African civilizations?  I have heard about them. 

       Right now, however, I am typing this essay on a word processor, on a computer and those Africans civilizations did not produce this computer. Therefore, I am not inclined to equate them with civilizations that produced the computer that has made my life a lot easier.

        I am not motivated to be defensive, to argue that Africa had great civilizations. My motivation is different, to wonder why Africa did not produce great civilizations. If you believe that Africa produced great civilizations, I say, good for you; perhaps, this essay is not for you.

      This essay is for those, who, like me, wonder why we, Africans, did not produce any of the things we employ in our current daily lives, such as the wheel, writing, printing press, cars, trains, airplanes, telephones, radios, televisions, microwave ovens, electricity, ocean-going ships, computers, Internet, fax, movies, rockets and so on and so on.

       Is there a reason why Africa was bypassed by the great civilizations of the past?  Let us look at the ancient Egyptian civilization. It is on the Nile .  The Egyptians, apparently, developed long voyage, sea worthy vessels and explored the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile River up to present day Sudan .  Now, why didn’t they have the curiosity to keep going on south on the Nile until they found out where it came from, Lake Victoria, in South Africa?  (If they encountered the various falls on the Nile , I am sure that they could have found a way around those obstacles to sailing.)

       The Egyptians had the military and naval capability to sail the Nile to its source, so why didn’t they do it?  If they had continued down the river they would have reached South Africa four thousand years ago. Egyptian colonies would have sprouted up along the Nile River and some Egyptians would have gone further inland to civilize the African hinterland.

      The Greeks explored Egypt . History tells us that Alexander the great captured Egypt around 350 BC. Greek shipping and naval vessels explored the Mediterranean and certainly could have explored the Nile to Lake Victoria , but they did not. Why didn’t they explore interior Africa ?  If they did, Africa would have been exposed to Greek civilization.

      Towards the end of the era before our common era, Rome conquered the Middle East, including Egypt . The Roman Navy was rather sophisticated. It certainly could have journeyed down the Nile to its fount and thereby opened interior Africa to civilization, as they did for Europe , two thousand years ago. Why didn’t the Romans venture into interior black Africa ? Why was black Africa left out of ancient civilizations?

    In the 1400s, the Portuguese, under the leadership of Prince Henry the navigator, explored the West Coast of Africa. By 1488 they had reached South Africa , Cape of Good Hope .  The Portuguese and later the Spanish, Dutch, English, French etc established slave trading posts along the West Coast of Africa and did not bother exploring interior Africa.  It was not until the mid 1800s that Europeans, during the scramble for Africa, finally entered interior Africa (the Livingstone-Stanley saga is well known).

       Some say that the reason why the Europeans did not go into interior Africa was the hot climate of tropical Africa and the presence of mosquitoes in Africa . Well, certain parts of the United States , where Europeans settled, are hotter than most parts of Africa . New York City , during the summer, is certainly hotter than Lagos , Nigeria at any time of the year.  Regarding mosquitoes, may I ask you if you have been to certain parts of the USA , say, Alaska ?  There, mosquito swamps literally becloud summer months that you can hardly see long distances! The point is that mosquitoes were everywhere, including tropical Latin America and yet Europeans settled in those places.  So why didn’t Europeans settle in interior Africa ?

       There must be a reason why ancient civilizations did not enter into interior Africa . I do not believe that this happened as a result of accident. I believe that it was by design. I think that Africans have a destiny, a rendezvous with history.

        Ancient civilizations touched the peripheries of Africa and did not enter into Africa . Even Asiatic civilizations like the Arabs, Indians and Chinese had contact with Africans over a thousand years ago. Chinese trading ships visited East Africa, over a thousand years ago; Arabs visited East Africa over a thousand years ago (and certainly visited Sahel West Africa over a thousand years ago.  Indian traders visited Africa or at least traded with Africans over a thousand years ago (excavations at Igbo Ukwu showed artifacts from India and this was in the ninth century).  So, why did ancient civilizations all dance around the periphery of Africa but did not get into the bowls of Africa ?   Why didn’t they enter what Joseph Conrad, the arrogant Polish writer, called the heart of darkness; were they afraid of being swallowed by a black hole?

      (Sarcasm aside, in space there are black holes that suck up stars, planets and light;  these objects  disappear into a black hole and are transformed into other forms of energy and are eventually spilled out  as other forms of energy. Black holes have warm holes from which objects enter and leave them in different forms.)

         Why was Africa left to its self until the twentieth century when, finally, she joined the rest of the world and cultural diffusion is now taking place in Africa ?  Why this isolation from the rest of the world, this is what I want to understand.

       Africans have only recently entered into world civilization. Perhaps, the first real influx of Africans to the rest of the world began in the 900s when African slaves were sold in Arabia and in the 1500s with the Trans Atlantic slave trade. With slave trade Africans were brought to Arabia, the Americas and Europe .

       Today, Africans live in Arabia, the Americas and Europe.( Africans are also making their presence known in India, China, Japan, Australia etc; please do not tell me that the Dravidians of India and the aborigines of Australia etc were Africans; they do not call themselves Africans, so let us dispense with radical chic, okay.)

       At the rate Africans are spreading, there is no doubt that in the next five hundred years Africans or a mixture of Africans and other people would form the majority of the populations of the world. That is to say that Africans have the capacity to spread and multiply, as other groups did. (Arabs spread from their Arabia home and multiplied and took over all of North Africa and the Middle East; Europeans spread from their caves in Central Asia and multiplied and took over Europe and the Americas etc.) 

         Africans are quite capable of doing what other groups did: develop and expand, so why didn’t they do so in the past; why didn’t Africa have civilizations that conquered and ruled the world?

     Was it because Africans are not intelligent enough, as white racists tell us?  Those white racists are a disappearing act. Before their own eyes their world is been taken over, therefore, those taking over their world cannot possibly be less intelligent than they. And least they get ideas into their heads that they can stop the tide of evolution, there is absolutely nothing that they can do to reverse historical trends. The world is passing over to Africans.

       At the rate, Europeans are becoming decadent; just think of their increasing tendency to homosexuality and you appreciate that they would disappear from the scene in less time than folks imagine. In five hundred years one doubts that there would be white men as we know them today. These people are self destructing at an alarming rate. Their time, apparently, is up and they are on a fast track to oblivion. They are joining the Native Americans to the bed they made for each other.

       Why were Africans bypassed by past civilizations only to be forcefully injected into civilization beginning in around 900 as slaves to Arabia and later the new world and in the 1900s into all other parts of the world?  Obviously, there is no unequivocal answer to this question.  I am going to postulate a hypothesis for our consideration.

       I believe that Africa was saved for the last.  History wanted other groups of human beings to dance their own dance of civilization, mess up and for Africans to enter the picture at last and correct things. Africans are meant to enter the scene and save mankind from itself.

       Left to European rule, clearly, the world would be destroyed, sooner than later, but nature and nature’s God wanted Africans to enter the world scene at the last minute to rescue the world, to save it from the antisocial personalities that descended on the world from Northern Europe.

     I am saying that it is by design that Africa and Africans were the last to enter into world civilization. Other groups were supposed to dance their own dance on the world stage, screw things up and, for, at last, Africans to enter the picture and begin the process of correcting the mess other groups made.

       You may ask: is Africa not in a greater mess than other lands? Are Africans not today the most impoverished people on planet earth? How can a people who seem to have lost their way rescue other people?

      It is true that African leaders are the most corrupt and thievish leaders there are on planet earth. There is no doubt about that fact. But what is happening in Africa has a reason for it. Africa was subjected to Arab and European civilizations. These external people imposed their sociopolitical instruments for governing people on Africa . What is happening in Africa is that those alien mechanisms of social organization are breaking down. With their demise an indigenous and authentic African means of social organization would emerge. 

       When, eventually, a real African political organization emerges Africans would take off economically. At present, Africa is in a state of decay and from its ashes a sphinx would emerge. 

       If you like, Africans are in a period of gestation where they are synthesizing their indigenous cultures and the alien cultures imposed on them and, sooner or later, would burst out with an adaptive culture, one that synthesized all the cultures they have been exposed to.

        (I have made some efforts in that direction in my efforts to synthesize Occidental, Oriental and African approaches to psychology, philosophy and religion.)

        I am saying that the reason Africa seems primitive is because nature and nature’s God saved her to be the last to enter the civilization race and finally give the world a realistic civilization, one that would make for human survival. 

       Africa is the birth place of all mankind. People migrated from Africa outwards to other regions of the world. In their new regions they formulated civilizations that helped them adapt to their world.  But now civilization has come full circle to where mankind began, Africa .

        With the discovery of the scientific method (by Bacon) mankind is obviously going to finally understand nature and manipulate the laws of nature for its use. I believe that in a few hundred years science would have finally understood the nature of life itself. I believe that we shall finally learn that there is a non-material aspect to existence, what folks call spirit, an aspect that uses the material aspect of nature (energy) to do work. Elsewhere, I have speculated on the nature of that universal intelligence.

       For our present purposes, the salient point is that science would, in time, fully understand how nature works. That is, if we have not first destroyed ourselves. If civilization is left in the hands of adolescents, which is what Europeans are, they would probably destroy the world. Civilization has to pass into the hands of adults, which is what Africans are, if mankind is to be saved.

     I believe that nature and nature’s God saved Africans to be the last group to guide human civilization in the era when science would become so sophisticated that mankind could be destroyed at any point in time.

       Africans understand the nature of love and forgiveness. Other groups merely talk about love and forgiveness but do not know what they are talking about. It is Africans that have in fact been compelled to forgive other groups. Africans forgave the Arabs and Europeans that enslaved them. 

       A group that has practiced forgiveness is in a position to teach mankind the nature of love (for on earth true love is characterized by forgiveness…I have written on this subject elsewhere).

        If this world is to survive we need forgiveness and no other people are better equipped to teach them that than Africans, a people who have been subjected to incredible abuse and still are standing on their own feet.

        Consider African Americans; as slaves they were humiliated but are still able to operate as human beings, albeit impaired ones.  Any other group would have vanished from the surface of the world if subjected to the type of indignity African-Americans have been subjected to. 

       The history of abuse and magnificent adaptation to life despite that abuse has best prepared Africans to lead the New World Order, a new world civilization based on love: our awareness of our union with one another.

CONCLUSION

       I believe that Africans seeming primitiveness was by design; they were saved to perform their historic role from the twenty-first century onwards. By the end of this century, world civilization would have passed into African hands, where it belongs until all mankind learns that it is one. When all people finally learn that they are joined and are one, it would no longer make any difference where one is born in the world.    I believe that only Africans have what it takes to take humanity to a new level of civilization, one that emphasizes our oneness. It is for the role of teaching mankind that it is unified that Africa was saved to be the last human civilization. 

       What do you think? Let us have a discourse on this subject. Please do not beg the subject by telling us about Africa’s supposed past glorious civilizations, such as Egypt . We do not need to deceive ourselves for the fact is that today, 2007, Africans are at the bottom of every indices of development. We shall rise and rule the world but we can only do so when we accept the ugly facts on the ground and dispense with mere noise that makes our egos proud of our non-existent past civilizations. Egypt may be a brown folk’s civilization, but that fact does not help us feed the Africans that subsist on less than a dollar a day.

       There comes a time in people’s lives when they have to grow up and quit being nostalgic about a glorious past that supposedly plays into their vanity but does not help them deal with extant problems. What we need in Africa is the development of science and technology, not idle talk of Africa ’s past glories.

      We no longer need militant scholars who talk about ancient African civilizations, identification with which makes us proud; we now need scientists who teach us to understand how nature works and devise technologies to exploit our understanding of how nature works. It is only science and technology that will move Africa forward, not made up and make belief history.

Ozodi Thomas Osuji

May 22, 2007

 ozodiosuji@gmail.com

Robot  Villager

# 1 var sbtitle4120=encodeURIComponent(Is Africa M...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 23.05.2007 07:26

Nok  Villager

# 2 Hi Ozodi, 1) I believe that your concerns regarding the apparent lack of black African civilisation (as a cultural sophistication and complexity) over the millenia stem from a loss of a present day individual connection with the African Past (something we largely all share as Africans), or to put it in another way, the broken thread of ethnic awareness and knowledge flowing from the past. The important point here is to realise that the facts of achievement are in themselves not as important as your value judgement of them in the context of your racial self-esteem. History is something subtly manipulated for the benefit of the story teller. For example you have happily used the word "civilisation" to describe Rome and Greece, and even mentioned that they "bypassed" us. In the process you have performed a value judgement, but to the detriment of your own History. You see, as an African, you have been more impressed (actually swamped) by the ideas, learning, religion, general attitudes of others, than they have been of yours. So when you start reeling off facts about "History", you may be simply reproducing somebody's version of the Past and not yours. 2) From today's point of view, African Teachers and intellectuals haven't risen to the challenge of seriously investigating and developing the African universe. So the average black African today is disconnected from (what should be) his complete range of Self, Possibilities, Spirituality, Potential, and is therefore predictably vague about the Future of his race. We view our survival mostly in the basic personal sense, and not as part of a proud self-aware culturality which determines how we engage with the world. We measure the "completeness" of things almost fully by personal success, and the exploits/success of the race don't appear very relevant to us. Just look at opinions in different African discussion websites. 3)When African development takes off in the true sense of the word, you will find that there will be a very detailed multilayered probing by serious Africans into the African Past, and a black African civilisation will materialise. 4) You wrote: This essay is for those, who, like me, wonder why we, Africans, did not produce any of the things we employ in our current daily lives, such as the wheel, writing, printing press, cars, trains, airplanes, telephones, radios, televisions, microwave ovens, electricity, ocean-going ships, computers, Internet, fax, movies, rockets and so on and so on. The question that concerns us today, leaving out all the rhetoric of History, is, what prevents African politicians today from pursuing technological self-sufficiency, instead of chasing the wind? And how many Nigerian writers have you seen speaking seriously about Nigeria competing industrially with other nations? This is the crux of the matter; the inadequacies of the (African) Here and Now, staring us in the face. 5. "With the discovery of the scientific method (by Bacon) mankind is obviously going to finally understand nature and manipulate the laws of nature for its use. I believe that in a few hundred years science would have finally understood the nature of life itself. I believe that we shall finally learn that there is a non-material aspect to existence, what folks call spirit, an aspect that uses the material aspect of nature (energy) to do work. Elsewhere, I have speculated on the nature of that universal intelligence." Bacon did not discover the scientific method. How did the Egyptians learn to track the movements of the celestial bodies, or make strides in medicine? Was it not by observation, measurement, and prediction? 6. "Africans understand the nature of love and forgiveness. Other groups merely talk about love and forgiveness but do not know what they are talking about. It is Africans that have in fact been compelled to forgive other groups. Africans forgave the Arabs and Europeans that enslaved them." Let us not flatter ourselves. Are we referring to the sort of love and forgiveness African politicians have for their constituencies? Or the love Africans ethnic groups have for one another? Africans are dealing from a position of gross disadvantage, and seem quite happy and content to associate with other races from a subservient position. 7. "I believe that only Africans have what it takes to take humanity to a new level of civilization, one that emphasizes our oneness. It is for the role of teaching mankind.......that Africa was saved to be the last human civilization". You see, one's agreement to the above has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. Agreement is by choice which is based on self interest, and it is that same realisation of choice that African thinking and behaviour should be predicated on. However when we carry a baggage of inferiority complex, then options appear considerably few. "It is only science and technology that will move Africa forward, not made up and make belief history". True. Posted by Nok| 26.05.2007 10:52