It’s February and the “official” recognition of Black History, but what history is that? This episode is a history lesson about the Black History not taught in school. Yvette and Ericka along with their special guest Corey Andrew, discuss significant pieces of Black history that will leave you speechless. At the end of this episode you will learn some truths that will not only piss you off due to the amount of “our” history that’s been hijacked and omitted but will empower you to walk taller and take control of the black historical narrative. “The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.” – Maya Angelou
During this episode, Yvette, Ericka and their special guest Corey Andrew talk about Black history seeped in firsts in education, mathematics, architecture, engineering, art, literature, medicine, and royalty going all the way back to 40 BC. Yvette leads the conversation with a walk through Black history not limited to the whitewashed version that effectively starts Black history as slaves in 1619.
Below, please find the content with links to references shared during the episode.
Queen Kandake Amanirenas of Kush
Queen of Kush from c.40 BC to c 10BC. When the Prefect Aelius Gallus of Sudan went out on a campaign in Arabia 24 BC, Queen Amanirenas strategically launched an attack on Sudan and defeated Roman forces at Syene and Philae. She led the capture of a series of Roman forts in South Sudan in 25BC and her army returned with the bronze depiction severed head of the Roman Emperor and she buried the severed head at the steps of a temple dedicated to victory. That head was found in Meroe in 1912 and is now prominently displayed in the British Museum.
Women Warriors
The frontline soldiers of the West African empire the Kingdom of Dahomey that existed from 1625 to 1894 were all black women. This all-female army was so fierce and ruthless that European colonists call the Amazons after Greek mythical warriors.
Queen Asantewaa
Born in 1840 she led the Ashanti rebellion against British colonialism. She was the first and only example of a woman to be given the role of war leader in Asante’s history. Under her rule, she promoted women's emancipation and gender equality.
Architecture
From 2500 BC to 300 AD so far, more than 225 were discovered in present-day Sudan. They were constructed over a period of a few hundred years to serve as tombs for kings, queens, and wealthy citizens. 14 pyramids were constructed for renowned warrior queens. Now, the history taught only talk about the ~120 much larger pyramids constructed in Ancient Egypt that was built over a period of 3000 years. Facts! These pyramids still stand today and are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Great Wall of Benin
Deemed one of Africa’s ancient architectural marvels. It was described by Fred Pearce in a science magazine called the New Scientist as “In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.” The Walls of Benin were destroyed by the British in 1897 which in essence destroyed more than a thousand years of Benin history of some of the earliest evidence of rich African civilizations.
Ron Eglash, an ethno mathematician (the study of the relationship between mathematics and culture stated the following “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture disorganized and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.” (Source: https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/african-marvels-the-walls-of-benin/)
Education
The first university in the WORLD was the Sankore University in Timbuktu. Founded in 13 BC it’s the OLDEST University in the world. The Sankoré University was capable of housing 25,000 students and had one of the largest libraries in the world with between 400,000 and 700,000 manuscripts.
Many of the math concepts learned in school today were developed in Africa. Over 35,000 years ago Ancient Egyptians scripted textbooks about math that included division, multiplication of fractions, and geometric formulas (err go geometry) to calculate the area and volume of shapes.
Medicine
In Western society, women for the most part were barred from carrying out C-sections until the late nineteenth century, because they were largely denied admission to medical schools. The first recorded successful cesarean in the British Empire, however, was conducted by a woman. Sometime between 1815 and 1821, James Miranda Stuart Barry performed the operation while masquerading as a man and serving as a physician to the British army in South Africa. (Source: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/cesarean/references.html)
Surgical Procedures
Egyptian medicine influenced the medicine of neighboring cultures, including ancient Greece. From Greece, its influence spread onward, thereby affecting Western civilization significantly. The oldest extant Egyptian medical texts are six papyri: The Edwin Smith Surgical Papyrus and the Ebers Medical Papyrus are famous. These are the oldest known surgical text in the history of civilization.
Vaccinations
The knowledge of inoculation goes as far back as the 1600s in West Africa. Black people were inoculating themselves with smallpox back then but when you look up the history of smallpox, none of that is referenced. It wasn’t until the late 19th century when the “vaccine” was deemed official. Cotton Mather who lauded who is known in history for his scientific and literary works learned about inoculation from a slave named Onesimus. It’s been reported he told people he received the information from “Africa.”
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