ADSactly History : Lost Science Of Ancient Africa [Part 2]

In our last post, we took a look at some lost science disciplines that should be credited to Africa and we also leveraged on some archeological discoveries to draw inferences. We looked at "Advanced Metallurgy" and how it was practiced by the Haya people, we also looked at "African Medical Science" (particularly the Traditional Bone Setting). Here, we will bring other lost African sciences to limelight for all to see the glory embedded in the black continent of Africa.

No doubt, science and technology flourished on the African continent in the ancient times. Even though some part of this history has been lost to modernism, but some part of it has remained till this present time - let's look at them.

Complex and Advanced Astronomy

astronomy is the science that deals with the study of the observable universe - including stellar bodies (sun, stars, planets), cosmic properties etc. In this present time, astro science has been aided by observatories and observational equipments like telescope, space shuttles, rovers and whatnot, but let's consider what happened before the invention of technological aids.

A particular tribe in the ancient Mali region of West Africa called the "Dogon tribe" was well known for the knowledge of advanced astronomy. They have been said to possess the ability to study the sun, the planets' cyclic movements and other celestial bodies and they were able to make predictions of solar events (like eclipse) and also invented their own astro calendar where they included some of these predictions. These, in the recent times, have left the scientific world in awe because all these were achieved without modern scientific observatory or other technological aids.

A particular prediction by the Dogon tribe was the prediction of Sirius' star trajectory. A festival was dedicated by the Dogon tribe for about 700 years as a tribute to Sirius. Here's the amazing part of this: Sirius is one of the brightest stars in our constellation and as such, it is visible to the unaided eye. However, this star has a tiny dense ally star which is invisible to the unaided eye named "Sirius B", this is the star that the festival was dedicated to, and they even mapped the trajectory of the star till this present time - which modern science has affirmed to. Here's the trajectory of the star (Dogon trajectory VS modern astro trajectory)

The predictions by the ancient Dogon tribe in relation to Sirius B include:

• Sirius B revolves round the parent star (Sirius A) in an elliptical orbit. They also went further to predict that it will take about 50 years for a revolution to be completed. Awesomely enough, modern sciences have proven this prediction.
• The Dogon tribe talked about the shape and nature of the star (small and extremely dense) and gave a diagram of its trajectory which has been confirmed by the present day astro science.
• Moving beyond the present day astro science, the Dogon tribe speculated that Sirius B also rotates round its axis in one Earth's year. This has not been affirmed by modern astro science - maybe it's just beyond the current observational tools they have at hand... what an ancient ingenuity.

The amazing part of all these predictions is; the present day astro scientists were able to detect Sirius B using very advanced and complex observatories, but the Dogon tribe achieved that without having access to any of those. It is, however, unclear where the Dogon tribe had obtained their vast knowledge of stellar bodies from, but some metaphysics scholars have inferred that it is connected to their age-long tradition of astrology and through supernatural means - of course, this is not within the areas of verifiable science.

Just recently, an artifact called Kanaga was excavated and on carbon-dating, it was discovered that it had existed before the 13th century in ancient Mali (Dogon) which they used to honour and celebrate Sirius B.

Let's talk about another area of science that flourished in Africa during the pre-colonial time.

Mathematical Science

From what we saw from the Dogon tribe, they were able to keep records of the exact trajectory of Sirius B because of their knowledge of advanced number system. Even before that, there have been archeological discoveries that have pointed to the fact that Africa is home to ancient mathematics. A particular bone carving was excavated (according to this report) along the Ishango coasts of Lake Edwards (in Congo). This bone had some unique markings like a metric system (or a meter rule) which suggests that it was used for measurement by early Congolese. On carbon-dating, it was discovered that the bone was used around 9000BC. This suggests that the Ishango people had knowledge of advanced metric system way before western science came to Africa.

Coming back home to Western Nigeria, the ancient Yoruba tribe also had knowledge of mathematics extensively. As a matter of fact, in this present time, to master the Yoruba number system you must be well knowledgeable in mathematics - this is because the number system is majorly based on "20", and every other number is gotten by subtracting or adding numbers to 20. For example: The number "24" is called "Eerinle ogun" - which means "20+4". 46 is written as (20 X 3) - (10-4) in Yoruba language and it follows that order for even more complex numbers. People from Western Nigeria will understand this well. Awesomely, this knowledge has been passed down through "oral tradition" before the introduction of western science.

Asides the Western Nigeria, among the South-south part of Nigeria, particularly the Delta Warri, a traditional game that has survived till this present time (the "Ayo" game) is based on complex and quick mathematical calculations. While growing up _{[@samminator speaking here]}, the game of Ayo was the major game played by villagers whenever I was privileged to travel to the village. How adorable, those unlearned village people were able to perform complex mathematical calculations while playing the game - this is to prove that their knowledge of mathematics was rather passed on through "oral tradition" than through western education.

Looking at all these case studies, you can easily infer that during the ancient times, a lot of science disciplines flourished in Africa but some of them have been given less credit because of some factors; including colonial influences. Even with all these influences, it is evident that Africa is the birthplace of civilization.

References: Ref1, Ref2, Ref3, Ref4, Ref5, Ref6