Looking at today’s Nigerians unruly behavior and unkempt emvironment, it might appear farfetched to even put Nigeria and civilization in the same sentence, not to talk of being the origin of civilization. According to local parlance na condition make our crayfish bend. For the lack of the right knowledge and perspective a people perish.
ASHE Foundation has always strongly insisted that Nigeria is the origin of humanity and civilization, and the springboard for a renewed global black ascendancy. We presented various well articulated papers that the area now called Nigeria, previously labelled Slave Coast and Negrita, the world’s largest continental mangrove and freshwater swamps, housing the two largest Original African groups, is the true Origin of humanity.
While arguments for the Nigeria origin of humanity is based on genetic and linguistic anthropological evidence, human geography, as well as the oldest humanoid skeleton Toumai, the missing link, found in Chad, the origin of civilization is a bit more complex.
First is the definition of what really is civilization? It is widely believed that civilization started essentially with evolution of nomadic hunting and gathering stage into settlements enabled with the start of Agriculture. It is believed that civilization brought advanced social organization large human settlements, social structure, religion and trade.
The earliest civilization is believed to be in Arabia/Mesopotamia, where also was initially argued was the true Origin of humanity that civilization started. The progressive logic being that from the first humans that evolved in Mesopotamia, they eventually coalesced into settlements backed by agriculture.
Now, this Abrahamic bias towards Iraq where enslaved Jews first wrote their history in the first 5 books, has been proven to be wrong beyond doubt. Academic perspectives have since shifted to an Ethiopian origin of humanity, then to Kenyan and Tanzania, before recently being argued that it was Botswana with a mythical inland lake to fulfill the necessary conditions of continuous mix of saline and freshwater.
ASHE Foundation responded by showing through time that the Lower Niger area has been the most suitable spot for evolution.
Most important are genetic studies that showed that Yoruba followed by Igala and then Igbo had the oldest and longest DNA of full sized ethnicities (Tishkoff 2009 table S8) followed by Harvard University Simon Genome Diversity Project (2017) that specifically dated the separation of Yorubas and San hunter gatherers to 87,000yrs ago, the oldest separation of full sized and Pygmy hunter gatherers. Yasuoka (2013) from Kyoto University showed that Yams were the evolutionary food picked by hunter gatherers and answered the Wild Yam question that doubted that life could have been sustained in the rainforest without savanna agriculture. Nigeria has always been the epicenter of Yams, producing about 70% of the world’s Yam output.
Now, Yorubas and Igbos, the two oldest and most populous Indigenous African groups have Yams at the foundation of their culture. Yam festivals were the most important and they had no Indigenous words for grains. They were mostly lactose intolerant so were never herdsmen. Being the epicenter of sickle cell also shows they never left the malaria rainforest coast.
Yoruba have a prosperity ‘myth’, ‘Gba Eni lowo Egbere’ that if you collect the mat, temporary habitant, of hunter gatherers, you will blessed with endless riches. This has been proven scientifically that whenever hunter gatherers settle temporarily for 90 days and pick wild Yams, when they move one, the end bits of the discarded Yams will continuously produce Yams for 35yrs to feed about 100 people. There are about 19 species of yam from water yam to other dry land Yams.
This was what Southern Nigerians understood and practiced shifting cultivation that resulted in advanced social organization. First from settlements, we grew into cities like Ife and the massive Benin. Long before the Mesopotamia settling to agriculture, Yoruba and other Southerners had began to settle and developed the first knowledge bank and religion, Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa.
A knowledge bank so old that it could recount the differentiation between hominids, monkey to Man, in the story of Orunmila and Ejimere, the king of monkeys. Western academia only started to get a grip on evolutionary science in the last century.
Rather than ask the ignorant arrogant Wild Yam question of whether Yorubas and Igbos could have evolved and developed in the rainforest only on Yams and Palm produce, we should be asking advocates of Mesopotamia/Arabia origin of civilization through agriculture, what did they survive on before getting to the point of developing agriculture?
The answer is that it was Southern Nigerians that spread into the Middlebelt and Sahel grasslands, where they developed grain agriculture with the benefit of having Yams, whose shifting agricultural practises was adopted from the rainforests into the African grasslands, where grass grains could be developed. With the drying of the Sahara, people move closer to the Nile, where settlements evolved in Ethiopia and Egypt, before moving into Mesopotamia.
It should also be noted the White Race didn’t re-emerge from Central Asian mountain cave complex after the Ice Age until 6000yrs ago, so agricultural practices witnessed in Mesopotamia and Eurasia around 13,500 years ago were accomplished by Original Africans that had migrated out of Nigeria through Chad to Ethiopia across the land bridge to Arabia and into Europe and Asia. Original Africans that had developed agriculture, religion, social order, sciences and philosophy before migrating out of Nigeria.
Millennia later Europeans met an advanced political system in Yorubaland that ensured freedom of speech and association, permanent roles for females, and the role of the chief executive was separated from the Commander and Chief of armed forces to create peace. It is an indisputable fact that western Medicine condensed and translated Original African knowledge bank on illness and treatments. The first systematic science book, the Christian Philosopher written in 1720 by Maher Cotton of Harvard University was based on Yorubas Soponna vaccination procedures.
So the question is what happened to us in Nigeria? We have led in every change in the 2000yr era of global consciousness until slavery, colonization and the current neocolonization and our cultural disorientation. From ages of Orunmila/Leo, the Sun to that of the moon calendar in the Age of Yemanja in 8000BC, to the era of Esu/Gemini and the conceptualization of Ifa-Afa-Iha-Eha-Fa knowledge bank, to the 4000BC of Osun and global trade to Original African civilizations in Asia and the building of monuments by Black Egyptians. Even the Age of Ogun/Aries, the Biblical 1st Horseman era, in which Whites overran Black civilizations in Eurasia and Egypt with horse chariots, bows and arrows, there is evidence from the Lejja Nsukka iron slags that we worked iron since 2000BC which is a good thousand years before other races, but just didn’t weaponized iron on a large scale.
The outgoing 2000yr era of Olokun/Pisces that brought religious and political dogma was based on turning knowledge banks into religion, of which Ifa Olokun was the most diverse and indepth, but with the use of weaponry and Abrahamic dogma we were overran and culturally misguided. However, we know that once again as we enter the 2000yr Age of Shango/Amadioha/Aquarius, the Apocalyptic 3rd Horseman , the Black Race will rise again with the help of Yoruba, Igbos and the rest of Original African groups in South and Middlebelt that will come together to fight for Justice for all, which will lead to prosperity and racial parity.
So when some self hating Africans cynically ask of what importance is the knowledge that we are the origin of humanity and civilization to us, we answer it gives us the chance to retrace our steps and understand our destination. A river that forgets its source runs dry as a kid that forgets home will forever carry the bag of suffering. It is to also ensure that unlike previous global consciousness kicked off from Nigeria but overtaken and misused by predators, we must sustain the fight for Justice. We must also be alert to the fact that the Shango/Amadioha era of global Justice could be exploited by our past enslavers in form of humanitarian militarism, whereby they will cause the injustice then send troops to save and colonize us.
