Friday 15 July 2011

AFRICAN HERITAGE SERIES:THREE; -BLACKS GAVE THE WORLD KNOWLEDGE

BY JUSTICE PATRICK TABARO

High Court of Uganda
 January 13, 2008

From my description of the pyramids in the Sunday vision of November 25, 2007, it is evident that black Egyptians were very advanced in civilization and had mastered astronomy, technology, mathematics, science, the arts, etc.
It is tragic that in our schools the pyramids are spoken of as mere burial structures (tombs) for Kings yet in fact they were much more. They served as centres of learning (colleges) and temples for scholars from other lands, priests, sages and prophets. The combination of tombs, colleges, temples, libraries, royal meeting places in one place was a result of the Egyptian belief that the dead, the living and the unborn belong to the same system.
Most Africans to day still hold that belief and the same doctrine survives in Christianity and Islam in resurrection of the body after death and trial for one's deeds on earth on the day of Judgment.
In Catholicism it is normal in prayer to invoke patron saints, who are departed persons, for intercession with God on behalf of supplicants. The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation is not much different.
 Over time, Egyptian learning and civilization spread to the Mediterranean Islands, Italy, India, China, Japan, etc. The Dravidian (black) people of India trace their ancestry to Africa and Leopold Senghor, the former president of Senegal, established a link between their languages and African languages. In 2005 at an international cultural studies workshop at Makerere University, one presenter, Prof. Dr.Murindwa Rutanga, stunned Ugandans by identifying words common to Rukiga and the Dravidian languages of southern India, the black civilization of India, the Harappan civilisation is well covered by Prof. Runoko Rashidi with Prof. Ivan van Sertima in African Presence in Early Asia.
Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop in The African Origin of Civilisations - Myth or Reality is further treatment of the theme that major civilisations of the world originate from black Egypt.
When Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492 he found there black settlers from the Mandinka community of West Africa. With this there can be no debate for it is from the biography of Christopher Columbus written by his own son.
If descendants of the Vikings should claim credit for having discovered America through Eric the Red, then they should be courteous enough to mention that Thorhall, a black man, jointly did so as Eric's deputy in 11th century (African Presence in Early Europe, van Sertima, 1985, 2000). It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the European map of America, drawn at the request of King Don Juan of Portugal in 1494 was based on information gleaned from the sailors of Guinea. The Africans found in the Americas were subsequently exterminated along with so many of the indigenous communities, known to the world as Red Indians.
The natives of Australia, Papua New Guinea and many other black people in the Pacific Ocean Islands (Melanesia or Black Asia ) came from Africa (Runoko,Rashidi, 2007). The misrepresentation of the African people in European scholarship led the eminent scholar, Fr.Alex Kagame, in Inganji Karinga to come to an unfortunate conclusion, by asserting that the Batutsi came from Ethiopia while the Bahutu came from Melanesia. It is the Melanesians who came from Africa and both Bahutu and Batutsi came from black areas of Africa. The Bahutu, the Batutsi and the Batwa constitute the Banyarwanda of Rwanda and neighbouring countries of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania. The differences in physique among Bahutu, Batutsi and Batwa are due to adaptation to changes in environment and climate since they took different routes to reach Rwanda, without forgetting the effect of diet since traditionally they ate different foods according to occupation.
We can now look at three intellectuals of classical Greek civilization - Thales (640-546 B.C.), Pythagoras (582-500 B.C.) and Aristotle who was among the last of the classical (Greek) philosophers. Aristotle was tutor to Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), and accompanied him to Egypt after Alexander established the capital of his empire at the then greatest centre of learning. Both Pythagoras and Thales went to Egypt as did all great Greek intellectuals to access advanced knowledge.
Pythagoras who is taught at all levels of education in school mathematics and in philosophy at university will easily reveal the debt owned by Europe to Africa in matters of knowledge. He spent 22 years in Egypt gathering information about Egyptian science and later returned to Greece to establish his own centre of learning. He was a pupil of Thales.
By the time Pythagoras went to Egypt, the Egyptian had used the inclined plane to move blocks of stones up heights during the construction of the Pyramids 2,500 years before.
The philosophical doctrinesof Thales, Aristotle and Pythagoras can be dealt with together. First of all, the world philosophy has no root in any European language. It has its etymology in sofia - Egyptian for deep thought or divine speech which were the hallmarks of wisdom. The Greek philosophers who sojourned to Egypt to study were acutely aware that they were not equals of the Egyptians sages.
Tradition has it that they settled for being mere lovers of Egyptians wisdom (philo=love, Sophia=wisdom). That is how they came to be known as philosophers. Their doctrines such as immorality of the soul, salvation and God, the uncreated creator, owe their origin to the Memphite Theology of 750 B.C. (by which time classical Greek philosophers were not yet on the scene) compiled from the doctrines of the people of the interior of Africa. The theology is inscribed on a stone which is kept in the British Museum. It was an attempt by Egyptians to explain the origin of the universe.
The turning of chaos into order or logic (logos in Greek) shows the Egyptian /Africans origin of the New Testament though written in Greek. The sun was worshipped as the ultimate symbol of God. This is proof that they had realised that without the sun there could be no life on earth.
Early Egyptians made no distinction between religion, science or the arts. It was all knowledge and the most sophisticated elite was the clergy who were required to master science, medicine, mathematics, astronomy, music etc, as we know them. There was harmony between religion and science and the two reinforced each other. The belief in eternal life motivated men to construct eternal building e.g. the pyramids and other permanent structures for the departed souls to rest eternally in peace.
Like all other ancient people they believed that heavenly bodies affect and influence human lives on earth (astrologers still do).
The belief that heavenly bodies, especially stars, influence people motivated the black Egyptians to try and establish the distance between them (heavenly bodies) and the earth as well as between the bodies themselves. Hence, the perfection of astronomy and mathematics.
The war between religion and science was a consequence of the doctrines of Europeans in the Dark Ages. Later we shall show that the so- called Dark Ages in Europe were the golden ages elsewhere- in North Africa, the Middle East, China, etc. When Europe declined, religion sank to the level of superstition- remember the teaching in Europe that the sun moves around the earth? Whoever taught otherwise was imprisoned, like Galileo Galilei was.
Black Egyptians knew the truth - that the earth and the planets move around the sun and worshiped the sun precisely because of its centrality to life.
Although ancient Egyptians believe in many gods by the time of Pharaoh Ikhenaton, more than 600 years before classical Greeks, they had arrived at the doctrine that there is only one God. This predates the religious beliefs of all people.
From this observation it follows readily that the Greeks acquired their knowledge from the black Egyptians. From the Greeks, the Egyptian ideas spread to the rest of Europe, especially during the reign of Alexander the great (356-323).
When the Roman Empire collapsed in 476 A.D., Rome was occupied by barbarians and the Christian Dark ages set in. The Barbarians reduced Europe and the civilisation acquired from the Egyptians through the Greeks to ruins, ignorance and superstition. Although the Church kept a modicum of learning in the monasteries under the Monks, Europe became so backward that bathing became a rare event. The mathematics, science, astronomy, medicine etc inherited earlier from Egyptians disappeared.
We shall soon see why scientific terminology and mathematical formulae still bear Arabic tags. Mathematics, logarithms, algebra, acid, alkali, arithmetic, etc are either names of Muslim scholars or the subjects they popularized.
Although the Roman Empire extended to the Middle East, the main theatre of destruction was Western Europe. The destruction in northern Africa was mild and hence some Egyptian knowledge survived. Islam, unlike the Christianity of the day, encouraged learning generally, and paid much attention to science. It is significant that Arabia itself was initially populated by black people of Ethiopia (land of sun burnt people). The black people of North Africa, after 642 A.D. when Egypt was taken over by Arabs/Muslims, were the main motivation for the renaissance (rebirth of Europe).

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