Fascinating stuff thanks. Over the years I've seen many social media posts celebrating such African writing systems, which is great but I can't help thinking there's a kind of implied sense of inferiority of oral culture in saying, "look Africa had writing too"! I'm not sure I've ever seen a post celebrating the greatness of oral culture as a whole, which seems a tragic omission. The occasional mention of griots was about all I've ever seen. Whole societies and empires functioned perfectly well in Africa without a single word ever having been written down. No one should ever look upon it as inferior. Song, dance, music and storytelling functioned perfectly well in recording and transmitting information. Oral cultures tended to generate prodigious memory skills that written cultures inhibited. Some drum languages were sufficiently complex to recite poetry, is just one example of how evolved these systems could be. I know some academic work has been done on the subject but almost certainly not enough. Given how predominant written culture is becoming in Africa it would be nice to see oral culture celebrated and protected in the way it deserves. If you've written on the subject before could you provide any links please, if not I hope it might inspire a future article.
" Whole societies and empires functioned perfectly well in Africa without a single word ever having been written down"
True
unfortunately, the modern discipline of history is still rooted in the eurocentric paradigm where only "recorded" history is counted as 'legitimate history' while all other forms of history are relegated to supporting roles, despite excluding the vast majority of society, which, until the 19th century was largely 'illiterate' even in the most developed western societies
This paradigm can only be challenged once African perspectives of history, both written and oral, are highlighted so that the discipline can create new frameworks for conceptualizing oral history as its own distinct genre of organizing information about the past.
It's the same challenge with the discipline's bias toward centralized organized societies (eg kingdoms or empires), and its neglect of segmentary, non-complex societies (eg pastoral groups, foragers, etc).
There have been some strides in expanding the discipline to include all these different forms of "histories" and "societies", but we're sadly still far from developing a more holistic concept of the past that recognizes the accomplishments of all societies including those outside the eurocentric norm
Totally agree of course. Will check out the article thanks. Incidentally re non centralised societies, the Betammaribe in your other article about the houses in Togo and Benin still practice a non hierarchical system and historically fairly large societies existed with such systems. I've got friends there are have stayed in those amazing houses
Fascinating stuff thanks. Over the years I've seen many social media posts celebrating such African writing systems, which is great but I can't help thinking there's a kind of implied sense of inferiority of oral culture in saying, "look Africa had writing too"! I'm not sure I've ever seen a post celebrating the greatness of oral culture as a whole, which seems a tragic omission. The occasional mention of griots was about all I've ever seen. Whole societies and empires functioned perfectly well in Africa without a single word ever having been written down. No one should ever look upon it as inferior. Song, dance, music and storytelling functioned perfectly well in recording and transmitting information. Oral cultures tended to generate prodigious memory skills that written cultures inhibited. Some drum languages were sufficiently complex to recite poetry, is just one example of how evolved these systems could be. I know some academic work has been done on the subject but almost certainly not enough. Given how predominant written culture is becoming in Africa it would be nice to see oral culture celebrated and protected in the way it deserves. If you've written on the subject before could you provide any links please, if not I hope it might inspire a future article.
" Whole societies and empires functioned perfectly well in Africa without a single word ever having been written down"
True
unfortunately, the modern discipline of history is still rooted in the eurocentric paradigm where only "recorded" history is counted as 'legitimate history' while all other forms of history are relegated to supporting roles, despite excluding the vast majority of society, which, until the 19th century was largely 'illiterate' even in the most developed western societies
This paradigm can only be challenged once African perspectives of history, both written and oral, are highlighted so that the discipline can create new frameworks for conceptualizing oral history as its own distinct genre of organizing information about the past.
(I have in the past written about Education in the Oral society of the Yoruba patreon.com/posts/education-in-of-88655364?immediate_pledge_flow=true )
It's the same challenge with the discipline's bias toward centralized organized societies (eg kingdoms or empires), and its neglect of segmentary, non-complex societies (eg pastoral groups, foragers, etc).
There have been some strides in expanding the discipline to include all these different forms of "histories" and "societies", but we're sadly still far from developing a more holistic concept of the past that recognizes the accomplishments of all societies including those outside the eurocentric norm
Totally agree of course. Will check out the article thanks. Incidentally re non centralised societies, the Betammaribe in your other article about the houses in Togo and Benin still practice a non hierarchical system and historically fairly large societies existed with such systems. I've got friends there are have stayed in those amazing houses
Thanks for curating and sharing this! Informative.
Excellent article well done, have you heard of the Songhai Kunbaw script ? it looked something like this https://egyptsearchreloaded.proboards.com/attachment/download/745
I could not get more info on it.
Thanks. I'll definitely look it up.
I was expecting to find information on historical records written in nsibidi. Maybe there aren't any.
Nice post still.
Are you gonna be posting all old patreon only posts on here or is this just an exception?.
It is probably just an exception