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Ekundayo
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Topic: where black africans savages prior to colonization Posted: 21-Apr-2012 at 00:34 |
YORUBA-SPEAKING PEOPLES
OF THE
SLAVE COAST OF WEST AFRICA
THEIR
RELIGION, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, LAWS., LANGUAGE, ETC.
BY
A. B. ELLIS
1894
...but on very important occasions a human victim is offered. In such a case,
after the head has been struck off, the corpse is disembowelled, and the
entrails placed in front of the image in a large calabash or wooden dish; after
which the body is suspended from a tree, or, if no tree be at hand, from a
scaffolding of poles...
There
is a noted temple Lo Elegba in a grove of palms near Wuru, a village situated
about ten miles to the east of Badagry. The market of Wuru is under his
protection, and each vendor throws a few cowries on the ground as a
thank-offering. Once a year these cowries are swept up by the priests, and with
the sum thus collected a slave is purchased to be sacrificed to the god. A
slave is also sacrificed annually, towards the end of July, to Elegba in the
town of Ondo, the capital of the state of the same name
This is not graphic like some eyewitness accounts I have read but it does give a clear idea that being a slave was risky at certain times of the year!
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 04:46 |
I am African and Nigerian like Ekundayo the writer of this piece and I am saying YEAH Africans were savages prior to the arrival of Europeans. Lawlessness, disorder, Cannibalism , Fetish , Primitive behaviour and lack of innovation were the ways of the people .
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Izon_Otu
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medenaywe
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 05:04 |
I disagree with You Boma now!If I do not use I-phone it doesn't means I am savage.We learn a lot about spirituality of ours by "primitive savages" all around the world. Regards. P.S. People in Zambezi had had their native schools long before English people came there.Lot of other things also.Spiritual values of their life.Life was more content than today maybe.
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Ekundayo
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 09:09 |
Originally posted by Boma
I am African and Nigerian like Ekundayo the writer of this piece and I am saying YEAH Africans were savages prior to the arrival of Europeans. Lawlessness, disorder, Cannibalism , Fetish , Primitive behaviour and lack of innovation were the ways of the people .
| Wait now! I don't recall writing anything saying Africans were savages prior to the arrival of Europeans. I quite disagree on the lawlessness, disorder, lack of innovation etc., and particularly take offense to the use of the word "fetish". The kingdom of Ife was so far ahead of the Europeans that they were making incredible lost wax casting method bronzes while the painters in Europe were still trying to figure out how to create dimension in their flat paintings! Before the arrival of the Muslim jihads and slave traders, Yoruba culture had it going on! Missionary Samuel Ajayi Crowther did a great disservice to the Yoruba people and culture as a whole when he translated the Bible into Yoruba and equated Esu with Satan, and instead of using the name of Orunmila ( the *savior* of the Yoruba race), he instead threw the Babalawo priest out completely and replaced him with Jesus. The Ifa practice and orisa worship is not fetish. One cannot stop history, destiny and fate, but what one can do is realize that the Yoruba had in place a divination system and ritual practice that served their people since the beginning of time on earth. The whole history of the Yoruba people is committed to memory through oriki and odu chapters of the sacred verses of Ifa. 256 avenues or roads contain all the elements and knowledge necessary to avoid and fix every bad situation of life. A child is divined for shortly after birth, to recognize his shining stars and his pitfalls in life, through divination by a Babalawo the child is able to know his taboos, his strong and weak points and how to maneuver through life more easily. UNESCO saw fit to put the Ifa divination system under the umbrella of the Endangered Intangible Cultural Heritage for protection. How many other cultures can boast of the sum total of roots and religious beliefs and practices committed to memory by priests and priestesses who still serve the orisa and people? Of the 256 recited odus there are countless variations and sub verses, all with their litany of herbal magic, the songs to sing, the food and animal sacrifices to perform, thousands upon thousands of details all set in memory and learned by the priests during their training. No be small thing o. I am of the belief that a culture, a society of people is only as strong as their roots, and if you can no longer remember what sustained your ancestors, you have lost your way. There is one God, most can all agree on this, but leave each culture to their own, and the biggest disservice to Nigerians has been the invasive preaching of evangelical preachers, an onslaught of almost 200 years of it. Everyone knows these fire and brimstone preachers sneak in the back door of the Babalawo house to get his magic so he can make those miracles on Sunday. The best thing they know how to do is keep that bucket passing through the crowd to chop money. There has to be a balance, and respect. We know there are bad people who do bad things in the bush in the name of *fetish*, but you can't paint the whole country as fetish, especially the good Babalawo and Iyanifa who are faithful to the old ways. Ifa is elastic and changes with the times, you even find odu that speaks the person must follow Islam. Where is the intolerance in that. But most of the fire and brimstone crowd only know how to point finger, raise the voice and even call their own grandparents or parents heathen for still following traditional Yoruba ways. If someone is happy in their faith and it is serving them , that is good. Where is the problem. Here is a review from the New York Times of a museum show featuring the Yoruba terracotta and metal works.
A head of their time;
Rachel Campbell-Johnston is stunned by head sculptures so sophisticated that
our ancestors said they couldn't be African.(Features).
The Times (London,
England) (March 3, 2010): p37. (813 words)
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Document Type: Newspaper
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London Times
Full Text :
COPYRIGHT 2010 The
Times
Byline: Rachel
Campbell- Johnston
Kingdom of Ife
British Museum, WC1 ****
Ahundred years ago, a
maverick German adventurer named Captain Leo Frobenius visited the jungles of
West Africa. He had heard of the region's wealth, of a marvellous sculpted
bronze head and astonishing terracotta figures and, as an anthropological
expert crossed with a plundering charlatan, he wanted to take a look for himself.
Three weeks spent
digging in forest groves around the city of Ife (pronounced "ee-fay")
were richly rewarded. He returned to Europe with a bag of cultural swag.
Archaeologists were astounded by what he had to reveal. How could such
sophisticated objects have come out of the Dark Continent? Many experts deemed
it to be impossible.
These sculptures were
not of African origin, they decided: they were evidence of the lost Atlantis of
the Greeks. Incredulous archaeologists, however, were forced to rethink, not
least when, in 1938, more treasures were turned up. Workmen found a cache of
spectacularly beautiful bronze heads, the first in a series of discoveries that
were to overturn prior assumptions about African art, forcing patronising
imperialists to reconsider their notions of the "primitive". Wrought
with extraordinary skill and astonishingly lifelike, these works expressed a
socially complex, aesthetically subtle and technically sophisticated culture.
The "Donatellos of Medieval Africa" was how an amazed Illustrated
London News described them when in 1948 they came to Britain to be conserved
and shown for the first time at the British Museum.
The kingdom of Ife,
the spiritual heartland of the Yoruba people, flourished from the 12th to the
15th centuries in the lush forests of the lower Niger in West Africa in what is
today the southwestern region of Nigeria. Visitors to this show are welcomed by
its king - the Ooni of Ife - in the form of a portly copper alloy figure which,
dressed in coronation regalia, stands at the entrance to Kingdom of Ife:
Sculptures of West Africa.
Precious little is
known of this culture. Its stories and traditions are essentially passed down
orally. But many guesses and assumptions can be made from its artistic legacy,
of which some 100 terracotta and metalwork pieces now go on show. Ife, this
show suggests, though far smaller than neighbouring kingdoms, came to
prominence because it had an iron-working industry. This provided not only
weapons but also agricultural tools. With access to the Niger river leading to
Timbuctoo and from there to the Saharan trade routes, surplus food could be
traded for other commodities. No doubt Ife had constantly to jostle for power,
but it also appears to have had strong relationships with neighbouring tribal
regions: a recurrent motif of a snake curling from human nostrils is to be
found not just on the carvings from Ife, but also those of nearby Owo and
Benin.
To move through the
museum's exhibition, a maze-like construction that winds through the Round
Reading Room gallery, is to move closer and closer to the heart of this
mysterious culture whose monarchy counts among the longest surviving in the
world, whose current ruler still sits in state and whose people still worship
in the forest groves from which their ancestral relics were dug up.
This is the culture
that Kingdom of Ife explores. It was a cosmopolitan society, the exhibition
suggests, for its legacy is richly various and its women, judging by the
numerous depictions of them, played a strong and valued role. Its metalworkers
were superlative craftsman. Its people probably also knew how to make glass -
crucibles have been discovered in the forest and figures are elaborately
adorned with beads - that would have given the kingdom a powerful trading role.
But it is the
sculpted heads that will strike the visitor to this show. Spotlit amid the
slightly gloomy mazes are visages of such extraordinary individuality that one
is pulled up short. They capture a spirit of individual identity that survives
the passing centuries, impelling the spectator to ponder the secrets that are
only now being unlocked. Many of these secrets were dark and frightening, as
terrible sculptures of gagged victims and human-headed clubs (perhaps used for
sacrificial killings) suggest. It is the attentiveness of observation that
compels. Here is a queen moulded in terracotta, her pouting face beneath her
headdress so extraordinarily rendered that her flesh seems almost soft. There an
old man, his slack lips and cavedin face so accurately depicted that his breath
seems to hover about his parted mouth.
Ife is in one sense a
highly specialised area of study. Here is a small and as yet mostly unexplained
fragment of our shared past. It hardly promises to be widely popular. And yet,
in its mysteries lies a profoundly felt apprehension of the mystery that is
common to all human life.
Kingdom of Ife:
Sculptures from West Africa is at the British Museum (020-7323 8838) from
tomorrow to June 6
Source Citation
"A head of their
time; Rachel Campbell-Johnston is stunned by head sculptures so sophisticated
that our ancestors said they couldn't be African." Times [London, England]
3 Mar. 2010: 37. Academic OneFile. Web. 2 Sept. 2010.
Document URL
http://find.galegroup.com/gtx/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T004&prodId=AONE&docId=CJ220156173&source=gale&srcprod=AONE&userGroupName=jefferson1&version=1.0
Gale Document
Number:CJ220156173
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 10:15 |
There were actually more kingdoms in West Africa than East Africa. Benin Empire, Oyo Empire, Hausa state , Sokoto Caliphate, ancient Gana, Songhae Empire, Mali Empire, Nupe, Nri are just some of them.
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Izon_Otu
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 10:28 |
You see, what you have narrated is actually the Fetish ways of the Ile Ife people of old. Ile Ife was the center of such practices even worse than how you depicted it. And so it was or still seen as the cradle of the Yoruba people and till today people still hold on to the superstition of old with the belief of OBATALA who was sent from the sky as the first man that gave birth to the Yoruba people. Fetish of Sango or Shanga and many other practices where people are killed unnecessarily for sacrifice and other wise. The whole culture was crude and that is why it was all savagery . Carving and sculpture is still ongoing and trust me without European influence they may never know how to upgrade like they still have not known even at this time despite all the influence from western civilization. They probably have been painting and carving for the past million years before Europeans and Arabs arrived and are still painting and carving the same way even at this time. The reason why the various clans of Yoruba land have tribal marks is to identity so you may be spared during conflict and war. It is the reminder of the savage past when people fought and kill and even annihilate clans for the survival of the strongest clan. That was pure savagery.
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Izon_Otu
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 10:33 |
And how come have you not improved on them. Study the history of China and see the progression. Civilization is a constant progression and it simply means the ability to develop from state to state. Now if you see gorila in the forest using tools does not mean the gorila was civilized. If the Gorila is able to transform tool to some thing else for better use and upgrade to another state of easy means of survival, then the Gorila is having civilization. Check out the Zimbabweans and tell me if they have improved from the days you are talking about . It simply means without the Europeans they may never move any step to any advanced level..
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Izon_Otu
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Ekundayo
Housecarl
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 12:20 |
Originally posted by Boma
You see, what you have narrated is actually the Fetish ways of the Ile Ife people of old. Ile Ife was the center of such practices even worse than how you depicted it. And so it was or still seen as the cradle of the Yoruba people and till today people still hold on to the superstition of old with the belief of OBATALA who was sent from the sky as the first man that gave birth to the Yoruba people. Fetish of Sango or Shanga and many other practices where people are killed unnecessarily for sacrifice and other wise. The whole culture was crude and that is why it was all savagery . Carving and sculpture is still ongoing and trust me without European influence they may never know how to upgrade like they still have not known even at this time despite all the influence from western civilization. They probably have been painting and carving for the past million years before Europeans and Arabs arrived and are still painting and carving the same way even at this time. The reason why the various clans of Yoruba land have tribal marks is to identity so you may be spared during conflict and war. It is the reminder of the savage past when people fought and kill and even annihilate clans for the survival of the strongest clan. That was pure savagery.
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What are you talking about man? You will still find the people of Ife worshiping and in fact all over Yoruba land. It was not Obatala in the ife creation myth, it was Odua who came first. Your use of the word fetish is repugnant. Lagos Oyo and Ondo have some of the largest shrines to Esu at this present time. As we speak there are oracles of the masquerade egungun speaking to the people in the streets who come for help, prayer and blessings. You are mistaken in your history of carving and sculpture. The Yoruba were working in metal of such intricacy hundreds of years before Europeans even dreamed of it. The facts are out there if you choose to look for them. There are accounts of cities in Benin where the roofs are covered in brass or copper, gleaming in the sun, the Portuguese spoke of how the streets were cleaner than theirs back home, marveled at the garbage removal system and the way the streets were laid out. I could go on and on but it seems you have swallowed the colonialist mentality and it has firmly taken root. There is nothing wrong with change as long as it does not wipe out what keeps a people and culture united and unique. Not trying to attack you personally, but maybe you are one of the Western educated who long ago stopped wearing traditional clothes either by choice or because raised in a strict Christian family who shunned everything that tied them to their ancestral roots. The Christian preachers have done an excellent job of brainwashing their flock in order to better fleece them while the British and other colonialist masters did their best to exploit and enslave both the Africans and the African continent. Not everything was bad that they did: roads, railways, houses, but we all know they were busy ransacking anything of value while making the true owners of the land feel as third class citizens. The trodding down and extinction of ancient rituals, cultures and religious practices is one of the most reprehensible of all forms of cultural genocide, easily achieved by constant preaching against all things "heathen" giving rise to shame and an inferiority complex, which in turn makes one look up to all things Western and deemed "civilized". The biggest tragedy of today is to see young people trading their traditional clothes for the jeans and Western street clothes, looking up to American rap artists or British, and discarding everything possible that links them to their heritage. Most people cannot even speak their native tongue anymore, This is what happens when the colonial masters prohibit the speaking of anything but english in their schools. This is how they enslave the masses. Take away the ase the power of your native tongue and take away your religious beliefs and replace them with theirs. I pity the people who cannot recite their family oriki.
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Boma
Janissary
Joined: 20-Sep-2012
Location: Abili
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 14:58 |
What are you talking about man? You will still find the people of Ife worshiping and in fact all over Yoruba land. It was not Obatala in the ife creation myth, it was Odua who came first. Your use of the word fetish is repugnant. Lagos Oyo and Ondo have some of the largest shrines to Esu at this present time. As we speak there are oracles of the masquerade egungun speaking to the people in the streets who come for help, prayer and blessings. You are mistaken in your history of carving and sculpture. The Yoruba were working in metal of such intricacy hundreds of years before Europeans even dreamed of it. The facts are out there if you choose to look for them. There are accounts of cities in Benin where the roofs are covered in brass or copper, gleaming in the sun, the Portuguese spoke of how the streets were cleaner than theirs back home, marveled at the garbage removal system and the way the streets were laid out. I could go on and on but it seems you have swallowed the colonialist mentality and it has firmly taken root. There is nothing wrong with change as long as it does not wipe out what keeps a people and culture united and unique. Not trying to attack you personally, but maybe you are one of the Western educated who long ago stopped wearing traditional clothes either by choice or because raised in a strict Christian family who shunned everything that tied them to their ancestral roots. The Christian preachers have done an excellent job of brainwashing their flock in order to better fleece them while the British and other colonialist masters did their best to exploit and enslave both the Africans and the African continent. Not everything was bad that they did: roads, railways, houses, but we all know they were busy ransacking anything of value while making the true owners of the land feel as third class citizens. The trodding down and extinction of ancient rituals, cultures and religious practices is one of the most reprehensible of all forms of cultural genocide, easily achieved by constant preaching against all things "heathen" giving rise to shame and an inferiority complex, which in turn makes one look up to all things Western and deemed "civilized". The biggest tragedy of today is to see young people trading their traditional clothes for the jeans and Western street clothes, looking up to American rap artists or British, and discarding everything possible that links them to their heritage. Most people cannot even speak their native tongue anymore, This is what happens when the colonial masters prohibit the speaking of anything but english in their schools. This is how they enslave the masses. Take away the ase the power of your native tongue and take away your religious beliefs and replace them with theirs. I pity the people who cannot recite their family oriki. [/QUOTE]
Your question was.. Were black Africans savages prior to Colonization and I said Yes. I never said the people never had a way of life. What you are narrating here are the historical ways of the people's life which I said was savagery and without the Europeans, the people may continue to live like that till now. And yes you just confirmed that they still live like that . You know all the sacrifice that followed those egungun and things you talked about were human sacrifice and of course you know all the atrocity that followed that kind of habit. Benin till today is buried in savagery and not much is changed. Many of the Benin people that ran away from cruelty migrated to the South EAST and founded new kingdoms which the Benin today do not even know about. Talk about the OSU culture of the Igbos and tell me if that was not savagery. You are Yoruba so you are only trying to forward the Yoruba history and paint it white and for your information I lived in Lagos and LAGOS was not part of the OYO empire and so had little or nothing to do with Ile Ife . It was actually under the Benin empire. The title of the traditional head of both BADAGRY and EKO ( the word Eko itself is an Edo word and not Yoruba ) are of Edo tradition ( OBA ) and not Yoruba. And of course you know what it entails to be an Oba in Edo land. It is pure fetish , devilish and inhuman.. Do not even argue that the word OBA is a Yoruba word cos no settlement, village or town in the OYO empire of the ANAGO has the title OBA. Alaafin, Ooni, AWUJALE, Olu and so on but non is OBA. Oba is a borrowed word from Edo . Just like Chief was borrowed from the English by the Ijaws.
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Izon_Otu
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red clay
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 15:13 |
An agrarian or nomadic life is not savagery.
Boma, I think you need to take a couple of deep breaths, and ease up a little.
Also, you are sounding like a white european, I for one, greatly admire and respect the achievements of the Historic African Civilizations. Your denigration of them doesn't shine well on you.
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Don Quixote
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 15:16 |
Originally posted by Ekundayo
[QUOTE=Boma] Not trying to attack you personally, but maybe you are one of the Western educated who long ago stopped wearing traditional clothes either by choice or because raised in a strict Christian family who shunned everything that tied them to their ancestral roots
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Ekundayo, this is a personal attack. Please, avoid such and stick to the subject matter. Thank you in advance. DQ
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 15:55 |
The truth should not always be bitter.And some times the washing of dirty linen out side leads to gains . I am a KALABARI Ijaw and one aspect of our history that is forbidden to tell is the very grave life style of the past. Covering up such history and claiming we never had savagery only make us look stupid because we become confused and remain lost never knowing where to amend because we are in denial. Ancient Yoruba culture was centered on voodoo which the Fon Call Vaudun that was spelt voodoo by the French. The worship of Sango ( Shango ), Obatala, Ogun, Oladumare were all Fetish. Oba Tala. was the Benin ruler who invaded Ile Ife. His power and might made the people worship him and deified him when he died. SHANGO was also another Ruler of Ile Ife who during his reign cursed some one during heavy rain fall and the person died mysteriously as thunder struck . The thunder that struck coincided with the time the person dropped dead and the people thought SHANGO invoked Thunder to kill the person. Shango became a god to the ignorant people and the people continued to worship him as the god of thunder till today. These are youtube footage of aspect of ancient Kalabari Ijaw practice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMPtUcLBTeM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsKXlsZJeHQ
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Izon_Otu
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Ekundayo
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 16:51 |
Originally posted by Boma
Your question was.. Were black Africans savages prior to Colonization and I said Yes. I never said the people never had a way of life. What you are narrating here are the historical ways of the people's life which I said was savagery and without the Europeans, the people may continue to live like that till now. And yes you just confirmed that they still live like that . You know all the sacrifice that followed those egungun and things you talked about were human sacrifice and of course you know all the atrocity that followed that kind of habit. Benin till today is buried in savagery and not much is changed. Many of the Benin people that ran away from cruelty migrated to the South EAST and founded new kingdoms which the Benin today do not even know about. Talk about the OSU culture of the Igbos and tell me if that was not savagery. You are Yoruba so you are only trying to forward the Yoruba history and paint it white and for your information I lived in Lagos and LAGOS was not part of the OYO empire and so had little or nothing to do with Ile Ife . It was actually under the Benin empire. The title of the traditional head of both BADAGRY and EKO ( the word Eko itself is an Edo word and not Yoruba ) are of Edo tradition ( OBA ) and not Yoruba. And of course you know what it entails to be an Oba in Edo land. It is pure fetish , devilish and inhuman.. Do not even argue that the word OBA is a Yoruba word cos no settlement, village or town in the OYO empire of the ANAGO has the title OBA. Alaafin, Ooni, AWUJALE, Olu and so on but non is OBA. Oba is a borrowed word from Edo . Just like Chief was borrowed from the English by the Ijaws.
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Boma my friend, I did not start this thread and did not post this question. I added information that might encourage dialogue.I did not say that Lagos is part of Oyo kingdom, but in this day and age we know is Yoruba controlled through and through and as such the practices are common whether is Badagry or the lagoon or the island Ibadan, Osogbo etc. If I were truly someone who did not have an open mind I would never have put the quote of A.B. Ellis which is painting the Yoruba ritual practices in a bad light. It is the past, it happened, but other cultures also made human sacrifice, and I can counter that life in the present Western world is full of dichotomies and conflicts, where the death penalty is given to prisoners of heinous crimes. How can we judge the forefathers who had their system of checks and balances in place, and their use of *criminals* for their own purposes. Slaves captured in war whether aggressor or defender were obviously seen as fair game to sacrifice. At least the death was given over to a spiritual purpose, just as in the bible itself. In the West around 100 years ago people were hung without a trial and even announced in the town squares. Whole families packed picnic lunches to go watch the execution, Is that not barbaric? I don't care so much about the migration of this and that and I would debate you hotly on Yoruba system of Ifa being based on Voudun and not the other way around, and bring up even the usage of Oba and the Anago term used in brasil as Nago people and where it can be traced back from even there, but my main concern is that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Obviously I am an Ifa practitioner, and excuse me if I feel it fair to get my licks in where I can since the tradition has been so villified for centuries and continues to be villified on television and from behind the pulpit.
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Ekundayo
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 16:54 |
Originally posted by Don Quixote
Originally posted by Ekundayo
[QUOTE=Boma] Not trying to attack you personally, but maybe you are one of the Western educated who long ago stopped wearing traditional clothes either by choice or because raised in a strict Christian family who shunned everything that tied them to their ancestral roots
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Ekundayo, this is a personal attack. Please, avoid such and stick to the subject matter. Thank you in advance. DQ
| Duly noted Sah, I will refrain from such in the future, however, understand my usage was meant more to illustrate a phenomena going on as we speak all over West Africa and not intended to personally injure Boma's feelings. It is a simple fact this is happening and a quick visit would make it apparent.
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Nick1986
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 19:58 |
Every civilisation goes through a nomadic, agrarian and warlike phase, but that doesn't mean they're savages. Even ancient Rome started out as just one of many squabbling city-states
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Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains!
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Boma
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 22:21 |
Boma my friend, I did not start this thread and did not post this question. I added information that might encourage dialogue.I did not say that Lagos is part of Oyo kingdom, but in this day and age we know is Yoruba controlled through and through and as such the practices are common whether is Badagry or the lagoon or the island Ibadan, Osogbo etc. If I were truly someone who did not have an open mind I would never have put the quote of A.B. Ellis which is painting the Yoruba ritual practices in a bad light. It is the past, it happened, but other cultures also made human sacrifice, and I can counter that life in the present Western world is full of dichotomies and conflicts, where the death penalty is given to prisoners of heinous crimes. How can we judge the forefathers who had their system of checks and balances in place, and their use of *criminals* for their own purposes. Slaves captured in war whether aggressor or defender were obviously seen as fair game to sacrifice. At least the death was given over to a spiritual purpose, just as in the bible itself. In the West around 100 years ago people were hung without a trial and even announced in the town squares. Whole families packed picnic lunches to go watch the execution, Is that not barbaric? I don't care so much about the migration of this and that and I would debate you hotly on Yoruba system of Ifa being based on Voudun and not the other way around, and bring up even the usage of Oba and the Anago term used in brasil as Nago people and where it can be traced back from even there, but my main concern is that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water. Obviously I am an Ifa practitioner, and excuse me if I feel it fair to get my licks in where I can since the tradition has been so villified for centuries and continues to be villified on television and from behind the pulpit. [/QUOTE]
Well said . You are correct this time . You see, the question is WERE they savages prior to colonization ? Your comment this time perfectly says YES . It is also true that other people including Europeans were savages at some point . But our savagery may never give way if we never had Europeans and other foreign influence.
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Izon_Otu
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Ekundayo
Housecarl
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Location: usbrasilnigeria
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Posted: 20-Sep-2012 at 23:57 |
Originally posted by Boma
Well said . You are correct this time . You see, the question is WERE they savages prior to colonization ? Your comment this time perfectly says YES . It is also true that other people including Europeans were savages at some point . But our savagery may never give way if we never had Europeans and other foreign influence.
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We are going to have to agree to disagree. You read into my comment what you like. I'm not pointing the finger and calling anyone a savage, not at all.
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"When you allow man's decisions to touch you, you have given away your God-given power,You have to say:"I don't recognize man as my maker or my keeper."Have faith in God and you will be rewarded."ESU
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Nick1986
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Mighty Slayer of Trolls
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Posted: 22-Sep-2012 at 21:12 |
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Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains!
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Boma
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Posted: 23-Sep-2012 at 17:26 |
Could be true cos even the Israelites started their religion in Egypt. The Feru ( Pharoah ) stool of ancient Egypt was the direct stool of God. Feru ( Pharoah ) Means great storm. The person who becomes the Pharoah was simply a Representative of God.This theory is can still be seen among some of the remnants of ancient Egypt who are now in the extreme South of Nigeria called the Ijaws. http://destee.com/index.php?threads/a-spiritual-discourse-of-the-ijaw-of-nigeria.44218/
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Izon_Otu
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Nick1986
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Posted: 23-Sep-2012 at 21:24 |
Originally posted by Boma
Could be true cos even the Israelites started their religion in Egypt. The Feru ( Pharoah ) stool of ancient Egypt was the direct stool of God. Feru ( Pharoah ) Means great storm. The person who becomes the Pharoah was simply a Representative of God.This theory is can still be seen among some of the remnants of ancient Egypt who are now in the extreme South of Nigeria called the Ijaws.
http://destee.com/index.php?threads/a-spiritual-discourse-of-the-ijaw-of-nigeria.44218/
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Interesting idea, although the Egyptians worshiped many gods. You should get in touch with Medenaywe as he's got a theory all modern languages evolved from Ancient Egyptian
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Me Grimlock not nice Dino! Me bash brains!
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