Opinions of Monday, 24 April 2017

Columnist: Yusef Gariba

Africa gave Europe it's modern education

Map of Africa Map of Africa

Many sources have it that education, be it formal or informal originated from Africa and to be precise, ancient Egypt, location of the oldest civilization in the world.

The ancient Egyptians are on record to be the first people to fully develop a writing format known as the HIEROGLYPHS as early as 3400 BC.

Greek, Latin and Arabic alphabets all emerged from the Egyptian hieroglyph.

Ancient Egyptians were the pioneers in astronomy as there were the first to organized a calendar, known as the astronomical calendar.

They were able to organize days into weeks, weeks into months and months into years thousands of years before the Gregorian calendar which we used today was formed.

The ancient Egyptians were also the first to break the frontiers of mathematics to be specific, trigonometry.

The great Pyramid of Giza is a good evidence to attest to the assertion. Even Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician credited with the Triangular formula had his entire education in Egypt and plagiarized the formula for finding the hypotenuse of triangle from the Egyptian.

Ancient Egyptians were also the first to make breakthrough in medicine as there is enough evidence to show that ancient Egyptian doctors started making surgery before Greek and Roman doctors; caesarean section for women having difficulties labour in ancient Egypt.

I know someone will sit in their comfort zone and try to annul my declaration because they have been made to believe that ancient Egyptians were not Africans but Europeans .

This is an idea I will never allow to go scot-free should it comes my way. The ancient Egyptians were Africans by all standards. Professor Cheikh Anta Diop, a very gallant Senegalese Egytyologist conducted a number of research to ascertain whether or not ancient Egyptians were Africans and after all the researches, the results came out positive; that ancient Egyptians were Africans.

I am going to herald two of his researches, the first being the Melanin Density Sampling and the second, the Blood Group Test.

Prof. Cheikh Anta Diop took a small skin part of the Egyptian mummy and measured the density of the melanin found in the skin and it was consistent with the melanin density of a today-African. Ancient Egyptians were Africans !

Prof. Cheikh Anta Diop took the blood samples of the Egyptian mummies and carried out blood group test and he found out the blood group of the mummies was B.

This implies that ancient Egyptians were Africans since Africans have predominantly Blood group B and their European counterparts are known to have blood group A. Again, it is confirmed ancient Egyptians were Africans.

in the meanwhile, reference can be made of university of Karueein situated in Fes, Morocco. It is the oldest and continually operated university on earth.

We had functioning higher institutions of education in West Africa such as the university of Sankore in Timbuktu capital of the Malian empire. I'm saying this to herald that we had an organized system of learning long before the arrival of the European on our shores.

In 711 AD, the African army of the Moorish empire from Africas Maghreb region invaded and colonized spain and other southern European states under the leadership of Tarik Ibn Ziyad and usurped it from the hands of the Visigoths from Germany .

One European recounted the events on the scene of the invasion-the reins of their (moors) horses were as fire, their faces black as pith, their eyes shone like burning candles, their horses were swift as leopards and the riders fiercer than a wolf in a sheepfold at night…. The noble Visigoths were broken in an hour, quicker than the tongue could tell. Oh luckless Spain.'

When we colonized them, we gave them the best of education. We made them scientific progress in Astronomy, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, Geography and Philosophy.

We made education universal for them, available to all, whiles in other parts of Europe outside the jurisdiction of the Moors, 99% of the population were illiterates including their kings. At the time when the whole of Europe had two universities, we built seventeen for them which were located in Almeria, Cordova, Grenada, Juen, Malaga, Seville and Toledo.

At a time when the whole of Europe had no libraries, we built seventy for them, with each one containing more than six-hundred thousand manuscripts.

Without ancient Egypt, Europeans would have had no education at all and without the Moors, European education would not be at the stage it is today, it would have been developing at a snail pace.

IF YOU ARE AN AFRICAN, BE PROUD BECAUSE THE WORLD TODAY WOULD HAVE NEVER BEEN AT WHERE IT IS WITHOUT YOUR ANCESTORS. ALUTTA CONTINUA!