WEST AFRICA & THE SEA IN ANTIQUITY

SOME NON-AFRICANS IN WEST AFRICA

My intention with the articles of “East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”, “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity, “West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity” plus “Abubakri II—Who He is?” (Online at clarence@starry-eye.com ) is to see if there is evidence of African maritime tradition(s) that is/are African.

There will be reference to such as the Alexandria (Egypt)/Antakya (= Antioch, Turkey)/Athens (Greece) or A/A/A-arc of the east Mediterranean, the Messina (Sicily)/Marseilles (Med.-facing sth. France)/Malaga (east-facing Iberia/Spain) or M/M/M-arc of the west Mediterranean but it will be obvious from the title that the primary concentration is west Africa and this basically means those African coasts facing the Atlantic Ocean.

             On the pattern seen for East Africa, West Africa can again be split into two. This means countries below the Bulge and those that are called here Above-Bulge but are more strictly on the Bulge of Africa. Below-Bulge are western South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (= DRC), Congo, Gabon, Sao Thome & Principe, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, etc. Above-Bulge are Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Senegambia (= Senegal & Gambia), Cape Verde Islands, Mauritania, west Sahara plus Morocco.

On the far side of Africa is Egypt. In “East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity” it is treated as being mainly of Africa not just an extension of southwest Asia. By c. 1000 B. C., the powers that dominated the A/A/A-arc off southwest Asia increasingly did not include Egypt. She seems to have turned south, presumably to see if things were any better there, as they had been in the days when trading with Punt (= Djibouti/Somalia). For this purpose Phoenicians were employed (for further see “The Phoenicians in West Africa online) and this led to what has been called the Periplus of Necho (after the Pharaoh that employed the Phoenicians).

Our only real source about this Periplus (= Voyage/Logbook) is in Herodotus (5^th c. B.C. Greek). His disbelief in the occurrence in the Periplus is crystallised in his non-acceptance of the fact that Phoenicians came back saying that the sun had been on their right for part of the journey. This phenomenon would only have happened south of the Equator and things would be back to normal towards the northern half of the portion of their circumnavigation of the whole of Africa. It is the detail about the sun that prompts most modern acceptance that this Periplus did happen.

The brothers Himilco (for more see “The Phoenicians in West Europe”) and Hanno (for more see “The Phoenicians in West Africa”) were sent to explore west Europe and West Africa respectively by the elders of the Phoenician-founded colony of Carthage. The Periplus (= Voyage) of Himilco is now a lost text and known only from fragments in Pliny (1^st c. A.D. Roman) and the poem by Rufus Avienus (4^th c. A. D. Romanised ?Gaul/Celt) called Ora Maritima (= Sea-coasts) that means further garbling by being adapted to the needs of Latin poetry some 1000 years after the original was written.

            Rather more is known about the Periplus of Hanno. It seems the original was deposited in the Temple of Baal at Carthage (= Poeni/Puni in Latin). At some later but unknown date, a Greek summary of this Phoenico/Punic text was made and this is now all we have. The Periplus of Necho was made east-to-west, whereas that of Hanno was made west-to-east. According to Pliny (ib.) and Martianus Capella (5^th c. A. D. Latinised Magrebi), Hanno circumnavigated right round Africa but apparently few others think so (but see below under Fishing & Sailing in Below-Bulge west Af.).

            Even if the opinion is followed that Hanno covered only the West African coast, there is considerable uncertainty as to how far south he reached. A lot depends on where the volcano described by Hanno proves to be. For some writers, this was Mount Kakulina (Sierra Leone). Unfortunately for this theory, vulcanologists tell us that Mt. Kakulina was dormant for millennia before the days of Hanno (c. 500 B. C.).

            The other major candidate for being this volcano is Mt. Cameroon. It is c.60 miles from the nearest coast but lava-flows of the type described by Hanno have been reported many times and in the 20^th c. this includes 1909, 1922 and 1925. The native name for Mt. Cameroon was Mongana-loba (= Home of the Gods). The name of the volcano in the Greek translation of Hanno was Theon ochema (Chariot of the Gods) that is usually amended to Theon oikhema (= Seat of the Gods). The African name and the amended Greek one could not be much closer.

             One of them is said to be Teichon Karikon but Livio Stecchini (online re. Hanno) wants to attach it to Anatolia (= Asia Minor = most of modern Turkey. It is true that Anatolians had more nautical nous than is realised, as is surely proven by Troy (northeast Anatolia); Greater Armenia (north Anatolia.); Proto-Etruscans from Lydia (central Anatolia.), Cilicia (southeast Anatolia.), Caria (southwest Anatolia.), etc. It is also known that Etruscans wanted to colonise Atlantic islands and Leo Frobenius (Voice of Africa 1913) compared Etruscan face-masks with Yoruba (Nigeria) ones. Stecchini (ib.) translated Teichon Karikon as Fort of the Carians. However, Garian/Carian also applied to the vast Saharan tribe called the Garamantes who are a lot nearer than any Anatolian grouping.

            Another account is one that was originally thought to be part of that by Skylax/Scylax of Caryanda (6^th c.) but is more probably a Greek of the 5^th/4^th c. B.C. and is usually called Pseudo-Scylax (= Ps-Scylax). He may be drawing on the same sources as Herodotus or even from Herodotus himself. He agrees with Herodotus that Africans are the tallest humans in the world but is primarily applying this to West Africans.

            A theme of twinned expeditions appear to be those sent out by Greeks now settled at Massilia (= Marseilles) involving the author of what has become known as the Massliote Periplus in west Europe and Euthymenes in west Africa. The Periplus of the “Massiliote” is known only as another garbling by Avienus, whereas that of Euthymenes joins the Periploi of Polybius (2^nd c. B. C.) and Juba of Mauritania (1^st c. B. C.) in being almost totally lost.

            Yet another such Greek twinning seems to have been those of Pytheas (? 2^nd B.C.) and Eudoxus (2^nd c. B. C.). That of Pytheas in west Europe is probably the best known of these reports of ancient exploration but again is really known only through lengthy quotes by other writers, notably Strabo (1^st c. B. C. Greek).

Eudoxus might almost qualify as what in British Colonial terms would be called an “Old Hand”. He made trips to India using the monsoon-system (& was probably the 1^st European to do so, not Hippalus) and made more than one attempt at rounding Africa. On one, he supposedly found Phoenico/Punic hippos at (?) Cape Delgado (on the Moz. /Tanz. border) that had been wrecked. It supposedly convinced him that Africa could be rounded (in this way observe a boat with dead (?) Amerindians in it is claimed to have convinced Columbus the Atlantic could be crossed). On his last known journey, Eudoxus took two galleys down the coast and was never seen again.

            The hippos was a very basic craft-type but could apparently hippoi could get as far round Africa as the IOR-facing coasts of east Africa. They are proven for West Africa when Strabo (1^st c. B. C. Greek) refers to them as the main vessels used in fishing for tunny off the west Magrebi or Moroccan coast. However, the Phoenico/Punic hippoi of this fishing mostly attach to Gaditanians (= Phoens. settled at Gadir/Gades) not Carthaginians. That found by Eudoxus was evidently wrecked off east Africa and will be touched on again. This especially pertains to what is written by such Messrs. Lacroix (Africa in Antiquity 1998), Chami ((The Unity of Ancient African History 2006), etc, when commenting on what is said in “The History of West Africa (edd. Ade Ajayi & Michael Crowder 1974).

The four days taken to reach the rich tunny-fisheries in what Strabo has described as very poor types of ship also matches the 4/5 days that Hanno says it took him to sail past the c. 1000 mile stretch represented by the western fringes of the Sahara Desert. At almost the opposite end of West Africa is another 1000 mile stretch of desert but this time it is the Namib Desert that constitutes most of the coast of modern Namibia and on the views just shown for Pliny, would also have been cleared by Hanno en route to circumnavigating Africa.

The main vessel-type taking early non-Africans along West African coasts were galley-forms. Lionel Casson (The Ancient Mariners 1991) writing about Greek ships, shows they presuppose enemy ships needing to be outrun but would also have marines aboard in case of fighting. Applying this to the Atlantic or west-facing coast of Africa has interest in the light of the galleys of Hanno, Eudoxus, the Classis Syraica of the Mauri, the Vivaldos, etc.

            It may just be the non-survival of records but there is more than a millennium between the Mauri fleet (1^st c. B. C.-1^st c. A.D.) and the Vivaldos (13^th c. Italians). Vandino plus Ugolino Vivaldo were Italians from Genoa. As said, they took galleys down the West African coast according to the author (?’s) of the Wikipedia article(s) on the Vivaldo Brothers (= Vandino & Ugolini plus that on Ugolini de Vivaldi). Given what will be shown about West African patterns imposing themselves on all non-Africans until fire-power tipped the balance towards non-Africans, this consistent use of galleys seemingly belongs here. In this light, it is worth noting that rowed galley-like canoes could still be recorded in West Africa in the mid-15^th c. by da Cadamosto and possibly in the 19^th c. by Burton.

            The Vivaldos/Vivaldis reached the Canaries according to Petrarch (14^th/15^th c. Italian) but they were seeking a sea-route to India and according to Antoniotto Uso di Mare, they were captured by “Ethiopians”. Given that Ethiopia was once used of all Africa, this could still be West Africa but other reports connect them with Prester John and this is a linkage that ties them to Ethiopia in east Africa. The latter would imply that the Vivaldos had rounded Africa. Other claimed West African voyages involved yet more Italians plus merchants from Dieppe (France), as discussed in the report on the “Guinea” coast (see below) by Jean Barbot (17^th/18^th c. French). 

SOME INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS

          Most of the northern third of the continent of Africa was once under water and called the Aqualithic by John Sutton (Journal of African History = JAH 1974; Antiquity 1977). As much of the same area is the variously termed Magreb (= North Africa west of Egypt), Soudan (= Land of Blacks & not modern Sudan) or the Sahara, the latter particularly may almost require a leap of the imagination to believe that a term indicative of a large body of water applied to a region that is now the hyper-arid Sahara. That this was so is proven by sat-nav photos showing wadis (= dried-out river-beds) of massive size plus pictures on rocks. This Saharan rock-art illustrates beds of reeds, boats made from reeds, men fishing from them, hippopotami, crocodiles, etc. Of roughly this date is the Dufuna (Nigeria) dugout-canoe carbon14-dated (= C14-dated) 5550 +/-110 and 5314 +/- 55.

Responses to the Aqualithic gradually becoming the Sahara were many and varied. One would have been fishing on lakes plus rivers that would have had  ever-more sea-fishing added to it and leading to the Greek term of Ichthyophagi (=Fish-eaters). This Greek term is applied to all round the African coast from Egypt round to Morocco. Another was an increase in livestock. It is to be assumed that the still-lush pastures of the Early Post-Aqualithic were ideal for cattle and there is growing testimony of African sources for the earliest African cattle-breeds. The early progress towards savannah conditions and the even greater climatic extremes apparently led to cattle-based regimes being replaced by those being based on the goats that would be expected to be capable of coping more easily with the more extreme conditions.

            Another response to the worsening climate would be the obvious one of emigration. Many in east Africa look for ancestors to the north/northwest; in Proto/Early Egypt to the south/southwest plus those in West Africa to the north/northeast. If this targets mid-Sahara, it is unlikely to be very wide of the mark. This has been put forward very strongly by Clyde Winters (The Proto Sahara online; The Proto Saharan Religion online; Atlantis in Mexico 2006; Afrocentrism: Myth or Science 2006, etc). He was writing about a Sahara-wide deity named Maa. The half-fish/half-man form of Maa seems appropriate for the fishing-based economies of the Aqualithic. The centring of this deity on mid-Sahara/mid-Magreb fits with Maa naming such as Maasai/Masai (=? Children of Maa) of east Africa and the Mande (= from Children of Maa) in West Africa.

            What may have been a West African sea-borne expression of climate-driven migrations of the Aqualithic-to-Sahara possibly belongs with what have been labelled the Caspian Culture. In “East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity” (online), it will be seen that some writers give it east African sources but it is named after el-Gafsi/Capsi (Tunisia). Then it gradually spread across the Sahara or Magreb (= nth. Africa west of Egypt) with the Magreb (= Libya/Tunisia/Algeria/Morocco/? Mauretania) further equated with Soudan (= Land of Blacks & very much wider than the present-day Republic of Sudan). The Caspian Culture has western branches, thus the Oranian (after Oran, Algeria), Mauretanian/Maurusian (of Mauretania) and across the Straits of Gibraltar in Iberia (= Spain & Portugal). In Iberia, it is called the Ibero/Maurusian.

            As the Aqualithic gradually turned to “Saharanisation”, many of the economic changes in the way(s) of life for the inhabitants of the Magreb/Soudan are detailed in “East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity” (online). So are tentative chronologies based on this Magrebi/Soudanic or Saharan rock-art. Parallels for at least some of the changes but not necessarily for the same reasons may attest the sequences of fishing on lakes plus rivers and a little at sea that developed into much more sea-fishing for the Asturian Culture (named by a province of northwest Iberia/Spain& a little further north than the Mauretanian/Maurusian of Iberia), the Natufian (named by the cave-sites around el-Natuf, Israel), etc. The more so as they are both of the overlap of the Late Palaeolithic (=Old Stone Age) and the Mesolithic (= Middle Stone Age) periods.

            The cave-sites of the Natufian Culture may be from whence this cultural grouping gained its name but its most famous features come from something else. The cave-sites were for both habitation and for funerary purposes but so too were the houses. The houses were again very definitely domestic architecture but frequently had burials underneath the floors of the houses. This phenomenon of dwellings being used for both the living plus the dead is widespread. Otherwise, the houses have roofs that are domed like beehives, ground-plans that are circular, stood on   footings of dry stone and walls of pise/mudbrick. Given a pronounced feature of a doorway with a slight passage, they resemble a keyhole of the old-fashioned type in their ground-plans. This keyhole-plan also resembles that of the ancient Greek tomb-type called a tholos.

            Another cave-site is that at Francthi (Greece). It is inside what was referred to above as the Alexandria (Egypt)/Antakya (= Antioch, Turkey)/Athens (Greece) or A/A/A-arc of the east Mediterranean (as opposed to the Messina [Sicily]/Marseilles [s/east France]/Malaga [east Ib.] or M/M/M-arc of the west Med.). Here in the long stratigraphy from the Palaeolithic to the Mesolithic to the Neolithic and beyond were obsidian microliths, tunny-bones, etc. The tunny is a deep-water fish but comes inshore to spawn. So it was probably caught using boats but not definitely. Obsidian is a volcanic glass that was a prized material because it could be sharpened time and time again, so great efforts were made to obtain it. The obsidian from Francthi was from the Aegean island of Melos some 60 miles away, so here use of boats is proven.

            Coming west towards to the M/M/M-arc, microliths continue but are increasingly of the geometric or blade/trapeze forms defined by Graham Clark (Mesolithic Interlude 1975 & other works). Also pottery with impressed decoration (hence the label of Impressed Ware[s]) has the ornament done increasingly using Cardium (= cockle) shells (hence Cardial or Cardial-Impressed Ware[s]) the further west it occurs. Structures tying the living and the dead, being of dry-build, keyhole/tholos-plan, domed/beehive roofs, etc, appear in various guises across the Mediterranean and in the M/M/M-arc, increasingly come under the influence of big-stoned tombs. The discontinuous nature of the distribution of these traits across the Mediterranean has prompted the suggestion that once again, seasonal pursuit of tunny is the mechanism.   

Also seen in the west is the Asturian culture of west Iberia (= Spain & Portugal) but named by Asturia (= n/west Spain. Here too early stages seem marked by a little sea-fishing. It was seen that certain traits having a discontinuous distribution across the Mediterranean were attributed to seasonal pursuit of tunny to as far west as east Iberia and for Jean Maury (The Asturian in Portugal 1977), this also occurs in west Iberia. The A/A/A-to-M/M/M movement plus that of west Iberia is as often inferred as anything else and looming large in Maury’s arguments are Asturian objects he feels are net/line-sinkers akin to modern ones for type, shape and weight. The multi-functional pick-like tools that in Africa may possibly connect with boat-building are known in Iberia but here most often in association with exploitation of mollusca by the Asturian.

The spread of the Caspian across the Magreb and again to Iberia is discussed in East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity but brings us to yet another of the blade/trapeze industries. Changes in material-culture are seen to have been traceable from A/A/A to M/M/M and Atlantic coasts and in Atlantic-facing Europe from the deep southwest of Iberia/Spain to the far  northwest of France (= the length of Atlantic-west Europe) there are more pertaining to the blade/trapeze forms on these Atlantic coasts of west-facing Europe. The most famous are probably the blade/trapeze forms of arrowhead that on the west European coasts differ from those of the Sauveterrian/Tardenoisian sequence of inland France. It should also be realised finds of shellfish need not necessarily directly indicate foodstuff, as molluscs used as fish-bait is also known.

 Some further sense of cultural continuity along Atlantic coasts seems to be shown by continuing use of mollusca shown by shells plus more of the blade and trapeze forms of geometric microliths. The latter as arrowheads are among those just shown to differ from ones of the Later Mesolithic of inland France and mainly do so by their right-angled shoulders. The fact this type apparently occurs the length of Atlantic-facing coasts of west Europe furthers the envisaged continuity. So too must Atlantic forms of Impressed/Cardial Ware(s) also known all along Atlantic-west Europe and the A/A/A-to-M/M/M traits coming under M/M/M-to-Atlantic influence. From this came the Atlantic Passage-graves mirroring the domed/beehive roofs, keyhole/tholos like plan, some dry stone building and so-called from their Atlantic-coast distribution

The last particularly means tholos-like structures repeated in big-stone/megalithic (from Gk. megas = large & lithos = stone = big-stones) forms. The argument in East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity is of a spread across the Mediterranean of tholos/keyhole-plans. This leads us to expect structures repeating the keyhole/tholos-plan would logically be expected to be the earliest and the associated C14-dates for Atlantic Passage-graves prove that they are indeed among the oldest of all megaliths. However, building with large stones also meant rapid departure from neat ancestral forms and considerable numbers of early irregular forms are known. Graham Clark (in Ancient Europe & the Mediterranean ed. V. Markotic 1977) shows how this connects with some of these more irregular forms of megalith, even though they are frequently described as Passage-graves.

Instances of the latter include Passage-graves of a type called Entrance-graves but which frequently have box-like chambers of a type that have often been called “Gallery-graves”. Such box-plans are very often the primary chamber-form that can have been extended and/or under cairns or mounds that have also been added to. They are particularly well attested as the Scilly/Penwith group of Cornwall (in southwest England), the Tramore group of Waterford (in southeast Ireland) plus the Bargrennan group of southwest Scotland. In the Isles of Scilly, the Scilly/Tramore type closely relates with shell-heaps of the limpet already seen of the Asturian Culture well to the south. It should also be recalled that limpets have also been regarded as possible fish-bait as much as foodstuff but if so, these mounds from Asturian Iberia to Cornwall have given few fish-bones. 

The Scilly and Tramore Entrance-graves are also associated by Clark (ib.) with the Cornish/Scilly and Nymphe Bank (off Waterford) fishing-grounds respectively. The Tramore forms may resemble the ground-plans of some types of the megaliths dominant in west Munster (= s/west Ireland) called Wedge-graves because of chambers and/or profiles. There may be some linkage of Wedge-graves and the early-dated Neolithic settlement of Cashelkeelty (Kerry). Kerry also being in the deep Irish southwest and having a large number of Wedge-graves is that part furthest from any postulated central-west European/ north British influences and the excavator was inclined to hark to Atlantic settlers from Brittany and this is considerably reinforced by a carbon-14 (= C14) date of 3895+/- 100 B.C. for Cashelkeelty (west Cork = s/west Ire.).

This is as early as any other dates for Early Neolithic settlement in the British Isles and strengthened by what is to be said about fishing along west-Irish coasts. Rudraigh de Valera (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy = PRIA 1960) is another Irish scholar looking for Atlantic arrivals on west Irish coasts but this time for the ancestors of the basic or two-celled Court-tombs. They are another type dominant in the west of Ireland. This is the type that Clark (ib.) regarded as most closely with tagged fish swimming along the west-Irish coasts on their seasonal spawning-cycle and being followed northwards by Atlantic fishermen. In the Mediterranean, the following of such spawning-cycles led to the bypassing of islands and that along Atlantic coasts also seemingly also bypassed British islands by the north-going Atlantic fishermen en route to Ireland.

The types of vessels in west Europe from which fish could be caught at this time are shown by Paul Johnstone (Seacraft in Prehistory 1980). There are several types. One was the simple dugout/log-canoe. Another was the saviero/xavega of west Iberia. It has traits that Johnstone plus others recognise as “Celtic” but not being wholly so and being of Atlantic-facing Iberia, perhaps the label of “Atlanto/Celtic” is more suitable. The most famous Celtic or Iron Age wooden vessels are those that Julius Caesar (1^st B.C. Roman) described as ponti (= plural of ponto). These were the main vessels of the maritime Celts best known from such tribes as the Pictavi, Ostimi, Veneti, Parisi, Morini, Menapi  and these ponti reached their peak in those built by the Celts or Gauls of Gaul (now mainly France) once called Armorica (= Land by the Sea)

              Dominant in Armorica (= mainly Brittany) in Caesar’s day were Veneti and the ponto reached their peak in those built by the Veneti. The Venetic ponti was high-sided, had massive cross-beams held by “nails as thick as a man’s thumb”, anchor-chains (not ropes), sails of leather/rawhide (not linen), etc. Caesar felt that the last may result from Celts in Gaul not knowing of linen but also allowed that the leather sails arose because the ponto mainly sailed in the conditions of the Atlantic. The latter is correct and the Celtic ponto seems to have been superbly adapted to those Atlantic conditions (also note Viking sails of wadmal [= heavy wool] reinforced by leather). More extensive use of leather but in the form of covering wicker-frames comes with vessels of coracle plus currach/curragh type(s) fully discussed by James Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror ib.).

            Skin-boats of coracle and currach type are recorded across Celtic Europe. Thus rock-art on the River Oglio (northeast Italy); by Lucan (1^st c. A. D.) on the River Padanus (= the Po, northwest Italy); by Julius Caesar (1^st c. B. C.) on the River Sicoris (= the Sagre, mid-Spain); by Strabo (1^st B.C.) in Portugal; several writers in Britain; Irish sources in Ireland. Those shown in mid-Spain are generally held to have been skin-boats of coracle-type inspired by the time Julius Caesar spent in Britain. However, Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror = MM 1936 & 1937) gives several very good reasons to question the generally accepted reports made by Julius Caesar and in  this seems he is considerably reinforced by the comparison of what to Julius Caesar in Iberia (Spain & Portugal) and Diarmait Ua Suilabheann (= Dermot O’Sullivan) in Ireland.

            That of Caesar shows him trapped by mountains, the superior numbers of the troops of Afranius (an enemy of Caesar) plus the Sicoris (= the River Sagre). He (?) recalled his days in Britain and ordered skin-boats to be built. His men did so and men plus horses were safely ferried across the Sagre/Sicoris. Hornell (ib.) notes coracles need skilled handlers, horses were ferried and mention of some kind of keel. This all tells very strongly against Caesar’s skin-boats being coracles. So too does the Irish parallel of O’Sullivan trapped between enemies and the River Shannon and ordering the horses to be slain and the skins to be made into boats. Of them, the coracle sunk but the larger currach did not and O’Sullivan’s men got to safety in the currach. This of itself leads to us doubting Caesar’s account and looking to still extant Celtiberic models, especially that the Lusitani still had them at the time.

            More skin-boats are those of the Americas that the Inuit/Eskimo ones called umiaks plus kayaks. They are recorded as having as having survived in the way that Richard Mac Cullagh (The Irish Currach Folk 1984) shows of the Celto/Irish currach. The Inuit craft bobbing above the pack-ice that had crushed modern-type wooden boats is shown by Tim Severin (The Brendan Voyage 1974) for the reconstructed currach called the Brendan. According to Johnson (ib.), American whaling captains ignored the Bedford bull-nosed whaling-boat in favour of the Inuit umiak/umyak when going on whaling activities. Traders are recorded as using skin-boats at opposite ends of the Irish Sea for commercial reasons by such as Pliny (1^st c. A.D. Roman), Solinus (2^nd c. A.D. Roman), Rufus Avienus (3^rd c. A. D.? Romanised Gaul), Sidonius Apollinaris (5^th c.? Gaul, Cormac MacCulennain (8^th c. Irish), etc.

            Another simple type of sea-going craft made of logs of balsa tied together. The latter are shown to have been plying between the western parts of South America that are now Peru and Ecuador and the western coasts that make up west Mexico by Thor Heyerdahl (Early Man Across the Sea 1978) and Richard Callaghan (Antiquity 2003). In doing so, these Amerindian vessels went against winds and currents. A particular device that enabled this to happen was the guara that has to be used in conjunction with stiff-edged sails. These sails may have been part of interchange between the western or Pacific side of the southern Americas and the eastern or Caribbean side of that continent. Clinton Edwards (ib.) says they were fore-and-aft ones that are proven on the western side but are very much more indefinite on the Atlantic (especially in the Caribbean).

            Anyone type of simple vessel in Meso America was the dugout-canoe of bench-like profile and plan plus flat bottoms. However, such writers as Messrs. McKenzie (Pre-Columbian America: Myths & Legends 1973 & 1978), Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2005), Peck (Yucatan: From Prehistory to the Great Maya Revolt of 1546 [2006]), etc, detail several departures from the norm. Those listed by McKenzie (ib.), Matthew Stirling (as Norman ib.) and Garth Norman (Izapan Carvings 1973 & 1976) belong to a U-shaped category of dugout-canoe. Peck (ib.) shows further departures from the Meso American/South American norms. Those that are intended for sea-going voyages have the raised ends that are usually regarded as indicative of vessels that are intended. Those of the Maya are shown by Peck (ib.) to belong to what Edwards (ib.) terms small ships.

            Going further from the Caribbean/Meso American norms would be what Desmond Nicholson (International Journal for Caribbean Archaeology 1974) called the Antillian type. The pictorial reconstruction of it has it as galley-like with oars rather than the normal paddles. More signs of galleys come from “old men saying ancestors came in wooden boats…that are seven caves and are ships or galleys” (as de Sahagun [16^th c. Spanish]). Presumably another version is in yet another of these “Old-One/Old-Men” texts called the Popol Vuh (= Book of Counsel = national epic of the Quiche Maya) referring to the “people from the east who came in seven caves, seven canyons”. Here we can also observe Diane Wirth (The Seven Primordial Tribes: A Mesoamerican Tradition online) on the Mayan “ak” syllable having many meanings that include cave, house, ship, etc.

            Peck (ib.) was showing a reconstructed Mayan vessel and more of the same applies to the “Old-One” texts collected by Ixtlichotl (17^th c. Aztec noble) also refer to ancestors from the sunrise (=? east) in ships or barcs. The ancestors mentioned are usually a relatively tentative Olmec-to-Maya sequence seems possible in the east of the culture-zone with a slightly different one of Olmec/Izapan/Maya in the west of that zone. Grondin (online) lists 10 Olmec-to-Maya traits (a) building large mounds, (b) deformed-headed leaders, (c) poles/stones marking basic points of the compass, (d) detailed astronomy, (e) celestial jaguar symbols, (f) celestial “dragon” symbols, (g) hallucinogens from toads and lilies, (h) ceremonial cylinders, (i) use of written scripts. Peck and Clyde Winters (The Olmecs & the 12 Routes online) would add seafaring to this list.

            Use of oars in the Antillian type is possible but not definite but could be made more so by early Spaniards writing of Mayan vessels being rowed rather than paddled. Unfortunately, this may be no more careless of words. A similar precision applies to use sails by the Pre-Spanish Amerindians of the Caribbean, Meso-America plus Mexico. John Guthrie (Human Lymphocyte Antigens Apparent Afro-Asiatics, Southern Asian & European HLAs in Ingenious American Populations online), John Hemming (The Conquest of the Incas 1970; The Conquest of the Brazilian Indians 1978; The Search for Eldorado 1978) plus others have traced movement between east and west in southern Americas. Also Pre-Spanish sails of the West-coast may be ancestral to the fore-&-aft variety that Edwards (ib.) thought was used on the East-coast.

            The sail plus form of the West-coast balsa-rafts may have been echoed by the jangada of the East-coast (especially Brazil & Venezuela) according to LeBaron Bowen (American Neptune 1953) as part of this movement. Contact between north and south in the southern Americas also seems probable. Several cults based on the jaguar, quetzal, etc, have been taken as indicative of the Olmecs of Mexico/Meso America moving south to be in contact with the Chavin Culture of Peru but remain theoretical at the time of this being written. On the other hand, there has been/will be brief mention of maritime parallels for this overland movement on both the west and the east coasts of the Americas but it is worth emphasising the differences of the marshy area inhabited by the Olmec Culture and the mountains inhabited by the Chavin Culture.

More examples would be groups with a seeming ancestry in those of Venezuela but reaching the Antilles (= islands of the Caribbean). An early study of the pioneer settlers was “Early Indian Farmers & Village Communities” (ed. William Haag 1963). The conclusion reached was that these early colonists bypassed the islands of the Lesser Antilles in favour of those of the Greater Antilles (= Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, etc.).This is a long distance but if so, this implies prior knowledge. Probably the best known of later groups include the Arawaks/Tainos, the Suazoids/Caribs, etc. and Peck citing Diego Chanca (16^th c. Spaniard) noting the Caribs could travel up to “150 leagues” (= 450/500 miles) shows they too covered long distances at one go. An early opinion of such as Alexander Humboldt was that the Caribs could have reached Florida (USA).

            Such distances achieved by the later groups would be considerably easier with sails. They were noted as a possibility as part of the jangadas of mainly Brazil. The Caribs may have had morniche-leaf sails but rather clearer is the evidence cited by when quoting early Spanish writers that the Maya used sails but Peck points out that this would not be normal in enclosed waters, as sails would be of much advantage in such largely windless circumstances. Michael Doran (ib.) notes Mayan words for Pre-Spanish technology and Spanish-derived ones for new technology. So when such words of the Motul dialect of Mayan as bub (= sail/ to sail) bubil (= to navigate under sail) appear in the Motul/Spanish Dictionary (16^th c.), they plainly belong with the Pre-Spanish phase. It is worth noting the Mayan terms (=? gods) for points of the compass/winds are “chiefly” (=? god) names.

Doran (Antiquity 2003) also refers to an account of Amerindians overwhelming the night-watch of a Spanish ship and sailing it across the Yucatan Strait separating Yucatan and Cuba to the island of  Guanaja (in the Bay Islands off Honduras). Doran says this proves a pre-existent expertise that would be impossible to acquire en route. Peck has objected to this kind of reasoning and says that Amerindian vessels would be unable to cross the Straits between Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Yet Peck shows that Maya could get to “the islands” in 10 days and it took the same length of time between Yucatan and these Antillean/Caribbean islands However, the use of sails would presumably make this a lot easier and this seems firmly indicated by the story that was just seen to have been cited by Doran (ib.).

It is also the case that this applies equally to the long journeys envisaged by Eric Thompson (Maya History & Religion 1970) between Panama and east Mexico by Mayan sea-going vessels. He regarded it as very plausible that Mayan traders could have reached as far south as Panama but again, this is a very long distance that would be made much easier by use of sails and with the indication(s) of long-distance sea-based connections, it may prove possible to associate the name of Itza/Itzamna (said by Peck to be one of the names for the Chontal Maya) with that of Zamna (a god of Brazilian Amerindians). Thompson also called attention to the “way-finders” attested in Mayan art with what was described by Bishop de Landa (on the (?) same matter. The suggestion is that they were needed by international traders but not by local boatmen along Mayan waterways.

The dates for more of these commercial and/or cultural ties appear to be shown by the affects of the Kukulkan cult beginning with the Olmecs on that of the Mixtecs and/or the Nahuals (esp. the Aztecs) going under the name of Qetzalcoatl (esp. in Aztec-ruled Mexico). Peck (ib.) further held Mayans were again to be detected by bateys (= ball-game courts) on St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands) that he says do not belong in Taino/Arawak tradition. He was also seen to say that Tainos of Yemoye (=? Jamaica) told Columbus was that the c.300 miles between Mayam/Maiam (= Mayaland) was the same as was said of the reverse journey by the Maya. On Hispaniola (= Haiti & the Dominican Republic) was a batey, cenote (= holy well/pool), the cenote full of offereings, etc, that Peck again thought attested Mayan influence in the Caribbean islands.

However, the position of the Maya and Cuba is interesting. Peck (ib) has expressed the opinion that not only could Amerindian vessels not crossed the Yucatan Straits separating the island of Cuba from the Yucatan provinces of Mexico but that Columbus was wrong about the Taino word of Bohio. He thought it meant the Homeland of the Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) but it really means home, so could equally indicate the Tainos were pointing to their own homeland. Peck does not refer to the well known mistake by Columbus that made Cuba the mainland and the Yucatan the island and a mistake by Columbus here could equally indicate that the Maya were in Cuba. There is also the matter of possible Mayan influences somewhat further north that Sears (cited by Peck) wanted to bring them through the Antilles (including Cuba).

The traits of Mayan origin that Peck holds reached as far north as Florida (a) maize grown in man-made hummocks; (b) flat-topped pyramidal temples; (c) burial-mounds of like plan and form; (d) hand-held tokens; (e) religious icons; (f) ceremonial garb. These artifacts are shared by the Maya of Yucatan and the Calusa of Florida but not with the Mississippian Culture to the north of Calusa-ruled Florida. The Flying/Plumed-Serpent is the salient feature of the Olmec-to-Maya sequence and is among the numerous things that Peck holds were taken to Calusa-ruled Florida by the Maya. Here too is Lake Okeecheebo (= Great Water in Seminole) but Lake Mayami in Calusa and the Calusa placename shortened to Miami is that of the nearby city of the same name. The Calusa associating the Maya name with large bodies of water seems very appropriate.

1.      The appropriateness of the name of the Maya being connected with a large body of water is emphasised by the fact that the Maya would have come via an even larger body of water, the sea. The Mayan connection with the sea is such that Peck feels able to hypothesise that devout Maya were willing to go on long voyages to find the home of Kukulkan. It has long been speculated that various west Africans and/or west Europeans drifted westwards on what have been called conveyor-belt currents that once taking up a non-powered vessel could sweep it towards the American continent with little that the unfortunate crew could do about it. This would have been via a combination of the Canarian plus the North Equatorial Currents. For the Amerindians of Meso America, this would be from the direction of the rising sun and this, of course, is from the east.

This got mixed up with the arrival of the Spaniards and it is interesting how many times Spaniards were asked if they had come from the sunrise and this agrees with the more famous story of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztecs plus Cortes. Even if the detail of the “White” God returning is actually based on a misinterpretation, there was apparently enough in several Amerindian belief-systems to allow a few Spaniards to conquer most of what became Latin America. The reverse of this may be the “Indios” turning up on west European coasts. One group were those that Pomponius Mela (1^st c. B.C. /1^st c. A.D.), Pliny (1^st C.A.D.), etc, state were found in Swabia and sent on to Metellus Celer (1^st c, B.C. Roman governor of Gaul). More are said by Antonio Galvao (16^th c. Port.) were in a boat in the Atlantic and sent on to Lubeck (Ger. & the chief city of the Hanseatic League).

There was also a wrecked vessel with two dead occupants in the islands of the Atlantic group called the Azores. According to Bartolome de las Casas (16^th c. Spaniard & friend/confidant & biographer of Columbus), they had facial traits that were not West African and not west European. Las Casas says they also convinced Columbus that there were people to be found in the “Lands Beyond” the Atlantic. Analogous to this may be what happened to the earlier Eudoxus (2^nd c. B.C. Greek) according to Strabo (1^st c. B. C. Greek). Strabo says Eudoxus was sailing on the Indian Ocean and became wrecked on the east African coast. Here he came across some still earlier remains that were subsequently identified as those of the simple ship-type from Carthage called a hippos. The Carthaginian hippos supposedly convinced Eudoxus that Africa could be rounded from west-to-east.

There will be more on comparisons with Africa in the next section but returning to the Maya, it was seen there was more than one reason for being on the open sea and another will have been the sea-fishing proven for some Maya by Norman Hammond (International Journal of Nautical Archaeology = IJNA 1982) catching deep-water ones. Heather McKillop (Salt: White Gold of the Maya 2002; In Search of Maya Sea Traders 2005) shows that the Maya extracted salt from the sea. Yet the sea-salt is thought to have been inferior to that coming from inland Yucatan but seems to have sold sufficiently well to justify part of one of McKillop’s books having White Gold as part of the title. This may indicate that the overall repute of the Maya group called the Chontal Maya or Itza/Itzamna of the Yucatan coast was a major factor as a selling point here.

If this is correct, there are several parallels. A good example may be the Neolithic stone-axe trade of the British Isles (= Britain & Ireland). It would surely be much easier to fashion an axe of local materials than import expensive ones of igneous rock from western parts of Britain and/or Ireland, especially if the excellent black flint from such as Grimes Graves (Norfolk, Britain). Yet studies have shown that those of igneous stone were imported into east Britain from east Scotland to southeast England. Equally, it would again be easier to bring the smaller stones at Stonehenge (Wilts., Britain) from the Marlborough Downs source that provided the much larger sarsens also at Stonehenge. Yet on the present evidence, it seems the smaller bluestones at Stonehenge were brought from south Wales. This may be due to the fact that the bluestones are also of igneous rock.

The aura of sanctity plus mystique that led to this at Stonehenge seemingly continued well beyond the Neolithic into the Bronze Age/Iron Age overlap. As there seems to be signs of Iron Age or Celtic ritual activity at Stonehenge, there seems every chance that the Druids as the master of ceremonies of the British Celts were later users of the place. Also consider that in our own day that footwear of trainer type locally-made does not sell well because they lack brand-image not because of inferior manufacture. Probably an even better for instance is what happens when the name of someone continually in the news and becomes a fashion icon because of the clothes worn by that individual becomes attached to an item of fashion. That item of fashion then tends to outsell rival garments almost entirely because of the right brand-name not on superior quality.

More anciently, megaliths of tomb plus ring combine superbly at Newgrange (Meath, Ire.) at about 1000 years before the final phase of the stone ring  at Stonehenge and building in stone in west Ireland largely took place because of a lack of timber but the Old-Irish for stone-wall is caisil from the Latin castella. Much of the early metalwork in Britain is of Irish origin and includes some superb gold work but the Old-Irish term for gold is oir from the Latin ora. Irish warriors/soldiers have long had a fearsome reputation but the epitome of the Irish fightinh-man is Mil Espaine coming from the Latin Soldier from Spain. This does appear once again to be an instance of the aura of status at work but this time attaching to the Romans in Britain once the Romans had conquered most of  Britain and made the Roman Empire the near neighbours of the Irish Celts (= Gaels).

More International Comparisons

Paul Johnstone (Seacraft in Prehistory 1980) plus McGrail (ib. & The Ancient Boats of Northwest Europe 1987) are sources that lead us to expect much from them yet have relatively little to say about Africa and even less about west Africa but this is rectified by others. Thus James Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror = MM 1923 & 1948); Robert Dick-Read (Sanama: Adventures in Search of African Art 1964); Roger Smith (in “The Canoe in West African History  JAH 1970); Stuart Malloy (Blacks in Science: Ancient & Modern ed. Van Sertima 1983); Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus 1976); Nichola O’Neill (The Fishing Canoes of Ghana 1996); etc. As befits a University thesis, the latter is particularly detailed.

Combining these various sources, we establish there were craft based on the dugout-canoe. There were umpteen variants of basic themes. Alvise Cadamosto (as Van Sertima ib.) shows some being rowed in galley-style. Extra space gained by adding to the length of the craft is shown by Stuart Malloy (IB); added width is shown by Michael Bradley (Dawn Voyage: The Black Discovery Of Amer. 1991); added sides are described in Harold Lawrence (in African Presence in Early America ed. Van Sertima 1983); etc. Van Sertima plus Lawrence confirm that several types had evolved on the great West African rivers. Included were galley-like vessels; dhow-like vessels; double-canoes; etc. but absent from this list are any skin-boats.

Skin-boats also loom large in what are labelled as Pacific Crossing and North Atlantic Crossing theories. The Pacific Coast hypothesis has it that Proto-Amerindians proceeded southwards via refugia or ice-free pockets in the Late Pleistocene/Holocene. Richard Callaghan (Antiquity 2003) shows this was echoed by the later Amerindians trading between the parts of Pacfic-facing parts of Americas making up west Mexico and the same west-facing coasts of the Americas that are now called Ecuador/Peru. Those echoes are paralleled for distance by what was once called the Northwest Atlantic Culture of West Africa but for reasons given elsewhere, is called the WAAC in these pages.

Leading on from what was said about Proto-Amerindians are the ancient coastal groups of the Northwest Coastal Cultures (= NCC, esp. the Haida). They also used the dugout-canoe as their basic sea-going vessel and Haida ones regularly plied the 100 miles of the Queen Charlotte Sound. One was rigged in schooner fashion in the early 1900s and taken round the world by Capt. Voss (acc. to Phillip Banbury in Man & the Sea 1975); another was taken across the Pacific to Hawaii; yet another was proven to be faster than a steamship over the same distance. The West African Coastal Complex (= WAAC) was also of ancient coastal groups and fished some distance in the way the NCC did.

The Proto-Amerindian voyages clearly traced on the Americas-West Coast have something of a parallel for distances in voyages from west Mexico to Ecuador/Peru seen to have been discussed by Callaghan (IB.). The decline in trade that then revived and this being intermittent over very long periods of time is that too seen of the WAAC of West Africa. Going south on the return leg particularly runs counter to the prevailing currents of the east Pacific no less than did traders on the Atlantic coasts of Africa. The Pacific voyages were made easier by the device called a guara that Thor Heyerdahl (Early Man & the Sea 1978) held was an invention of Pacific Amerindians but thought by Bradley (ib.) to begin in Africa.

The Atacama (Chile) Desert stands between most West-coast Amerindians and those of south Chile. In “Chile: A Brief Naval History [Prehistory, Conquest & Colony] online), Carlos Lopez Urrutia says that the Chilean Amerindians underwent very little maritime development but then surprisingly goes on to say that the Chilean tribe of the Cuncos not only built docks, fish-traps but also the dalco (= dugout-canoe) that he tells us is the finest of all the native-built boats in the Pre-Spanish Americas”. The Atacama Desert stretches along roughly a thousand miles of American-west coast, as do the western fringes of the Sahara and the Kalahari Desert at opposite ends of West Africa traversed by very simple vessels.

Ancestral strains of East-coast Amerindians named from the Pre-Columbian site of Saladero (Venezuela) later emerged as the Arawaks (= Tainos) plus Caribs. It seems that the oldest permanent Arawaks settlements in the islands of the Caribbean were in the Greater Antilles in the primary stages, at the presumed expense of the Lesser Antilles. This also assumes prior knowledge of the Caribbean Sea. It should immediately come to mind that islands known about but not settled till some later stage has also been put forward for the islands of the Atlantic littoral of west Africa and it is not unreasonable to assume that that this prior knowledge was also gained via fishing plus trading activities.

This means that the Arawaks were prepared to go considerable distances to reach the places of their final permanent of colonisation of Caribbean islands. This is to be taken as also meaning that very long distances were covered in such simple vessels as dugout-canoes that from what is said by Peck (ib.) would have been very basic ones at that. This indicates propulsion came from paddlers not rowers. On the other, hand, Nicholson (ib.) was shown to replicate the Antillean dugout-canoe in galley-form with oars and equally the case is that Alvise da Cadamosto (15^th c. Italian working for Portugal) plus Richard Burton (19^th c. Eng.) record oars beside the paddles normal for west Africa.

The Caribs also undertook long voyages in canoes that were usually paddled. Peck cites Diego Chanca (16^th c. Spaniard) saying Caribs went “150 leagues” (= 450/500 miles) on some raids. Knowing there would be something worthwhile at the other end again presumes prior knowledge. One such occasion may have been reported in the Mayan text called The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Sails would have made life a lot easier and Carib sails are proven. The source is as disputed as that of West African sails. Suggested prototypes for those of West Africa range from 6^th-Dynasty Egypt to 16^th c. Portugal. Form and material suggest a West African evolution.

Mayan use of sails would attest interest in winds, as do winds at cardinal points of north, east, south and west bearing god-names. Winds plotted as a simple cross resemble the basic wind-rose/compass-forms also marking the cardinal points of the compass. Peck cites Spanish writers on (?) Mayan seasonal fishing-camps. Mayan words linking mountain-caves, canyons, houses, etc, with sea-going canoes join those in Old-One texts meaning the same. Parallels in the Poteidan aspect of the Trans-Saharan Maa also meaning mountain, house and something boat-like. Winds bearing god-names feature in West Africa (esp. in Yoruba). Probable West African seasonal fishing-camps also exist.

The most famous native boats in the Americas are Inuit/Eskimo kayaks and skin-boats form part of Pacific Coast and North Atlantic Crossing theories. The latter argument has some interest as despite coming under heavy criticism has received something like Academic acceptance. Skin-boats were also known in Latin Europe, Celtic Europe, Nordic Europe, (?) Meso America, parts of Africa, etc. The skin-boat in various forms and numerous labels is an archaic type that has survived not only the atrocious seas in which Inuit hunt and travel but has survived a passage on the Atlantic too. This compares on both counts with what is known about the West African dugout-canoe.

Some of the Nordic rock-art shows many skin-boats plus some wooden ones. The most famous of Nordic ships are those of the Nydam/Kvalsund/Oseberg/Gokstad sequence for Colin Morton (The Sea Remembers ed. P. Throckmorton 1996) giving the Viking longship. Percy Blandford (An Illustrated Hist. of Small Boats 1974) cites the captain of the Gokstad replica sailing the Atlantic in 1891 as saying the hull “worked” a lot but “the hull working a lot” is held to attest seaworthiness. Yet the Viking long-ship never had the strength of the dugout-canoe as one-piece constructions and Bradley shows the West African dugout-canoe had the strength of yachts of the Virtue 5-ton class taken on Round-World and Trans-Atlantic trips.

The just-mentioned ship excavated at Nydam (Schleswig-Holstein, Germany) may be the type that carried the Germanic ancestors of the Anglo/Saxons across the North Sea on raids on Late Roman/Early Sub-Roman Britain. John Heywood (Dark Age Naval Power 1991 & 1996) shows the Nydam ship was probably rowed and paddled, so comes close to Polynesian, Caribbean plus west African craft on this count. The paddle scores over the oar when a target needed to be approached noiselessly. Heywood recalled his British Army training here and practical experience will have taught this valuable lesson to groups where such raids were integral to the way of life, so Germany, Polynesia, Meso-America, west Africa, etc

The tribe of Gaulish (= French) Celts called the Veneti had the best known of Celtic ships. Sails were the most famous of their features and used extensive amounts of leather and Julius Caesar (1^st C.B.C. Roman) did wonder if revolved around a lack of knowledge of fabrics or if this was due to the conditions of sailing on the Atlantic. That it is the latter is reinforced by the emergence of the stiff-edged sails that appear to be important for the development of the proto-guare that Michael Bradley (The Dawn Voyage: The Black Discovery of America 1991). The sails of the Venetic Celts are considered as solid testimony of the Pre-Roman use of sails on Atlantic coasts in Smith’s “The Canoe in West African History” (JAH 1967).

Celtic Europe was already said to have had skin-boats in the form of currachs plus coracles. On the views followed above, they attach closely to the western end of the AAA/MMM/Atlantic routes for the first megaliths. In particular, there is the western entry into Ireland. There is also a decidedly Pre-Roman road-system to the major Irish harbours that all have non-Roman/non-Viking names despite it being said that Ireland did not use its harbours till the Viking period. A question frequently asked of the period when European ships sailed on West African coasts is where are the harbours? This plainly overlooks a salient feature of both Celto/Irish currachs and West African dugout-canoes, they could be beached almost anywhere.

 The coasts of west Europe attest some of the changes of blade/trapeze flint/stone-work, Impressed/Cardial Ware(s), types of megaliths, etc, that extend along most of Atlantic-facing Europe. This particularly involves Tardenoid arrowheads that on these coasts differ from those of inland and Frobenius was of the opinion that arrowheads of the West African coast differed from those of adjacent inland parts of Africa. Maury was seen to regard the Asturian on these same Atlantic coasts as using net/line-sinkers but few signs of fish-bones are to be found. In parts of Africa, the fishing of the Aqualithic seemingly passed to groups called Ichthyophagi but which again have left little in the way of fish-bones or much other archaeological evidence.

The Asturian Culture faces the Atlantic-west of Iberia from south Portugal to Asturias/Vizcaya (= Pays Basque= Basqueland). Kurlansky (ib.) says Basque ships sailed for c.1500 miles past coasts plus islands for Icelandic cod and when ousted from those waters still brought cod not from Nordic, British plus Icelandic seas, so Atlantic cod seems probable. It seems to mean there were Atlantic crossings in Pre-Columbian days, as also argued for West Africa. The west Iberian archaic boat-forms include the dugout-canoe that was/is the fundamental type in West Africa for literally millennia. The distances covered by the Basque ships on both coasts plus the open Atlantic are equally matched by those of West African canoes.

Island-hopping or islands known about but not settled till later is how it seems Neolithic settlement is held to have spread across the Mediterranean from the A/A/A-arc to the M/M/M-arc and that later settlement is often much later. They were suggested to have been illustrated by the greater increase in Mesolithic blades/trapezes; impressions on Impressed/Cardial Ware(s); gradual changes from mudbrick/pise to dry stone tool then big-stone megaliths. John Cherry (Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 1980) shows much of this is based on “informed speculation” (= guesswork). This absence of positive evidence obtained by excavation is equally the case with much that is demonstrated for West Africa.

An early expression of Greek nautical prowess is recorded in the Iliad (= The Trojan War) by Homer, especially in that section called “The Catalogue of Ships”. If this prowess is expressed by King Nestor in the Iliad, we find Nestor falling on his knees thanking Zeus for his surviving the 50-mile trip between the Aegean islands of Tenedos and Lesbos. This alone should prompt wonderment at the much-vaunted Greek prowess and it reminds us that West African sea-going was usually on the open seas. This means that “the splendid black ships” described by Homer (? 10^th c. Greek) are on a par on with the dugout-canoe of west Africa and that often their building is not the equal of African canoes.

Some ancient Anatolians were better sailors supposed. They include Lydian’s that Herodotus (5^th c. B.C. Greek) says split caused by a famine, one group stayed and the Tyrrhenians/Etruscans took to the sea. An inscription in (?) Proto-Etruscan on the island of Lemnos plus Herodotus saying they passed islands plus coasts en route to Italy. This smacks again of islands known about but not settled, as will be/has been seen of West Africa. The lack of evidence of people moving overseas will also be shown of West Africans. The ships of the Proto-Etruscans, Trojans plus the Greeks were very similar and the point about the construction of those ships not being the equal of the West African canoes stands.

The Phoenicians may also originally have been Anatolians but soon became Semites. They are held to be the first to apply Semitic science to seafaring. Remarks about them need not be as many as about the Greeks. A cited example has already shown Mycenaean/Bronze Age Greeks on short sea-trips praising Zeus for their not drowning. Later Greeks are also noted as not wanting to stray far from home waters, whereas, Phoenicians certainly did. Yet even Phoenicians are known to have paddled some craft and the combining of paddled plus rowed vessels is proven of West African canoes. The tunny-fishery off northwest Africa had proven Phoenician sources but was originally West Africa.

 That what is now called the Persian or Arabian Gulf (depending on ethnicities), was once called the Erythraean or Red Sea makes for considerable confusion. So too does ancient sea-trade between Sumeria (= later Akkadia = Babylonia = sth. Iraq), Dilmun (= Bahrein), Meluhaa (= Pre-Aryan Pakistan/western India), as Assyria knew where Akkadia/Babylonia was yet some Assyrian texts also place Meluhaa south of Kush/Nubia (= Sudan). Should this proven to be correct, this upsets the geography of the other places. If Meluhaa was in Africa, there is presumably some kind of connection with the Greek term of melas (= black), so joining the very long list of ancient terms to describe Africans of both east and West Africa.

Because ancient Iran/Persia is said to have had a dependence on the ships of the Phoenicians, it may be assumed there were no Iranian ships on the sea and this was seen to have been applied to West Africa. Yet messrs. Hasan ( A History of Persian Navigation 1928), Nourbaksh (Iranians, Pioneers of Navigation in the Persian Gulf online), Joneydi (The Persian Sea in the Avesta, the Pahlavi Texts & the Shahnemeh online) say otherwise. One thing that can be denied are the claimed Persian origins of the Shirazi of SubHorn east Africa and/or the Fors/Fars of AboveHorn east Africa. Persia naming a large body of water resembles the Mare Ethiopium (= Sea or Ocean of Africa) that is now seen as part of the Atlantic since the 1700s.

Egypt is easily the most famous country in Above-Horn east Africa. Alessandra Nibbi (Discussions In Egyptology 1997) cites Strabo on Egyptian hostility to the sea and sailors to the effect that Egyptians did not go to sea. Added to this is the supposed West African fear of the sea that stopped them going to sea? This is wrong on both counts. The reconstructed Ra1 showed that when the steering-oar broke, an oar thrust through the side of this reed-boat could act as both a replacement plus a proto-guare. Bradley (ib.) says this brought about elongated oars/paddles in West Africa that on their own would lead to inefficient paddles but that when allied with stiff-edged sails, cold also act as proto-guares.

Above-Horn east Africa more or less faces the Red Sea. Christopher Ehret (The Civilisations of Af. 2003) feels here were small independent kingdoms but it seems they were as commercial as much as political, so Axum (= Ethiopia/Eretria), Punt (? = Djibouti/Somalia), Proto/Early Bantu, Azania (= African Ausan= most of east Af. south of the Horn of Af.) etc. The overlapping ports is very much what has been envisaged for west Africa from the WAAC defined by Frobenius to what is described by Barbot (17^th /18^th c. French). To beat pirates attracted by the trade, Axum appointed the Barnagat (= Lord of the Sea) analogous to the Aromire (= Chief of the Waters [Nig.]) and Hari-Forma (= Friend of the Waters [Mali])

The parts of east Africa south of the Horn are well described in the text initialled as PME (from Periplus Maris Erythraea = Voyage on the Erythraean Sea). The PME in east Africa and “Hanno” in west Africa are known to be primarily about commerce in their respective dates, are both known from Greek texts, speak a lot about their respective parts of Africa, etc. Mozambique plus Mombasa may both mean “Place of Boats” and parallel the several place-names seen as this in West Africa (esp. Gambia & Senegal). An old name for the mainland part of Tanzania was Tanganyika (=? Place of Sail/Navigation) and would presumably be analogous to Djahi (= Place of Navigation) as a Wolof name for Senegal.

The Erythraean Sea is more or less the western Indian Ocean. By the time of PME (1^st c. A.D. Egypto/Greek) being written, Arabs were established in northern parts of the Erythraean or Indian Ocean region. From detailed studies by messrs. Hourani (Arab Seafaring 1951 & 1995) and Tibbetts (Arab Navigation 1971), use of stars was standard for Arab navigation, as it has been seen for west Africa and elsewhere. Reinforcing this would be Zanzibari variants of Great Flood myths (best known via Noah & see just below). Moreover, there are such as “Cosmas” writing about birds marking east African coasts during storms plus Jean Barbot describing the same large seabirds off West Africa.

Madagascar is the largest island in the western IOR and to the north are the Comoro Islands and to their north was “Mojomby” that may or may not connect with Swahili forms of Great Flood myths that include ravens eating the dead. It seems Indonesians bypassed several islands en route to settling Madagascar and east Africans also en route to Madagascar apparently bypassed the Comoros. Known islands not settled are also known in West Africa too and permanent settlement may be much later. If the Comoros were originally fishing-stations, this too has West African echoes. Iamblichus (3^rd c. B. C. Greek) noted sea-based astronomy on east African islands and this again resembles West Africa.

Early Indian interest in IOR islands seems shown when the Ramayana notes Rama looking for his kidnapped wife on Lanka/Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka plus islands to the east came under Chola rule and Chola kings so effectively spread Hinduism to there that many islands became known as Indonesia (= the Indian Islands) and notions of a sea-borne religio/cultural complex will be seen to involve west Africa. Thomas Rattray (17^th c. Eng.) drew Indians swimming around their boats “happy as spaniels” yet Hindus were told they stopped being so having been to sea. This smacks of fear of the sea given a religious veneer and something very like this nonsense has been shown to apply to West Africa.

Sri Lanka is the largest of the mid-IOR islands. It is usually regarded as having been called Taprobane/Serendib/Lanka/Ceylon. Online discussions of West African discussions compare Tibet in Asia and Gabon in Africa and Tibet and Sri Lanka have become twin poles of Buddhism at opposite ends of India. Solid evidence of the “Hydraulic” civilisation of Sri Lanka comes via canals. Mathematical skills are said by Asiff Hussein (online) to allow canals dropping only six inches over a mile. This makes them field-structures as remarkable as the eya-type enclosures of Edo/Benin plus Yoruba parts of Nigeria them remarkable West African instances of civil engineering in their own right.

     Sumatra is a candidate for being Taprobane. Pliny (1^st c. A.D. Roman) tells us sailors from Taprobane used birds as navigational aids and the Tang yu Lin (= The Tang Papers) by Wang Tang (12^th c. Chinese) says the same of “foreign” sailors. Pliny says this comes from a lack of maths. Across the IOR, no candidate for being Taprobane can be said to lack maths and this is made dafter still if Taprobane does prove to be Sri Lanka (see last para.). This thinking this could be applied to West Africa if it were not for such as “Africa Counts” by Claudia Zaslavsky (1999). Zaslavsky argues a lack of written maths does not indicate backwardness when showing awesome mental-maths in West African market-women.

More islands in Nusantara (= Malaysia, Indonesia & the Philipines), Near-Oceania (= Melanesia & Micronesia) plus Far-Oceania (= Polynesia). Presumably the ancestors of the recently-built Burobudur-type ship sailed night and day as it did and from Paul Manasala (online) shows Filipino night-fishing. The first Europeans were mightily impressed by the speed and distance of the Nusantaran/Pacific praus (= sailing-canoes). Even one-man canoes in West Africa could outrun even European ships in full rig in calm seas. A one-man dugout-canoe of this same Kru-size took 55 days to cross the Atlantic, whereas the European ship of Amerigo Vespucci (naming the Americas) on the same route and distance took 64 days. 

This is the cusp of the IOR becoming the Pacific. Here are Nusantara (= the Islands), Indonesia (= the Indian Islands), Melanesia (= the Black Islands), Micronesia (= the Small Islands), Polynesia (= Many Islands), etc. Sea-going is known here as early as that noted below by Sean McGrail from parts of West Africa. Nusantaran/Indonesian sailors are recorded to the west in Madagascar and to the south in Hati Marege (= nth Australia). Bypassing islands again seems shared by Indonesia and West Africa. Great Flood myths were studied by James Fraser (The Folklore in the Old Testament 1913). He proved they attach very closely to birds as navigational aids, as Sulawesi (Indon.) and again West Africa.

In the Melanesian part of Near-Oceania there began what archaeologists have called the Lapita Culture. It seems there is a very warm debate among the experts is about just how much the slender Lapita folk passed to the robust Pacific islanders of today. This robustness is referred to by Atholl Anderton (in the Pacific section of Great Civilisations ed. by G. Burenhalt 2004). This kind of physique is that too of the canoe-borne warriors encountered by Alvise Cadamosto (15^th c. Italian) in West Africa. The suggestion is that the ruggedness increases because of the needs of long-distance voyaging and it may be worth noting the contrast of physical types seen by Cadamosto either side of the Senegal.

Star-lore in Micronesia plus Melanesia respectively is exampled by what is said by Messrs Vilaverde (online) at Ritidian Cave (Guam) plus Evans at Vatuele (Fiji). What is shown by Rudolph Vilaverde at Ritidian seems to include star-maps. Part of what is shown by David Evans at Vatuele includes a prau being sailed towards Sirius. Knowledge of Sirius is widespread and ancient in Africa, notably as Egyptian Sopdet (= Gk. Sothis), Dogon (Mali) Sigi Tolo, etc, so indicates east and West Africa. The Vatuele canoe evidently being sailed towards Sirius might almost be seen as a gloss on the Yoruba (Nigeria) phrase of Irawa-oko (= Canoe-star) for Sirius, so again Sirius plus canoe combine but this time in West Africa.

Polynesians also used stars during night-sailings, as confirmed by James Cook (18^th c. Eng.) saying “they steered by the sun by day & the stars at night”. Polynesians appear to have originated in Nusantara, in that Java (=? Homeland) seems reflected in such as Havaiki (mid-Poly); Avaiki (Cooks); Hawaiki (New Zealand); Havai (Societies); Hawaii (nth. Polynesia.); Savai (= Samoa); etc. Hawaii, Peru plus West Africa loom large in online histories of early surfing suggested to attest intimacy with the sea. So too must swimmers in the sea in all three areas. Another sign of the same conclusion comes with Hornell comparing paddles in Marquesas (mid-Poly.) and West Africa for pointed-shape, elegance and elongation.

The many Chinese contributions to civilisation are detailed over several volumes by Prof. Joseph Needham plus colleagues. Claimed maritime achievements include the rudder, lee/centre/dagger/guara boards, compass, etc. Paul Johnstone (Sea craft in Prehistory 1980) presents an obvious sequence of “boats dug out of logs” (= dugouts) to the sampan and the dominant tradition in West Africa was also seen to be “boats dug out from logs”. In his book, “1421”, Gavin Menzies (2004) notes the year-long Chinese voyages led by Zheng-he (= Cheng-ho). Voyages of several months appear worldwide. They include those of the Yoruba to unknown destinations and recorded by Frobenius as taking 12 months to complete.

That China also knew of using birds as navigational aids is proven by Wang Tang (as above) but it should be noted that he refers them to “foreign” sailors. The ships of these sailors may have been Nusantaran (esp. on the arguments of Robert Dick-Read in “Phantom Voyagers” 2004), Sri Lankan or Persian. The last are usually accepted but the principle is known in all three areas and in no sense can this be attributed to a lack of maths on the lines of Pliny and particularly bear in mind what was written about Taprobane/Sri Lanka. What should be borne in mind, is that in a largely pre-instrumental age, having more than one method of getting safely home is surely straightforward commonsense.

The Zuisudra (Sumeria)/Ziusudda (Akkadia)/Utnapishtim (Babylonia) sequence of south Iraq has tales about ravens and/or doves sent to espy land. Just how closely this combines with Great Flood myths is well attested by the Noah story in the Old Testament. This passing to Arabs is well shown by that most thorough study of the manual(s) of Ibn Majid (15^th/16^th c. Arab) by George Tibbetts (ib.). Land-bound is the Koran version telling of a hoopoe-bird sent by King Solomon of Israel to find the Queen of Sheba in the Yemen, in short, the length of the Arabian Peninsula. Hints that not all Hebrew/Jewish folklore is in the Bible is provided by the Jewish legend of the raven sent out by Noah that stopped to feast on the dead.

It has long been argued that the Phoenicians were the first to employ Semitic science to going to sea. It is now established that the major ancestral strain of what became the Phoenicians was not originally Semitic but became so in time. This was a time when there was relatively little difference between applied and theoretical science or between astronomy and astronomy; as all were “Natural Science”. Much of it was arrived at by dint of watching the skies and this included observing birds and we have the Phoenicians guided towards what is probably the most prominent peninsula of M/M/M-facing Iberia at Sol Ifach and which is marked by thousands of nesting seabirds.

A story of the  Swahili or “Shirazi” of Zanzibar in east Africa has similarities with that of Noah and with it now being known that the Swahili are a African people with an Arabic overlay, it is worth noting that the land-bound Masai of Kenya also have a version that substitutes vultures for ravens. So to the other land-bound forms of birds-as-aids are added those of Africa but it will be fully realised that the major connection is with the sea. Here we remind ourselves of the large seabirds seen to attest the coasts of east and West Africa, as in Cosmas Indicopleustes (= C. of the Indian Ocean & 6^th c. A. D. Greek) and Jean Barbot (17^th/18^th c. French writing about “Guinea” [= west Africa]).

That ancient Europe also knew the birds-as-navigational-aids theme is well attested and easily demonstrated. Apollonius Rhodius (2^nd c. B.C. Greek) wrote a long account of the Voyage of the Argo. In it, he points to such as Idmon plus Mopsus paying particularly close attention to the ways of the birds as much for the purposes of navigation as for anything to do with augury/soothsaying functions. Christopher Hawkes (in Pytheas: Europe & the Greek Explorers = 8^th Annual Myres Lecture 1977) felt that the flight-routes of seasonally migratory birds guided Pytheas (? 4^th c. B. C. Greek) to Iceland. Hawkes (ib.) particularly mentioned the hooper-swan in this connection.

There is also the Druid-like figure of Pellitus of Iberia “knowing of the ways of the …birds” according to Geoffrey of Monmouth (12^th c. British). The Druids of Gaul/France, Britain plus Ireland are also shown by such as Julius Caesar (1^st c. B. C. Roman), Peter Berresford Ellis (The Druids 1995), as acute observers of natural phenomena. One such observation comes to us in the mythical form of stories about Bran. His name translates as Raven and he was probably originally an attribute of a god who became one in his own right. He learns of a wondrous island and sets out in his vessel to seek it out. Stripped of the mythical and fabulous, this smacks of the use of ravens to espy land.

George Marcus (Conquest of the North Atlantic 1980) refers to a story in the Landnambok (= Book of the Settlements) explaining how a Viking named Floki (9^th c.) got his epithet of Rabe. It has been said that whooper-swans may have been followed to Iceland by a Greek and it has long recognised that Celtic settlements on islands marry closely with the seasonal routes of migratory birds. It has already been seen that that the Celto/Irish tales about Bran offer an oblique reference to the kind of events that led to Floki becoming Rabe-Floki. He was aboard a ship on the open Atlantic and sending out three ravens, one did not return and its route was followed and Iceland was rediscovered.   

Another Atlantic island-group is the Azores and birds in the form of goshawks led (?) Portugese ships there. Unfortunately for this theory, goshawks are unknown to Azorean ornithology before the arrival of the Portuguese and Semito/Berber raca (= birds of prey) seems more likely. To Atlantic islands named by birds is added the Maya settlement in Mexico of Cozumel (= Island of Birds). Another island marked by birds may lie behind the western Amerindian legend of Coatu identified by Heyerdahl (ib) with Sala-y-Gomez (nr. Easter Island) marked by large numbers of seabirds. The seasonal migration of the golden plover is held to have been followed by Polynesians to the widely scattered islands of the Pacific.

This may help to explain the apparently random settlement of remote Pacific islands. Messrs Rawson (Isles of Refuge 2002) plus Anderson (online review of Rawson) show Polynesians settling some islands but not others. Having noted that Melanesia came from Greek melas (= black) and nesos (= islands), we note an opinion that Melanesians are black and Polynesians are brown because of Polynesian “express-train” movement through Melanesia. Going west of Nusantara (already seen as Island s/east Asia) to Madagascar, several IOR island-groups were apparently bypassed in late cents. A.D. but not settled much before the arrival of Europeans according to Dick-read (ib.).

Persians plus Arabs coming the other way also seemingly ignored these same islands. Cleisthenes (3^rd c. B. C.Greek) shows natives then Greeks avoiding an island off the Indian coast “because it was unlucky”. There is also the suggestion that islands off the coasts of both east and West African were known first as fishing-stations and were only settled at some later stage. Graham Clark (Mesolithic Interlude 1975) shows Mediterranean islands randomly bypassed in seasonal pursuit of tunny but recall John Cherry (ib) saying this is rather more  theorised than proven. However, the apparently random C14-dates, blade/trapeze industries, Impressed/Cardial Wares, dry built keyhole/tholos-plans, etc, support Clarke.

Herodotus was seen to have said that the ex-Lydians that later were Tyrhennians/Tyrsenoi/Etruscans sailed from Anatolia (= Asia Minor = most of modern Turkey) past several lands suitable for settlement but sailed for Italy and bypassed several islands very suitable for settlement in doing so. Mark Kurlansky (The Basque World History 1999) was seen to report something very similar of Basques sailing from Vizcaya/Pays Basque (= Basqueland in northwest Iberia/Spain) non-stop to the fishing-grounds of the Faroe Islands and going past several other islands and coasts of western Europe facing the Atlantic Ocean, the English Channel plus the North Sea in doing so.

Apparently relatively close to the Faroes were the islands of what was known to Pliny as the “Cronian” (= Greenland/Iceland) Sea(s). It seems they were known to the Greeks, Romans plus Irish in Pre-Norse days but Faroe and Iceland were not permanently occupied till the Viking/Norse arrival in the 8^th/10^th cs. Yet more Atlantic-facing islands are those of the Caribbean that were settled by the Epi-Saladero Swauzoids better known as Taino and Caribs. According to the attached carbon-14 dates (= C14-dates), the southernmost islands that make up the Lesser Antilles were seen to have been bypassed in favour of the northerly and usually larger islands that are called the Greater Antilles.

This was also seen also as further avoidance of islands eminently suitable for colonisation being left behind for lands beyond and that this betokens foreknowledge and so too does Amerindian wind-reading that may be linked to Pre-Columbian cross-shapes in the Americas. They may record direction and closely resemble simple wind-roses marking north, east, south and west or the cardinal points of the compass. Grondin (ib.) holds that this passed from the Olmec Culture to the Maya. Also belonging here may be posts and/or stones marking these cardinal points plus the apparent god-names that the Maya attached to the winds and the direction from which they came.     

Chinese wind-roses are very much elaborate than were those of the simple cross-shaped just seen for Amerindians. The Polynesians plus Nusantarans also had forms of wind-roses. To judge from the terminology passing from the Persians to in the form of the words for rhumbs (= divisions) of the Arabic wind-roses, so too did the Persians. Very clearly, the Arabs also used them and scenario of borrowings may be relevant for the Shirazi. However, it has been self-evident for some time that the claimed Arabic or Persian sources for the Shirazi or Swahili is no more than just that, a claim and no more than that. This means the Swahili are sea-going Africans with at most, a Persio/Arabic overlay.

Also very African is the Yoruba concept of the four corners of the world in cross-shaped arrangement to north, east, south plus west to attest both direction and from whence the wind comes. Joseph Olumide Lucas (The Religion of the Yorubas 1948 & 2001) shows the winds bore the god-names of Obatala (= North Wind), Jakuta/Sango (East Wind), Ifa (= West Wind) plus Oduduwa (= North Wind). They also combine in the heads or roundels at the ends of the cross-shaped images of Olori Merin (= Lord of the Four Heads). These images were set up in towns, so recall what was said about Mayan practices and how they apply to West Africans at sea is seen below.

This illustrates further that the Swahili are sea-going east Africans with wind-roses of mainly local derivation. At best the Swahili are Bantus with an Arabic overlay with a few Persian words added. With it being shown that Semitic science was applied to going to sea by way of Chaldea plus Phoenicia, it has interest that the Huntingford translation of Periplus Mare Erythrai (= Periplus of the Erythraean Sea = PME 1980) quotes the following Swahili proverb of “Kasikazi mja nasni. Kusi mja na mtama” (= The Northeast Wind brings fish & The Southwest Wind brings millet). This seems to be a very obvious reference to major items of commerce in east Africa.

The Phoenicians had as equal concern for wanting to know wind-directions, as they were equally dependent on the sea as the west and east Africans just discussed (as nicely shown by the just-quoted Swahili proverb). Both Maria Eugenia Aubet (The Phoenicians in the West 1994) plus Barry Cunliffe (Facing the Atlantic 2001) describe this of Phoenicians on M/M/M and Atlantic coasts respectively. Given the many Phoenician colonies in Magrebi parts of West Africa, this will have applied equally to here as well. After all, more than one reference has been made to the fact that it seems the Phoenicians were probably the first employ Chaldean science to maritime contexts.

It seems wind-roses came by way of Phoenicia (approx. Lebanon), Ionia (= Greek-ruled Anatolia), the Aegean islands to mainland Greece. Reinforcing this will be the claimed Phoenician parentage of Thales of Miletus, the claimed Syrian birth of Andronicus (designer of the Horologion), Stecchini (“Winds” online) noting the Horologion bears the Apeliotes (= East Wind) of Ionic Greek not the Apheliotes of mainland Greek, etc. Each of the faces of the Horologion (= The Tower of Winds at Athens) is that of a godling. This has been shown more than once above. Greek wind-roses seemingly run 4-points (Homer: 10^th c. B.C.), 8-points (Aristotle: 4^th c. B.C.), 12-points (Timosthenes: 2^nd c. B.C.), etc.

Iberian Celts knowing of wind-roses seems proven by the Baumgarten (Peritia 1965) study of Orosius (? a 4^th c. A.D. Latinised Iberian Celt). Those of Gallic Celts reported by Matthew Paris are tied by Eva Taylor (The Haven-finding Art 1958) to purposeful voyages by Irish Celts who also knew Orosius very well, so can be expected to have known the Orosian-noted system equally as well. Tales of the saga type show that the Norse/Vikings of Scandinavia/Nordic Europe also had full knowledge of wind-roses/early compass-forms. A fragment of one is referred to in an Appendix of West Viking (1965) by Farley Mowat. It is said to have come from a Viking site in Greenland.

More Norse navigational knowledge is shown by Storr Oddi (= Star Oddi), Einar Eyjolfsson, Nicholas de Teverre who could set latitude, etc. George Marcus proves this is directly relevant for Norse night-time sailing, especially when taking position by the North Star/Polaris/Pole Star by night and cites reports of ships lost at sea because of stars that could not be seen. He tells of Ormund not wanting to miss out on a moonlit night, attempted a night-entry into harbour, bumped into other ships and this was described as slovenly by some of his crew. The reverse of this was Gudemal doing so when putting into Orkney at night but successfully and receiving great praise when doing so.

Of Celtic Europe, Pellitus of Iberia adds “the ways of the stars & planets” to his Druid-like knowledge (as Geoffrey). The Druids of Gaul were also expert astronomers (as Caesar). The Isle of Mann is a British island but Manx is Irish-derived. Fishermen here are said not to mention eayst (= the moon) directly but refer to ben-reine ny hoie (= Queen of the Night). If this is retained from the Old-Irish ancestor of Manx, the taking of sightings from Polaris telling a Celtic skipper where he was, it must have significance when P. B. Ellis (The Druids 1994) tells us that Polaris is Realta Eolais (Star of Knowledge) in Irish. Dicuil (9^th c. Irish) notes Irish crews night-sailing between Scotland and Faroe.   

Felix Chami (ib.) has tied comments by Iamblichus about east African islanders to excavations there and their astronomy to maritime navigation (& observe McGrail [ib.] also tying this to the astronomical skills described of the Druids of the Celts by Julius Caesar). West African knowledge of the stars and night-sailing has been demonstrated several times and included the night-fishing that has at sea been recorded all along the “Guinea” coast, the Yoruba voyages involving Sirius as Irawa-oko (= Canoe-star) plus the Pleiades (= Sailing-stars) that are part of the evidence firmly placing the Atlas family in west Africa. This is the very clearest testimony of West African sailing at night.

Phoenicians taking position at night by Polaris (= Pole Star = North Star) at night. When we realise that such as Aratus (4^th c. B.C. Greek) tells us that Polaris was Phoinike (= the Phoenician star) in Greek, it is surely confirmed that most of their navigational techniques came from the Phoenicia/Anatolia/Aegean/Greek direction already observed already. Further is Euripides (5^th c. Greek playwright) showing that in his play called “ The Phoenissae” (= The Phoenician Women) that blind Tiresias “needed his feet to be guided like a sailor using stars”; the Odyssey telling us Odysseus/Ulysses steered at night using star-systems; Telemachus (a son of Odysseus), etc. 

Of Anatolians fitting here, Virgil (1^st c. A. D.) notes a Trojan watching the stars; the ship of Aeneas ploughing through night-time seas; Pallas asking about stars. Tibetts shows more Persian words as Arabic navigational terms (as stars & planets) and that Ibn Majid (15^th c. Arab) warns of the need of night-watches on ships on IOR and Red Seas. The Sanskrit text seen as the Muallaim tells us that the sea-going Indian pilot needed to know about the stars and planets. The Chinese dominated much of the western Pacific/eastern Indian Ocean World/Region (= IOW/IOR) and are known to have applied their very considerable astronomical knowledge of astronomy to sea-based navigation.

That some of this star-based navigation was also known to Amerindians, is amply proven by Peck (ib.) but he regards Polaris as of no consequence to the Maya yet others consider Polaris as Mayan God-C and as of great navigational significance. Callaghan (ib.) noting Amerindians overcoming a Spanish night-watch, taking their ship and sailing home shows Amerindian night-sailing. Very close to the shores on the opposite side of the Americas is the site of Izapa. Messrs. Stirling (as Normanib.) plus Norman (Izapa Sculpture 1973 & 1976) regard what is shown on Stelae 3, 6 and 26 are crescents relating to both the quarter-moon but also to canoe to (?) again suggest night-sailing.

Bronislaw Malinowski (Argonauts of the Western Pacific 1987) says that Melanesians did not need the stars when steering at night but there was what was might almost be called a professional caste of astronomer-witches with the power to help or hinder sailors at sea (& note McGrail has to say about Druids, astronomy & navigation). The Melanesians did have names for the major constellations and the Polynesians had actual star-maps. They placed emphasis on the Pleiades (= Makali = Hui-Hui). This is besides what Evans and Vilaverde say about knowledge of Sirius in the Pacific where James Cook (18^th c. Englishman) says the Polynesians steered by the sun and the stars at night

The Indonesian (?) rafts of late cents. B. C. /early cents. A.D. apparently sailed night and day, as did the vessel replicated from what was depicted on the walls of the Burodbudur (Indonesia). The Burodbudur successfully crossed the Indian Ocean and circumnavigated round Africa to as far north as Ghana. It is but one of several such reconstructions in recent years and another is the Cilicia. The latter was built to publicise that Armenia was once ruler of what today is much of Anatolia/Turkey and that this Greater Armenia once had a Mediterranean fleet. This is clearly in addition to what has already said about Anatolians having a much greater ancient renown as sailors than is realised.

The Cilicia left Poti (Georgia) for Venice (Italy) then on a second leg to Portsmouth (Eng.). The food to be eaten was sea-foods traditional for the A/A/A-arc during the middle Ages. Another such reconstruction was the leather/skinboat or currach built for Tim Severin (The Brendan Voyage 1978). Bradley says that what was eaten on the first leg was modern but that what was followed on the second leg was a traditional one of the Irish Celts or Gaels. Presumably this Medieval Irish diet would have been along the lines of what was described in the Middle Irish poem of the (?) 8^th/ (?) 9^th cs. A. D. called Aisling Meicc Con Glinne (= The Vision of Mac Con Glinne).

Undoubtedly, easily the most famous of these reconstructed ancient vessels were the reed-boats of the type depicted in Saharan but otherwise better from depictions from Pharoahonic Egypt designed for Thor Heyerdahl (The Ra Voyages 1971). Of them, the reed-boat called Ra 1 was the one that almost made it across the Atlantic but not quite, whereas, Ra 2 did achieve the Atlantic crossing. Bradley (ib.) says the diet followed on Ra 1 shows it was very much modern foodstuffs but that what was eaten on Ra 2 was rather more like traditional Berber/Arab fare. This included flat-bread baked to an Ancient Egyptian recipe provided by the Cairo Museum.

Johnstone (ib.) shows that Polynesians leaving from Pacific islands of atoll type mainly did so with a basic foodstuff that was pandanus fruit. It was grated into flour, then dried and packed into bundles and wrapped into leaf parcels. Johnstone (ib.) also noted Polynesians leaving islands that were of volcanic origin. This time the basic foodstuff was based on based on the taro or breadfruit. It had the very useful property of not spoiling even fermenting. It was also packed into long leaf bundles that were tucked into the hull or hung from the deckhouse. This took Polynesians to even the remotest Pacific islands in what were always but built-up forms of dugout-canoe.

By now it should be very firmly established in our minds that the dugout-canoe was the basic form that typifies West Africa voyages and if the theory that the robust physiques of Polynesians was/is due to the needs of long-distance voyaging holds, it would be interesting to see if this applies equally to coastal West Africans. It was seen that by no means all ancestors of the Polynesians were muscular and robustness in Africa is hardly confined to the west coast. However, one particular comparison with just above is the baking of flat-bread/biscuits to be taken on long voyages. This was taken on such trips as it did not spoil in the sea-air for Jean Barbot (ib.)

Equally as traditional were the groups that the Greeks described as Ichthyophagi (= Fish-eaters). That they were known to the ancient Greeks not only gives them considerable antiquity but also means that this again is not just theoretical but factual. Such a diet was that on crossings of the Atlantic by Messrs. Bombard plus Lindemann (as Van Sertima ib.). Bombard did this on a raft. Lindemann stands even closer to West African tradition in that not only did he follow the all-fish diet that named the Ichthyophagi, he also used a dugout-canoe and this was of size normal for West African fishing. Do we need any more proof of traditional diets linked to long-distance voyages?

FISHING & SAILING IN ANCIENT WEST AFRICA BELOW THE BULGE

            The received wisdom is that the oldest recognisable ancestral strains in Africa are those of the Pygmies plus the ancestors of what are otherwise called the Khwe (= San or Bushmen) or/or Khoikhoi. Putting them together, they have been called Khoisan plus the Khoi/Khwe used here. At some later stage, with the Bantus came such as grain-growing, ironworking, etc. Such as the Bantu-ruled Mwenemetepe Empire (= the Monomatapa Empire as known to the Portuguese) was later still and well to the north of a line from the River Limpopo (Mozambique) in the east to the River Orange (South Africa) in the west. Even later were the Bantus that reached the Great Fish River in the 18^th c. and the first Bantus to reach Cape Town where they are scarce before the 1850s.

However, this has been recently challenged. As far back as Carl-Richard Lepsius (19^th c. German), there was the theory that Bantus preceded the Khoi/Khwe and something like this has been recently revived by such as Lacroix (ib.), Chami (ib.), etc. Lacroix (ib.) has latched on to a comment that appeared in an early edition of Volume 1 of the History of West Africa (edd. Messrs. Ajayi & Crowder 1985). This was to the effect that the Proto/Early Bantus grew yams and palm-oil not cereals and Cooke (Africa 1965) plus Chami (ib.) takes this further.

Lacroix (ib.) takes this to indicate that the Proto/Early Bantus had a Stone Age not an Iron Age economy. Cooke (ib.) shows there are European maps showing the Mwenemetepe/Monomatapa Empire on the Limpopo/Orange line. This places Bantus some 300/500 miles further south at dates much earlier than they are supposed to be on the above-noted received wisdom. This also brings us very closer to Cape Town long before the mid-19^th c. date already referred to and to the very curious story of Umlindi Wemingizimu.

It is a well-known European practice to wish Classical (= Greco/Roman) names on to non-Classical gods and this seems to continue with the early Portuguese in West Africa, in that Luis de Camoes (16^th c. Portuguese) reached into Greek myth and came up with the name of Adamastor. This was originally a giant of the Titan type defeated by the gods of Olympus. Adamastor was applied to the deity residing in Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town Harbour (South Africa) by de Camoes. The African name of this deity was Umlindi Wemingizimu. This name is purely Bantu and means The Watcher of the South. The zimu/zima part of the name is widespread across southern Africa and is apparently to be equated with mulungu/murungu and both can mean spirit and/or god. Umlindi is still invoked by fishermen in Cape Town Harbour. Also Table Mountain is part of the protective circle of kramats (= shrines of local Muslim saints) in South Africa.

To be asked here is why would a people who allegedly did not go to sea need to be protected at sea? It is also one that will be seen to apply to West Africans from western South Africa in the south to Senegal in the south who again are supposedly non-maritime but who have close sea-links that are not always obvious. This may connect with the rounding’s of Cape Agulhas at the very southern tip of Africa that were possibly more frequent than known literary records suggest. They are known east-to-west from the Voyage of Necho; west-to-east from the Voyage of Necho (acc. to Pliny & Martianus Capella), a Phoenico/Punic wreck at Cape Delgado (acc. to Eudoxus & Strabo), etc.

Strabo (1^st c. B.C. Greek) was also seen to written that the Phoenico/Punic hippos was a very poor vessel-type yet from that same Greek, it can be allowed that they were taken on the Gadir/Cadiz-to-Morocco fishing-voyages that took four days to complete followed by however many days it took fulfil their catch. Strabo has been shown to be the source by which we know that yet another evidently rounded Africa to as far as Cape Delgado (in Mozambique & almost into Tanzania) where he says it was found by Eudoxus. The west African dugout-canoe can be assumed to have been superior to the Phoenico/Punic hippos and with the Gambia type qualifying above-given description of “small ships”, would not have been markedly inferior to most Phoenician ships and were capable of bearing 80/100 men, 10/12-ton cargoes, livestock, etc.   

Chami (ib.) emphasises the African point of view. The below-seen West African pride in canoe-making also belongs here. Nor if the pattern of things African imposed on non-Africans from the Phoenicians to the Portuguese holds good, certain things follow. One is when Chami to the rounding’s of Africa probably being more frequent than generally realised. The Africans who were employed by Hanno have added to them those that Yusuf Ben-Jochannan (Black Man of the Nile 1989) says are recorded in Portuguese log-books as guides/pilots.

We may be sure that some of that expertise was acquired by fishing and/or, especially as Ichthyophagi/Fish-eating are traced all round Africa from Egypt in the east to the Canaries off the Morocco in the west. There are also what appear to be remnants of 30-day calendars recorded by Messrs. Faria (as Ellis 1896 & online) and Ellis (The Yoruba Speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast ib.).

Trading all round the coasts of the coasts of Africa seems attested by what is said by messrs. Tyldesly (The Female Pharoah 1998); Herbert (The Red Gold of Africa 1984); de Brye (17^th c. German); Patterson (The North Gabon 1975); Henze (The Manillas, Arm-rings & Ankle-rings of West Africa online); Bovill (The Golden Trade of the Moors 1968).

This again takes us from Egypt in the northeast of Africa apparently round to Morocco in the northwest of Africa. Thus the asem (= rings of gold) as part of what Egypt traded to Punt (= Djibouti/Somalia); the copper rings known as personal adornment in east Africa from Somalia to South Africa; more of the same shown by de Brye as being traded to Khoikhoi in western South Africa; the half-rings/manillas of the Phoenicians (as Henze) of copper to those of iron of Europeans trading in “Guinea”; the rings of (?) “Guinea” gold traded by Wangaras/Dyula to Morocco (as Bovill), etc.

Also over much of Africa are speakers of “Click”-tongues. Messrs. Willcox (as Chami) plus Chami (ib.) attach the bat-like speech of the Troglodytic Aethiopes chased over the Sahara by the Garamentes to this. More Troglodytes/Trogodytes are to be found on coasts plus islands of Eritrea/Ethiopia. Yet more Click-speakers are the Hadza of Tanzania and islands off Tanzania (on Chami’s view of Iambulus). However, easily the most famous of those with languages of the Click type are the Khoi/Khwe.

The Khoi/Khwe are best known from those in Namibia and the linkages suggested by the distribution of Click-tongues might be strengthened by rock-art with similar motifs from the Sahara to Namibia (inc. types of sheep) but there are problems with such a connection. One being that both the fringes of the Western Sahara and the Namib are sea-facing stretches of desert stretching1000 miles and the included the part of the Namib Desert so dangerous to ships that it was called the Skeleton Coast. Nor does Thembi Russell (BAR 1294 = The Spatial Analysis of Radiocarbon Databases: The spread of the first farmers in Europe & the first fat-tailed sheep in Southern Africa 2004) subscribe to the so-called “Western Route” for the first fat-tailed sheep in southern Africa.

Sea-routes to Namibia would certainly have involved long stretches of desert but it has been that simple types of vessel had gained ancient acceptance as being capable of staying at sea for 4/5 days with few problems and these desert coasts are recorded as taking four days to clear. Also fat-tailed sheep are part of the rock-art repertoire of the Sahara and Namibia and the introduction of fat-tailed sheep into southern Africa is usually linked to Click-speakers now represented by the Khoikhoi in Namibia and the rest of southern Africa. It should be observed that Click-speaking Hadza of Tanzania apparently relate more to Pygmies than Khoi/Khwe and some Bantu tribes speak Click-tongues and are again unrelated to Khoi/Khwe.

            It may well be that the Namibian C14-dates aggregated by Russell (ib.) are felt by him not to support the Western Route bringing fat-tailed sheep to Namibia then to South Africa but a different reading of those clustered in Namibia lead to the opposite conclusion. That opposite conclusion would bolster such champions of the Western Route as Messrs. Stow (The Native Races of South Africa 1905), Cooke (ib.), Bousman (African Archaeological Review 1998), etc. Nor should we overlook what will be said very shortly about Namibian/Angolan copper being shipped in large amounts and over long distances in canoes.

            This means that transport of Namibian sheep would not have been a difficulty, the more so since West African canoes have also been recorded as bearing even larger items of livestock in the form of cattle. Thus notions of the much-discussed mobility of Click-speakers having a sea-borne component and linked to the Western-route spread of fat-tailed sheep bolsters Chami’s arguments. So do Click-speaking “Troglodytes” on islands off Tanzania and Eritrea/Ethiopia. Although this in turn receives support from what is said by Frobenius (ib.) but it has to be said that the large cargoes of copper also have problems.  

One is that old bugbear of secure dates and it is unfortunate the “ancient” copper-workings at Tsumbeh (Namibia), Benguela (Angola), Bembe (Angola), Niari (Congo), etc, are not firmly dated. However, Leo Frobenius (ib.) gives some support to notions of long-distance seafaring. Neither is there very much in the way of written records to indicate Pre-European exploitation of these sources. The devastation of large-scale slave-raiding that when including the tribal griot (= story-teller/oral-historian) left a “talking-book”/oral-lore system bereft of its historical traditions in many cases.

            Relatively little is actually known about the earliest trade-routes/contacts in Africa but if the pattern of Pre-Bantu traits of east Africa shown in "East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity" being taken over by Bantus holds good, there is what is written by Messrs. Barabe (The Religion of Iboga or the Bwiti of the Fangs ib.), Herbert (African Studies Review 1974, Red Gold of Africa 1984), etc, to consider. Eugenia Herbert (ib.) particularly argues that what was said of the earliest recorded non-African traders in Africa applies equally to the next group of non-Africans to want to trade in West Africa. In short, from the Phoenicians to the early Portuguese, African trade-modes were imposed on non-Africans wanting to trade in West Africa.

            The antiquity of this would be reinforced by acceptance of the Frobenius views of traits from Angola to Morocco. They included villages arranged shrines/temples (= the Templum); house-interiors arranged around water-tanks (= impluvia); the roofs of the houses being ridged; shapes of drums; types of looms; frontally-strung bows; tanged arrowheads; raml (= sand-divination) etc. The Frobenius concept of a unitary culture does not hold but he does point out that these traits are almost entirely of the coast. The frontally-strung bows plus arrowheads particularly contrast with those of adjacent inland people(s) and the whole is underlain by the dugout-canoe. This makes it even more likely there was canoe-based commerce along West African shores from long before the arrival of the first Europeans in the form of the Portuguese and that Angolan copper would be an important component in this.

            A deity of Angola discussed by Jan Knappert (The Aquarian Guide to African Mythology 1990) is the one that he described as the Angolan equivalent of the Greek Poseidon and the Roman Neptune. Time and time again, we read of West Africans not going to sea because of fear of the sea, all their needs were met on the great rivers of West Africa, etc. Therefore, since they did not go to sea, they did not need protection at sea. This is something that our experts appear not to have explained to the Africans, as west Africans persist in and insist on having gods of the sea. The case of Umlindi has already been discussed and now another Bantu people turn out to have had/have a sea-god.

            The Bantu people here shown are the Mbundu or Kimbundu of Angola and the god of the sea in this instance is the one that Knappert was noted as calling the Angolan counterpart of the Greek Poseidon and it will be seen that this is not the only west African case prompting a non-African to apply this to a west African god of the sea. The Mbundu god of the sea was called Kianda. Nor were the Mbundu the only Angolans fishing at sea. This was equally so for the Bakongo sub-tribes of the Solongo and the Ashiluanda also resident in Angola. Their entire economy is fishing-based. This, of course, repeats the pattern of what the Greeks were seen to describe as Ichthyophagi (=Fisheaters). More of these Ichthyophagi are noted below and are to be noted amongst more of Bakongo naming Congo.

            Also occupying parts of Angola, the Congo, Congolese Democratic Republic (= CDR =ex-Zaire) plus Zambia are the Luba. A word from that language is Lunga. It seems this was the name of the Luba Creator-god, forms part of similar Mulungu/Murungu/Murugan names of across southern Africa and is cognate with the zima/zimu words meaning god or spirit and already seen as part of the Bantu name at Cape Town of Umlindi Wemingizimu. In this light, it has further interest that lunga can also mean a large body of water, as well as a word for dugout-canoe that Pieter de Marees (17^th c. Dutch) traced from Congo to Gabon.

            The Luba traded widely across southern Africa from the Indian Ocean to Angola and the Congo basin and such trade/traders made be the source of some of the knowledge reaching Greeks such as Heliodorus (3^rd /4^th c. A.D. Greek). Lacroix says he names seven rivers in a list west-going from the Nile to far west as the Great River flowing into what locally is called the Chami-sad ( = the Ocean). In Kikongo, the River Kongo/Congo is both the Great River plus “the Sea” and Lacroix (ib.) identifies it with the Great River of the Aithiopiaca (The Ethiopian Tale) by Heliodorus. This means the Chami-sad/Ocean into which the Great River/River Congo flowed can only be what yet another Greek called the Western Ocean. That other Greek was Ptolemy and what he calls the Western Ocean is, of course, the Atlantic that is otherwise called the Mare Aethiopium till about 1700 from the fact that its most frequent users were “Aethiopians”/Africans.

Probably confirming that Kikongo (the spoken language of the Bakongo) words came to the outside world via the medium of trade is what Messrs. Patterson (ib.) and Lacroix (b.) tell us. Patterson (ib.) says that what are called Fiotte words in the Gabonese language named Mpongwe originally came from the Kikongo-group tongue of Vili. They include Mani (= Ruler), malaffa/malaffo/malassa (= mead/wine), matombe (= bark-cloth), etc. Somewhat more famous is the word of gorilla according to Messrs. Lacroix and Lendering (online re. Hanno). They say this is a garbled version of the Kikongo phrase of nii diida (= violent chest-beater). It is still unknown whether this actually described animals or humans in animal-furs. However, if actual apes, it is worth noting the capture of wild animals for commercial gain was/is hardly new and implies trade-contacts between the Bakongo and Hanno of Carthage.

Richard Burton (Two Months in Gorilla Land & the Cataracts of the Congo 1876 & online) says the Mpongwe were especially proud of their canoe-building skills. In this light, he cites an experienced sea-captain named Bottelaer as saying that the Mpongwe canoes combined “strength, solidity & symmetry”. Burton (ib.) says they could take up to 10/12 tons in weight and Patterson (ib.) tells us that they carried between 80/100 passengers. Burton was of the opinion that the distances covered by the Mpongwe in their canoes might almost take them to the Americas. This again indicates the perceived strength(s) of West African canoes and is roughly 80 years before Hannes Lindemann (Alone at Sea1958) succeeded in doing so in a West African dugout-canoe.

The 600/700 miles would be part of what John Fage (as Herbert) says about copper reaching the Niger Delta. It has long been assumed that copper got to Nigeria by way of the Trans-Saharan trade-routes from somewhere in the Magreb (esp. Takedda, Morocco). Fage points out that that the distance between the Saharo/Magrebi mines and south Nigeria is roughly the same as that between the copper-sources of the Lower Congo and the Niger (= 600/650 miles). Patterson (ib.) tells us that the yardstick by which west African sailors were judged on by early Europeans were the abilities of those of present-day Ghana but he says that of  sailors of modern Gabon were very much on a par with those whose ancestors were from what was the Gold Coast/is now Ghana.

Barabe (ib.) felt Gabon was for Africa what Tibet was for Asia as centres of religious development. It seems that the Pygmies or Mbouiti gave rise to the system of Bwiti taken up by Bantus from (?) Angola to Gabon, centres on Gabon and Barabe (ib.) feels it relates to forms of Vodun/Voodoo known to as far north as the Benin Republic (= ex-Dahomey). Burton (ib.) seems to have thought it was also felt it was tied to way-finding at sea by the Gabonese. Just how far back this can be taken remains moot but the oldest dates for African iron technology may give us clues.

Centring on Gabon is a series of C14-dates that Augustin Holl (in The Archaeology of Africa edd. Shaw, Sinclair, Andah & Okpoko 1993) are the oldest for ironworking in Africa. John Taylor (Oxford Journal of Archaeology = OJA 1988) argued that west African iron technology was diffused by sea from Carthage, as in Nigeria it coincides with oldest-known exploitation of Nigerian tin and the generally accepted date for the Voyage of Hanno (6^th c. B.C. Carthaginian). John Sutton (OJA 1989) answered Taylor (ib.) but thought the diffusion from Carthage came overland. The Gabonese/Cameroonian/Nigerian C14-dates, the West African technology that especially means crucibles, etc, effectively rules out outside agencies for the beginnings of the west Early African Iron Age.

Cameroon is another candidate for being where the West African ironworking first emerged according to Christopher Ehret (The Civilisations of Africa 2002). He also traces another such centre across Africa from Great Lakes to Tanzania. In Tanzania by c.100 B. C. /200 A.D. this had so developed that what was being produced had gone beyond mere iron and was steel of a quality unsurpassed till 19^th c. Europe. Whether Cameroon is part of the continuum from the south suggested by the C14-dates from Gabon or what is envisaged by Ehret (ib.), it is clearly part of the West African metals diffusion.

A southern connection for copper in Cameroon may emerge from a linkage with the Nok Culture of Nigeria. The Nok Culture shows the earliest known dates for both tin and iron deposits in Nigeria. Copper from whatever source would be needed for the ideal of true tin-bronze having 10% tin/90% copper as its ideal and when well-hammered is held to be stronger than pure iron. It has already been shown that a sea-borne diffusion has been allowed for the earliest of these west African metallurgists and this plus the southern connection is reinforced by what is said for a later period by Rosalind Wilcox in “The transactions & cultural interactions from the Delta to Douala” (online).

The canoes that are the essential vehicle for Pre-Colonial West African sea-borne commerce at all times are also touched on by Wilcox (ib.). She maintains that the dugout-canoe provided important lines of communication between the Douala that is otherwise the River Cameroon and the Delta of the River Niger. Douala is also one the names of the Mande within the borders of modern Cameroon according to Mohamed Yakin (The Almanac of African Peoples & Nations 1999). Others listed are Doula, Diola, Dioulo, Diouala, Diala, Jola, Jula, Wangara plus Yola. Given that Yakin (ib.) equated Dyula plus Wangara, it surely has interest that both are synonyms for trader/merchant.

In favour of ruling out non-Sub-Saharan sources for the earliest Nigerian ironworking is what is said by Messrs Holl plus Eggert (in Shaw et al ib.) and this tells once again for the Gabon/Cameroon/Nigeria sequence. They have pointed to the lack of methods of manufacturing iron from outside Africa and those that have been found in Africa and this is particularly true of Sub-Saharan Africa. In short, on the available evidence, the African Iron Age is of African origin.

The peculiarities of the oldest known Nigerian ironworking technology can be seen to stand with rest of that in what Ivan Van Sertima (1976) called “Black” (Sub-Saharan) Africa. Yet even with the recognition of the oddities of the Early Iron Age in Sub-Saharan/Black Africa, some kind of consistent picture was seen to emerge from what was said above regarding such diffusion. This came via what till c. 1700 was still being called the Mare Ethiopium (= the African Sea = Atlantic Sea/Ocean), a term that clearly recognises that this was basically a coast occupied by black Africans. Here too was based a scene depicted on one of the maps of the Ramusio (15^th c. Italian) series. It shows an African dugout-canoe, a fish of the size that John Brown (Transactions of the American Philological Society 1968) says prompted monster-fish myths (think Jonah & the “Whale”) plus a European ship. The dugout–canoe is not only of the type that will be seen as having mainly a fishing use but will be seen to have faced the open Atlantic.

The Bight of Benin also faces the Mare Ethiopium/Atlantic Ocean. If we follow Patterson (ib.) describing the dangers of rounding Cape Lopez, there is a piece of doggerel quoted by Sir Alan Burns (History of Nigeria 1968). It runs “Beware of the Bight of Benin, few come out but many go in” and serves to yet again illustrate that African canoes were on dangerous seas. Yet in rounding Cape Lopez and going into Benin they survived, notwithstanding, that they were “primitive” craft. The Bight was, of course named by the ancient city of Benin originating as a city of the Edo and was/is still Edo to its original builders.

 Further reasons for retaining the older name for at least the surrounds or hinterland of the ancient kingdom of Edoland will be given shortly but easily the best known feature of Edoland/Old Benin is metalwork of long development and most famously that looted by the British during the conquest of what was to become Nigeria. The above-cited Benin bust stands as a superb example of the type. The Etruscans, Phoenico/Punics, Greeks, Portuguese, etc, have all been invoked as the source of this bronze-work yet this stands with the non-African builders of Great Zimbabwe as being nonsense (& see above).

It is to be realised that the first urban centres in West Africa are also due to Africans. They are very definitely older than either Islam or Europe in West Africa. There are also the eya/iya (= enclosures) also in south Nigeria telling for the need to enclose something and  those around Benin would be given great antiquity by the linkage with the Periplus of Hanno and the Geographike of Ptolemy by Stecchini and Lacroix respectively. It is of interest that within the welter of tradition about the sources of Benin, it seems it is said the Yorubas gave Edo/Benin its first rulers and also its first metalworkers. If this marks the mother-site/daughter-site system well known to archaeology, again an early date is called for, the more so given the Yoruba and Edo tongues are said to be very similar.

Lacroix links the Hyppodromos Aethiopiae  (= Racecourseof the Africans) mentioned by Ptolemy to the horses described by Olfert Dapper (17^th c. Dutch) in an area of southwest Edoland that Lacroix says was/is free of tsetse-flies usually so devastating for quadrupeds. So we may possibly have something here that attracted non-Africans to the variously termed Great Ardra, Ifago, Warri or Edo/Benin, etc. Horses from here were widely traded and appreciated across southern Nigeria. Hanno was also attracted to offshore islands in the Bight of Benin, if the arguments of Stecchini stand. This will have included such as Sao Thome, Principe, Pagalu (= ex-Annobom), Bioko (= ex-Fernando Po), etc.

Stecchini argues that a grid with its eastern side based on these islands marked an island that he says was called Atlantis but does not clearly state whether he felt it was the "Atlantis" of the writings of Plato (4th. c. B.C. Greek). Whether this means these Bight of Benin islets could be regarded in the light of what is often written about such as the Cape Verde Islands, Canary Islands, Madeira Islands plus the Azores Islands as the remnants of "Atlantis" remains distinctly moot. It might be held that they could be seen as fishing-bases that were occupied temporarily during the fishing-season but this too is uncertain. What we do know is that the Buki inhabited Bioko long before even the earliest Portuguese arrived on the coasts of West Africa at dates that are yet again unknown. It may be that this matter of offshore islands and Pre-European settlement is relevant for the first traces of Edo on the islands of Sao Thome and/or Principe. Here comes to mind “Edo from Sao Thome & Principe” by I. Ewoki (online). Ewoki shows that in the Creole of Sao Thome, Edo/Edoid words are well to the fore. This seems to match what is written of islets and/or islands in the Persian Gulf, Erythraean/western IOW and/or Red Sea coasts.

            If the Edos truly are an offshoot of the early Yorubas, something else they share is the eya enclosures of Eredo type. These earthworks are said by Patrick Darling (several times online) to be larger than the Great Wall of China (itself said to be the only man-made object to be visible from space) and to have involved more labour than the Pyramids. If the societies building the Great Wall and the Pyramids are held to be advanced and organised, what then does this say of ancient Nigeria? An answer comes with Leo Frobenius (ib.). He would have been even more impressed had he known more about these massive earthworks. As it was, he came to believe that here lay that civilization that the Greeks wrapped up in the trappings of the myths surrounding the maritime-based empire called Atlantis.

Frobenius was one of the most eminent Africanists of his day and wanted to position Atlantis off the coast of Yorubaland. He cited Yoruba legends of 12-month voyages plus golden cities under the sea in support of his thesis and he also felt able to make a direct comparison between the Yoruba Olokun and the Greek Poseidon (= Greek God of the Sea &? co-founder of Atlantis). That the expertise shown by the builders of canoes and eya-type earthworks continued is surely nicely shown by the admiring British Army remarks about the high quality of the building of Yoruba canoe-ports near Lagos (Nigeria) in the 19th. c. This is cited by Smith (ib.). The Lagos canoe-ports housed canoes that were rather more of what will be called the Gambia type that were usually war-canoes than the Kru type more for fishing (see below). No fishing was allowed on the second day of the Yoruba week. This was because the second day of the week was also the Sabbath of Yoruba fishermen and was dedicated to Olokun who was seen as the Yoruba god of the sea  (just above).

            Another Yoruba god had images that were cross-shaped and set up in towns to attest way-finding and wind-direction and the arms of the cross bore the heads of gods, hence his name of Olori Merin (= Lord of the Four Heads). Cross-shapes marking direction of people plus winds attributed to gods were also seen for Olmec/Mayan towns of Meso-America. Olori Merin-type crosses match the 4-point wind-roses known to Homer (? 10^th c. B. C.) for simple form. The named gods also marking wind-direction was further shown to be shared with the Horologion (= Tower of Winds at Athens, Greece) designed by Andronicus of Kyrros (2^nd c. B.C. Greek). It should not be forgotten that the wind-rose is basically a device of the seaman.   

Olori Merin-type images in Nigeria have been seen to have had arms that frequently ended in circular roundels but often the circle encloses the cross. This has led to a variety of terms that include ringed-cross, cross-in-ring/disc, wheeled-cross, Atlantis Cross, Mariner’s/Sailor’s Cross, etc. Surely, the most telling of these phrases is that of Sailor’s/Mariner’s Cross. John Morwood (Celtic Visions edd. John de Courcy Ireland & David Sheehy 1985) plus Chrichton Miller (Golden Thread of Time 2004) connect this directly with daytime navigation (esp. gold “sun” or “solar” discs of the Atlantic Bronze Age, some of which actually bear crosses and are cross-in-discs).

On the other hand, night-time navigation is told for by the Yoruba term of Irawa-oko (= Canoe-star = Sirius). Fishing at night in West Africa is proven by the earliest Europeans from at least the coasts of Angola/Congo to those of most of the “Forest” states of Edoland/Benin plus Yorubaland.  Confirmation of concern about navigation at sea is compass/way-finding and this attaches to the Mpongwe already seen as seafarers.

Besides this is what has just been said of the Yorubas who presumably would have had a particular concern for navigation on the 12-month trade-trips to points unknown but seen to have been recorded by Frobenius (and again recall what was said about early Mayan “compass”-forms & “way-finders”). In any case, not only was Olokun the Yoruba god of the sea but was the Yoruba god of wealth too, so carries the implication of wealth coming by sea.

            From Dahomey to Asante completes these Forest kingdoms of Edoland/Benin, Yorubaland, Dahomey plus Ashanti. Dahomey plus Ashanti also share being the basis of one-time colonies and taking on names full of meaning for Pre-Colonial West Africa. We saw that the Mbouiti of the Pygmies was taken over as Bwiti by Bantus and certain writers suggest that links between Bwiti centred on Gabon and Vodun/Voodoo centred on Dahomey. Somewhere here began the religion that Hollywood has bastardised into Voodoo but is probably best labelled as Vodun. Its ancient origins lie in a period when Africans were developing spirituality not technology but they were to learn the bitter lesson that the men with the guns usually overcame those with the gods. Agwe is the god of the sea in Vodun but the distance to be covered, the frailty of the canoes but, above all, the "quelle horreur" (= great horror) of the sea according to French opinion cited by Roy Bridges (in Africa and the Sea ed. by J. C. Stone 1985) prompts questions. One must be about gods of the sea. After all, on the basis of the received wisdom, West Africans were not at all sea-minded, therefore, would not have needed sea-gods. Moreover, Robert Smith (JAH 1970) cites 17th. c. British captains saying Nigerians did not practice Pre-European sea-trade at all but there will be more on this later.

            The Pre-Colonial name adopted by Dahomey was Benin. Edoland is to be seen as a synonym for the Benin of the present-day in Nigeria. Otherwise, it is what Stechinni (online article re. Hanno) was seen to describe as the Edo/Bini-built city of Benin. The region called Benin (= Edoland) may be in southeast Nigeria but the Republic of Benin (= ex-Dahomey) is on the further or western side of Nigeria. To escape further confusion, the Benin in Nigeria will be called Edoland and the Republic of Benin on the western side of Nigeria will be called Benin.

            According to Knappert (ib.), a distinction in Benin is to be made between the Ewe/Dahombe (= Dahomean) god of sea and the Ewe/Dahomean god of fishing. The god of the sea was variously called Hwu/Wu/Wu-na. These umpteen spellings make it possible that yet another is Agwe. This may be made stronger by the fact that Hwu/Wu and Agwe involve very similar rites that appear to have involved vessels stuffed with desirables pushed out to sea. A good fishing-season ensued if it went out to sea but if it floated back to shore, bad fishing would be the case. The Dahomean god of fishing was Avrikiti. The concept of fishing being seen as stealing from Wu described by Knappert (ib.) is very clearly to be taken as indicative of fishing at sea.

            The apparently similar ritual will be seen to probably be echoed by those of somewhat further north than Benin and for that matter most famously attaching to the rites of Agwe already seen to be the god of the sea in Vodun. Here the rites appear more elaborate in that here the boats are actually proven but the theme of vessels packed with the above-noted desirables is very definitely still the case. There is just the possibility that this explains the canoes laden with goods reported by Columbus via las Casas as leaving Senegal and/or the CapeVerde Islands. If so this would join such as the “mistake” by de Marees about kankey that is said to be based on a misinterpretation about the unleavened bread taken aboard Portuguese ships but it will be noted that this runs counter to the views expressed here.

Ashanti is the last of the “Forest” kingdoms and was also the basis of the British-ruled Crown Colony of Gold Coast and the ancient name taken on independence was Ghana. However, the term of Ghana more strictly was that of the ruler of Wakar (= Ouagoudou/Wagudu) Empire. Whether originally a title, a placename or something of both, Ghana is now used of both the Wakar Empire plus ex-Gold Coast but ancient and modern Ghana were 400/500 miles apart. Yet there are links between the two.

            Tribes of Old-Ghana plus Ghana include the Mamprussi, Dagomba, Gonja, etc. The Soninke tribe of Mandinkas were apparently the major elements in the founding the Wakar Empire and Danso names came via the Mandinkas to the Akan-speakers of Ghana. Kings in Old-Ghana and Ghana spoke only through intermediaries and had such symbols of power as swords plus whisks. Spirits were called ka in Old-Ghana and kra in Ghana. Matrilinear succession occurred in both. On Kecia’s “World Boutique & African Art Gallery: African Tribe- Free Articles” (online) looks to the scripts of Saharo/Numidian neighbours of the Wakars for the origins of some of the famous gold-weights of the Akans.

            Guinea and Ghana also closely relate but there was considerable about what “Guinea” meant. Guinea could mean all of Sub-Bulge West Africa and Barbot tell us that the English “Captain” of Guinea had West Africa from Senegambia to Angola as his remit. It could also mean West Africa from Cape Three Points (Ghana) to the Niger Delta (Nigeria). It probably comes as a relief that that the general consensus is that Guinea applies to what is now called Ghana.

            Barbot being wrong about kankey seems unlikely, as it is an African word and fits with comments made already about the traffic between Ghana (= the Guinea of Barbot) and Angola and the equally attested trade-routes going the other way. Barbot also flatly contradicts the British opinion saying that Pre-Colonial Nigerians were among the West Africans that feared the sea and did not trade at sea. The matter of currents plus that of distance will be picked up shortly. In any case, online histories of early surfing list Peru, Hawaii plus Ghana as important centres of the development of early surfing. This could have been as early as c.2500 B.C. but is more usually attributed to c.1000 B.C.

            The online histories demonstrate that this indicates an intimacy with the sea not the “que’lle horreur” (= great horror) or supposed fear on the part of West Africans. The more so given that youths messing about on boards being washed in to West African shores stood a very good chance of being taken by sharks. Nor should it be overlooked that such Italians as Alvise da Cadamosto (15^th) plus Christopher Columbus (15^th/16^th c.) employed by Portugal and Spain respectively describe just how good they were at swimming, in fact, they are regarded as the best swimmers in the world and this is not confined to Ghana.

            Ghana seems to have also known something of the rites of Agwe/Whu shown for Nigeria and Benin in that Olfert Dapper (17^th c. Dutch) is cited by Rene Baesjou (History in Africa 1988) as showing what appear to have similar rites tied to priests of the (?) god named Nai (= god of the sea of the synthesised Pre-Ga/Ga of Ghana) called Soko/Soco. Burns (ib.) quotes a Yoruba phrase of “eyaoibo ni Fulani” (= the Fulani are from overseas). There are various groups of land-bound wanderers of this kind shown to have fall into this category and a few instances. However, it seems that this was matched by what was said of the Ga of Ghana according to David Henderson-Quartey (The Ga of Ghana 2000).

            If we are looking for sections of otherwise land-locked peoples as sea-borne immigrants, Henderson-Quartey (ib.) also makes obvious that this is not mere cliché when showing that failed kings were “sent home” (= into the sea). Of further relevance is Lacroix (ib.) citing Ptolemy saying that a people on what is now the coast of Ghana were another of the Ichthyophagi/Fish-eating groups but this time called Aphricerones. Lacroix (ib.) relates this to the Akan word of afarefo (= fishermen). Lacroix linked this to the word of [a]flatyelo also meaning fishermen but in the Senufo language of much the same region. De Marees was seen to prove the large fishing-fleets off Ghana. Crews of trade-fleets from here were the ones that baked the unleavened bread called “kankey” knowing that it would not spoil on the voyage”. These sailors received high praise from early Europeans for their skill at sea and were the yardstick by which West African sailors were judged.  

FISHING & SAILING IN WEST AFRICA ABOVE THE BULGE

            The Senufo language was also known in the Ivory Coast and to judge from the maps in the Lacroix book, Ptolemy placed more Ichthyophagi on these same Ghana/IvoryCoast/ Liberia coasts. These were the Ichthyophagi Aethiopes meaning African or Black Fisherman. Given that Ichthyophagi/Fish-eater economies are traceable all round the coast from Egypt in the northeast to Morocco in the northwest, it is curious that that these African fishermen are particularly singled out for their blackness but proximity to the Equator may play a part in this.    

            Lacroix and Lendering agree that commerce brought Hanno to West Africa (& observe what named Ivory Coast & the above-noted trade in rings in various materials). Just here the pilot/interpreters that came with Hanno from further north in Africa stopped being useful to him. Lacroix holds that this indicates that Hanno had reached areas inhabited by speakers of the Kru-group languages. This roughly equates with either of Cape Palmas (Liberia). To the south begins the underside of the Bulge of Africa to the north is the backbone of the Bulge.

            An article by James Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror = MM 1923) also refers to Kru-speakers. Hornell was the leading British maritime historian for most of the 20^th c. The canoe-type named as Kru usually carried a crew of one or two and they were predominantly for fishing. Elizabeth Tonkin (in Stone ib.) adds some Kru are still known as the Fishmen. She also states that they were known as the bravest of West African sailors by early Europeans. Thus it is appropriate that Liberia named called Liberia II. This was the dugout-canoe successfully sailed across the Atlantic by Hannes Lindemann (Alone at Sea 1958 & above). He succeeded on the all-fish diet naming the Ichthyophagi and one group of them were anciently on this very same coast.

            As Sierra Leone is not strictly the Kru homeland, the title of the Hornell article is slightly wrong. Hornell’s title was “The Kru Canoes of Sierra Leone” but Mohamed Yakin (ib.) says the Kru/Krio centre on the sea-coasts of Ivory Coast and/or Liberia. It was shown above the Kru-type was usually small,  was mainly for fishing and no more than two was normal and yet was exactly the type of dugout-canoe that Lindemann took across the Atlantic as Liberia II.

            Yet the “Kru Canoes of Sierra Leone” is a very reasonable title for the Hornell study. After all, it does appear that the Kru type of dugout-canoe is attested in Sierra Leone. It may be that the Kru type was small but according to Pieter de Marees (17^th c Dutch) they could out-speed a European ship in calm seas but it should be said that European cannons would make this risky. For de Marees (in the Van Dantzig & Jones edition for the British Academy 1987), this means the west African dugout-canoe was faster than even a European ship in full rig. This puts them at the opposite end of the size-range from those met with by the Portuguese at the mouth of the River Gambia leading to a Portuguese retreat that was less drastic than that in Guinea-Bissau.

            Guinea-Bissau is outside what most would have defined as “Guinea” but as ex-Portuguese “Guinea”, the colonial term is partly retained in Guinea-Bissau.  Bassey Andah (in The Archaeology of Af. edd. Messrs. Shaw, Sinclair, Andah & Akpoko 1995) says this was an area of early African farming-systems. The yams, sorghum, African rice, etc, that attest the earliest west African crops, are apparently emerging between c.8000/4000 B.C. and are fully underway by c.2000/1500 B. C. at latest and develop independently of anywhere else. Porteres (in Shaw et al ib.) plus Roger Blench (The Prehistoric Movement of Plants between Africa & India online) show they spread eastwards to outside Africa at an early date. It seems it is in the mass-handling of these African crops that the first large urban centres develop and again without stimulus and/or influence from outside.

            Andah (ib.) puts much of the development in Guinea-Bissau to the Dyula, a name that Yakin (ib.) was seen to write means trader in Mande and that Dyula and Wangara were synonyms. Alongside this is the Wikipedia online article on Guinea-Bissau stating that it was a pivotal point in the Pre-European West African sea-trade. A powerful fleet was built up and it saw off attempted Portuguese invasions in 1535 that only finally succeeded in 1936. It is said the colonial administration there was one of the most brutal of anywhere in Africa.   

            The Bissau part of the name comes from the islands making up the Bissago/Bijaggo Archipeligo. At what date West Africans settled there is uncertain. However, Stecchini (online ib.) wants to attach them to a visit by Hanno and Lacroix to a report by Ptolemy. The Bissagans are ethnically very similar but one group apparently speaks a language unintelligible to the others and others are partly so. Between 1000/500 years is usually allowed for the development of a language. This presumably means that on what is being said in this paragraph, the present inhabitants were in place between 500/100 B.C. at latest and in getting from the mainland to the islands, some narrow channels had to be crossed that were/are fished by the indigenous population.

These narrow channels are held to be treacherous and that West Africans could not cross between the mainland coast and the nearest islands. This is despite the fact that the islands had an existing population; that it had possibly been there for millennia but certainly for centuries; had been fished by the islanders for most of that time; the powerful fleet that as seen above, prevented Portuguese conquest for four centuries; the sea-trade so successful for centuries; etc.

Much of this is neatly encapsulated by the Cape Verdes, as this group of islands is also part of “proving” that West Africans could not have been reached them as part of something more general. King Juba II of Mauretania (1^st c. B.C. /1^st c. A. D., as Pliny) plus al-Idrissi (13^th c. Arab) describe buildings but no people in West African islands. This is frequently taken to be the Canary Islands but cannot be so because the Canaries have had a settled population for millennia and it can be proven this was so. Ptolemy gave coordinates for the Canary Islands that Lacroix (ib.) says suits the Cape Verdes better.

This makes it the more likely that it is the Cape Verdes being referred to by al-Idrissi and a reason for buildings and no people were seen is adequately explained in terms of seasonal fishing-camps and belong with the several instances of islands known but not settled till very much later (as already seen). Interpretation of what is said by Pacheco Pereira cited in Mchael Bradley's “Dawn Discovery” (1991), seems to attest West Africans "100 leagues" (= c. 300 miles) out to sea. This is also nearly the distance between the Cape Verdes and Senegal with that between these islands and Mauritania being 400/450 miles. These distances were exceeded by Gabonese canoes; (?) the 12-month Yoruba voyages; the non-stop crossing of the Atlantic by Hannes Lindemann, etc.

The canoes that Lacroix says did not reach the Cape Verdes were those of the Wolofs but yet another island perhaps attaching to the Wolofs is the variously spelt Cerne (off the coast of what is now Mauretania). Cerne is recorded by Hanno and is often taken to be a version of Canar/Cannar or Ganar/Gannar. That West African canoes could and did reach the Cape Verdes is proven by no less than Bartolome las Casas (friend & early chronicler of Columbus). The main island of the group is Sao Tiago and west of it  is Fogo/Fuego and from there came the informants of las Casas (15^th/16^th c. Spaniard). West of Fuego is Brava but it is far too tiny to have been the final destination of the cargo-laden canoes described by las Casas and yet west of Brava is only the open Atlantic and which again reminds us of the descriptive term of “small ships”.

Proving that west African canoes were in the Cape Verdes and that they can be seen to have been cargo-laden on purposeful voyages west of the same island-group takes us to other voyages on the Atlantic that were not always witting ones. These are ones where the south-flowing Canarian Current veers west and becomes the west-flowing North Equatorial Current. One method of avoiding unwitting voyages across the Atlantic on these so-called conveyor-belt currents was the volta del mar (= turn at sea in Portuguese). This suggests this knowledge came from the Portuguese. However, it is generally agreed that this knowledge is securely tied to actual crossings to the Americas and the first recorded voyage of someone from south Europe doing so is that of Columbus not anyone from Portugal, so the question is where Columbus have learnt this technique?

An answer comes in “Africa: A Place in the Discovery of America” by William Stevenson (in Fortune 1987 & online). He shows conclusively that Columbus gained most of his Atlantic expertise in the West African islands. Columbus plus Cadamosto (an Italian working for the Portuguese) were seen to have felt that Guinea Africans were the best swimmers in the world and Barbot says just this of the Senegalese. This was coupled above with what is said in online histories of early surfing to indicate an intimacy with and not a fear of the sea.

Cadamosto encountered massive canoes at the mouth of the River Gambia that sound galley-like. Also galley-like were the fast ships on the Egypt-to-Punt trips to outrun probable Red Sea pirates. Casson (ib.) says this was what galleys were for and such non-Africans on West African coasts as Hanno, Eudoxus, the Vivaldos, etc, consistently sailed in galleys. This should be telling us something about the West African vessels that they were presumably outrunning and to this can be added that the Gambia type canoes were rowed not paddled.

The sleek Egyptian ships just referred to, Greek galleys plus canoes of the Gambia type all shared something else, in having fighting-men aboard. The warriors in the Gambian canoes were highly disciplined. Cadamosto reported that they only fired their missiles at the Portuguese ships of Cadamosto’s fleet at a given signal when they fired them in unison at the ships. It seems likely that the Senegambians were probably not averse to a little piracy when the opportunity presented itself but otherwise these showy canoes were part of the protection of the maritime interests of the rulers in Senegambia (= Senegal plus Gambia).

This can be taken as guarding the maritime end of trading also occurring on land and river. Probably the most famous overland trade in Africa is that across the Sahara. On the opinion that this was not possible until the introduction of the camel by the Romans, above suggested dates just cannot have been so. Local resources may play a part in the rise of the ksour; the great increase in their being built; the Libyco/Berber raids; the rise of the Dhar Tichitt Tradition (= Late Prehistoric in Mali/Mauritania.), Garamantes (starting between1000 & 500 B.C.), Jenne-Jeno, the Wakar or Ouagadou/Wagadu (= Old Ghana) Empire (starting? c.300 B.C. /300 A.D.).

However, local resources are unlikely to provide the whole answer and the cross-desert trade must have played a major part and it is noteworthy that the title of Law’s article was “The Garamantes & Trans-Saharan Enterprise in Classical Times” and Parker (ib.) tied this to the Wangara said by Mohammed Yakin (African Peoples & Nations 2001) to mean trader in Mande. Henry Parker (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute = JRAI 1923) says that Wa nGara (Children of G.)/Wangara was also an archaic Soudanic term for the speakers of languages belonging to that vast linguistic family of West Africa called Mande. Nor should we overlook Mande/Mante combines with Gara to give Garamande/Garamante.

Parker (ib.) further alludes to a series of towns taken from the Garamantes by a Roman army led by Cornelius Balbus (1^st c. B. C. Roman). For this he was awarded a Triumph at Rome according to Pliny. The Plinian list is discussed by Lhote (as Law), Law (ib.), Parker (ib.) plus others. It runs Dasibari, Barracum, Balsa, Alasi, Galla, Tapsacum, etc. Henri Lhote gave Dasibari as Da Isa Bari (= Great River of Da= the Niger). Parker saw Baracum as Barakunda (=? Boat-town & note Barokunda in Gambian placenames); Alasi as Lasikunda (= Closed Village); Balsa as Balusa (= Goat-town/market); Tapsacum as Tabusa (= Market under the Fig-tree); Galla as Galla (= Assembly/Market-place).

This name-list emphasises once again, the importance of traders and/or markets. Equally to the point is that Parker renders the Latin words through the medium of Mande and regards this as proof positive of the Mande/Garamante linkage. This fits with such as Gaituli; Mauri (? leading clan[s] of the Gaituli); Melano-Getuli (= Black Gaituli); Leuk-Aithiopes (= White Africans); Sanhaja (of 22 Black & 19 Berber clans); Showa (African in all but name & language). The African element was well to the fore till the 12^th c. (see “Phoenicians in West Europe” online for more on the Garamantes). No wonder John Pory (17^th c. Eng.) is quoted in Bovill’s (The Golden Trade of the Moors 1958) making reference to “Black” (& note the tautological term of Blackamoor & that both parts mean black) plus tawny Moors. In short, there were both “Blacka”moors plus Moors with lighter skins.

Nor should the fortress-like nature of the Tibesti (Algeria) and the High Atlas (Morocco) Mountains as places of refuge be forgotten. The more so given that the very archaic feature of members of the same tribe not having personal names is recorded of the Tibesti Aethiopes by Gustav Nachtigal (18^th/19^th c. German) and the inhabitants of the High Atlas by Herodotus (5^th c. B. C. Greek). This is thus shown right across the Magreb and so too is the connection by Pausanias (2^nd B. C. Greek) of the Nasamones and the Atrantes/Atlantes. The Atrantes/Atarantes and Atalantes/Atalantes were seen as separate by Herodotus but this is doubted by such as R. L. Smith (ib.), Michael Skupin (The Carthaginian Columbus online), etc. They regard them as one people. Reinforcing this has been/will be what is said of the, Gaituli, Proto/Early-Wolofs, Lixitae, Atlantes/Atrantes, Ganari/Canari, etc.

From what is said by Messrs. Smith (ib.) plus Winters (Atlantis in Mexico 2006), Gaituli in West Africa and new in Old-Egyptian respectively both mean “From the South”. In Africa, “From the South” still tends to indicate someone from Sub-Saharan Africa. In short, an Aethiope/Aithiope or African is being described. Herodotus refers to Aethiopes as the tallest of all humans but is generally recognised as meaning east Africans, whereas, Ps.-Scylax saying almost the same is placing West Africans as amongst the tallest humans. Cadamosto wrote of muscular men on the Senegambian side of the Senegal and much punier ones on the Saharan side and there is the Wolof tradition that this was once the ancient kingdom of Gannaria and it had a Wolof king but that it was abandoned. Given that this Gannar Coast is also the western fringe of the Sahara forming the coast of the modern state of Mauretania, reasons for both the punier humans plus the abandonment present themselves.

Rivers by the name of Dra/Draa/Dara neatly bracket this coast of Wolofia/Gannar/Mauretania. Closely related is Ndara (the Wolof name for St. Louis, Senegal) on the River Draa (the Wolof for the River Senegal). North of the Gannaria/Ganar Coast are the foothills of the Atlas Mountains. Here runs the Oued/Wadi (= River) Dra/Draa. Other Wolof words include Barokunda/Barakunda = Boat-town) in Gambia and Senegal and recall Gambian used to describe the giant sea-going canoes met with by Cadamosto at the mouth of the Gambia. From the Wolof sunugal (= [? Place of] our canoes) seemingly comes the name of Senegal. It is surely significant that Old-Egyptian Djahi (= Phoenicia) and Wolof Djahi (= Senegal) both mean “Place of Navigation” and for the Phoenico/Punic (= Phoenician & Carthaginian) there is absolutely no problem identifying them as sailors.

Many writers identify the northern Dra with the River Lixos that “Hanno” (= the text of the Periplus of Hanno) says named the people called the Lixitae but the Lixos cannot really be located with any more accuracy than vaguely somewhere in south Morocco. The Skupin translation of “Hanno” has the Lixos as a river not of “Libya” (= Af. west of Egypt = the Magreb for Skupin) but of “Aithiopia” (= Af. sth. of Egypt on the Skupin model) and that this means the Lixitae were Aethiopes not Libyans as will be seen for all the populations along this same coast.

Hanno described the Lixitae as herders and Parker (ib.) saw them as fisher/seamen. They appear to have been one of the several African groups acting as interpreters for Hanno. Only the Lixitae are described in this role but at a point identified as somewhere near Ivory Coast/Liberia, they stopped being useful to him but others are described as interpreters and it will be very obvious that they were non-Lixitae. On the basis of the parallels of the Phoenico/Punics and early Portuguese trading on the Atlantic coasts of Africa and the west Africans noted in Portuguese log-books, it will be self-evident that west Africans were also pilot/guides on voyages of the Phoenicians plus Carthaginians.

Reasons have been given for following a possible route of metalworkers from Mauritania to Morocco plus Iberia have been tentatively put forward in the Africans in Early Europe section of West Africa & The Atlantic in Antiquity. It is unknown and will always be probably unknowable if the Gaituli confederacy belongs here too in tying modern Mauritania with ancient Mauretania (now mainly Morocco & recall the slight difference in spelling) by including the Lixitae but given what will be said about the populations on the same coasts, it is probably reasonable to place their ancestors among those “From the South”.

It has long seemed to me that the leading lights of the Gaituli were the Mauri. The connection of the two names is seemingly confirmed by the Gaitulian label pinned on the dye-industry established in the Canary Islands by the King of the Mauri called Juba II. Mauri has been seen as but one of several Greek and Roman words meaning black and the Gaitulian/Mauri linkage with the Canaries gives us some maritime connection that is further proven by the fact there was also a Mauri fleet. Probably making this more secure is the Palmer translation of The Voyage of Hanno (= The Voyage of Hanno down the west coast of Africa 1931). Palmer tells us that several Mande-like words occurred in the Canaries and the interesting thing is that many are indicative of political development. 

From what is said by such as Smith, Skupin plus others, there is no valid reason to separate the Atlantes and Atarantes as was done by Herodotus and they will treated here as being one people under the name of the Atlantes. This relates closely to those of Atlas (both as mountains & the giant Titan or demi-god), Atlantic (= Sea of Atlas), Atlantis (= island of the Atlantic), Atlantides (= islands of the Atlantic), etc. Linking the Titan with the mountain(s) is the myth of Perseus getting Atlas to look on the face of the Gorgon named Medusa and being turned into stone.

The pens of Gustav Nachtigal (19^th c. German) and Herodotus (5^th c. B. C. Greek) attest the sharing of the archaic feature of no personal surnames from the Tibu of the Tibesti Mountains (south Libya/north Chad) and the Atlantes of the Atlas Mountain. In short, right across the Magreb/Sahara and too is the comparison of the Nasamones and Atlantes made by Pausanias (2^nd c. B. C. Greek). This is made all the stronger by comments of Meek (ib) plus Herodotus. Meek saying Nasamones means “Negroes of Ammon” and that Amun/Amon/Ammon is a frequent part of African names/part-names. Herodotus tells us the Atlantes constantly complained of sunburnt skins, so they too were Aithiopes on the Greek definition.

Large-stone or megalithic structures are said to have an “empire-like” distribution across the Sahara by Natalya Marquand (The Megaliths & Stone Circles of Morocco & their relationships to those of the Med. & Eur.). There is opinion to the effect that some of this attaches to the Dar Tichitt/Wakar/Mali/Songhai sequence of empires. These large empires make it all the more intelligible that someone like Atlas in West Africa could also be seen as the ruler of another vast empire that in his case was Atlantis. Not only was Atlas placed firmly in West Africa, so too were his “family”.

It has already been shown that the earliest West African urbanism arose from centres handling large amounts of crops of almost entirely West African origin and this was at dates well anterior to the arrival of Islam or Europe in West Africa. As these urban centres got larger, they grew into nations and then into large empires covering several ethnicities. Examples may include the large Aethiopian city shown by Ps-Scylax at the mouth of what is generally seen as the Senegal and frequented by Phoenicians; Jenne-Jeno from excavation plus what is said by Lacroix (ib); Lixos (Morocco) from the above plus what is said by Hecataeus of Abdera (? 6^th c/5^th c. B.C. Greek); the last five of the six cities reported as settled by Hanno were in the nature of reoccupation of existing cities.

In tandem with this is the aforesaid emergence of large empires and in what they represent are large entities of multiple ethnicities under ruler. In common with all great empires, there is the rise and fall of those in West Africa. However, at dates when most of the modern states now making up Europe were hardly embryonic let alone developed states, in west Africa there were stable regimes with stable and ordered  hereditary succession to throne of whoever the founder of the dynasty was.

A number of maritime analogies apply to the Sahara. One is that the sea of sand that is this desert has a shore called Sahel meaning shore in Arabic and closely relating to Swahili who as sea-going Bantus very definitely offer no problems about maritime history. Another is the clichéd camel as the ship of the desert but not nearly so well known is the camel-necked mtepe/dau as the camel of the sea (& note the type of Phoenician vessel described in the Greek language as the hippoi [= work] horse of the sea).

The Sahara is as trackless as any sea and stars plus birds were anciently used to navigate across both sand and sea and Herodotus has some interesting remarks to make about the latter. He wrote of black birds attached to the origin-myths the cult-shrines to Zeus Ammon at Siwa (Egypt) plus Dodona (Greece) and rationalises this to read that this really refers to Africans with sing-song voices. Thus when we further read that black birds guided the lost Alexander the Great plus party across the desert to Siwa, it will be immediately obvious that this is an oblique reference to Africans who are in this role. When to this is added that Arabic writers state that such as the Malian cities of Gao (= Kaukau), Timbuctoo, Jenne-Jeno, etc, provided priest/magicians thousands of miles across the desert for the Egyptian Mystery System (= EMS) in Pharaohonic days, it will be self-evident that the Siwa Blacks were not the only African priests in the Sahara. Backing this up would be what has already been said about the Nasamones were also “Negroes” plus that the Siwa shrine was in their territory. Beside this is that even if Greeks were a little shy of stating so openly, there is the Toffut al-Alabi (12^th c. Arabic text cited by Van Sertima 1976) saying Negroes guided the great caravans across the Sahara “because they knew the ways of the stars and birds”.

Gomez Zurara (15^th c. /16^th c. Portuguese) confirms use of bird-flight for navigation across the Sahara Desert and this has been shown several times above for other parts of Africa. To what has been said about the anciently-told Nasamonian connection across the Magreb/Sahara to the Atlantes can be added what has also been written about the linkage of the Tibu sharing their name with the Tibesti Mountains and the Atlantes sharing their name with the Atlas Mountains.

Navigation across the Sahara plus mention of the Atlantes returns us to Atlas and the traits he shares with Umlindi. Both were giants; both were turned to stone; this happened via female agency; both mark their respective corners of Africa; both acquired European names when they became to Europe; both had very links with the sea. The maritime ties of Umlindi were shown above but those of Atlas are shown by Homer describing Atlas as a magician knowing the depths of the sea. He is further linked to the sea as (?) founder/king of Atlantis.

In accounts of Abubakri II of the Malian Empire by Arabic writers, there is mention of him sending a fleet “to find the other bank of the Atlantic & Lands Beyond” but that only a single ship came back. The lone survivor of a particular battle, flood, famine or some other disaster is a worldwide folkloric theme that serves to provide a mechanism by which the tale unfolds. Another example of a single survivor of a sea-disaster comes from the other side of Africa in the form of the Egyptian “Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor” and it too has mythic/folkoric themes but is generally treated as serious history (also see West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity; Abubakri II: Who He?). In discussing the shared Umlindi/Atlas traits, it was seen that some are mentioned by Homer who is seen by some as the 10^th c. B.C. writer of material that again contains that is plainly mythical but again his work has merited serious study by historians. So the “knowing the depths of the sea” has been around in west Africa for a very long time and is confirmed by the captain of our returnee ship described as reporting an “undersea stream” that many would identify with the “conveyor-belt currents otherwise known as combined Canarian/North Equatorial Currents.

It is well known that the myths generally show Atlas in the light of what in English idiom “is as thick as two planks”. Well to the fore in most of the world’s great religions is the retreat to a high place to commune with gods/god and it seems likely that the original of Atlas did this and this further makes it probable that he was from within the Atlas population already seen from ancient sources to have been black. Nor would this original of Atlas have been alone. Another African retreating to the Atlas Mountains was Abu Ibn Bakri Musa (12^th c.). Around his murabit (= hermitage) grew the reform movement of western Islam called the al-Murabitun (= Men of Faith = Almoravids). The reaction in turn against it in west Africa was by Ibn Tudmar (12^th c/13^th c.) called al-Muwaidun (=? Proclaimers of the Faith = Almohades).

Another ancient feature seemingly confirmed by these West African ascetics is that of conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (= Spain & Portugal). There is reference by Procopius (5^th c. A. D. Greek) to an African invasion of Iberia long before his time. It may be this connects with Strabo (1^st c. B.C. Greek) telling us Tearko (= Taharquo) of Kush got as far west as the Pillars of Hercules (= Straits of Gibraltar), al-Masudi (9^th/10^th c. Arab) mentioning a split between Kushites and Nubians and the former going right (= west) plus al-Makary (see below) talking of Africans invading Iberia. Equally, there is the likelihood that it follows a long line of such invasions from West Africa. Those of the al-Murabitun/Almoravids plus al-Muwaidun/Almohades are all too often claimed as “Arabic” but of the four recognised Islamic conquests of Iberia those of the Almoravids plus Almohades are almost solely west African. We also note that not only was the basis of Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War the Moroccan troops that he brought with him but they were termed Moros/Moors (= Blacks).

Beyond the Atlas Mountains were a people who were probably a vestigial population if it can be accepted that Pliny was describing the Canari. When the same word is applied to the islands opposite the Atlas range, it comes to mind that he claims the name comes from large canes (= dogs). However, no evidence for these large dogs in Pre-Spanish times in the Canary Islands has ever been found. In any case, where the name really originates has already been hinted at.

The spellings of the word(s) are various and appear to include Gannar, Ganar, Cannar, Canar, Cerne, etc. As the Gannar/Ganar Coast, this was the territory that the Wolofs were seen to have abandoned and now is not just the western fringes of the Sahara but also the coast of modern Mauritania. As Gannar it also occurs in the Gannaria extrema (= Gannar Peninsula = Ras Nouadibou = ex-Cap Blanc) of Ptolemy. Applied to islands, it seems Cerne was probably one of the islands in the Bay of Arguin and as Canary applies to islands opposite the Atlas region at some 90 miles distance.

If those following the opinion that where Pliny places more of the (?) same people are correct to do so, the Canari/Ganari were not just west of the Atlas range but also to the north of those same mountains. Having already identified the name as originating with the Wolofs, the remarks of Ps.-Scylax, Strabo plus Procopius have great interest. Strabo held that Aithiopes held the West African coast up to Dyris (the Atlas region). Ps-Scylax described all the inhabitants of the African west coast as Aithiopes. Procopius was shown to have recorded a tradition still extant in his time that Aithiopes invaded the Iberian Peninsula millennia before his days.

To these traditions of West Africans crossing the seas west to the Canaries plus north to Iberia, more is added. Notable here are Atlas known from as early as Homer as the great navigator of the Atlantic and sharing his name with the Ocean plus his “Daughters” being known variously as the Hesperides (=Islands of the West), Atlantides (= Islands of the Atlantic), Pleiades (= Sailor’s Islands), etc. This makes it very obvious where the Greeks thought Atlas plus family came from.

That this is also an enduring tradition amongst West African sailors is shown in “Abubakri II: Who He?” It seems Pleiades originates in Greek plein (to sail). As stars, their rise on the horizon began the fishing and sailing season over much of the world and this is recognised by Messrs Bass (as Jarita Holbrook 1998) plus Holbrook (Archaeoastronomy & Ethnoarchaeology = AEN ib.) in West Africa (esp. note the Bozos of West Africa). Nor is the notion of sailing-stars unknown in West Africa (as shown above) and it is observed that Pleiades seems to translate as Sailing-stars.

Not does only northwest Africa appear the most logical place to end of navigation along West African coasts but also that shown as having happened across the Sahara Desert. With the Atlas family seen to involve West African islands, is this not very directly echoed by what has been/will be said about Christopher Columbus and where he acquired his Atlantic expertise and who from?

Harry Bourne