Will King Charles APOLOGISE For the Destruction of Benin City in 1897?


16th century Benin City was described as ‘wealthy and industrious, well-governed and richly decorated’.


According to the UK Guardian newspaper, ''With its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the Great Wall of China, Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a place of ‘thievery and murder’.''

The paper went on:

''The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.

The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours ..to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet''.

Benin City was also one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.

When the Portuguese first “discovered” the city in 1485, they were stunned to find this vast kingdom made of hundreds of interlocked cities and villages in the middle of the African jungle. They called it the “Great City of Benin”, .... Indeed, they classified Benin City as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities in the world.

In 1691, the Portuguese ship captain Lourenco Pinto observed: “Great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon; all the streets run straight and as far as the eye can see. The houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses.”

In contrast, London at the same time is described by Bruce Holsinger, professor of English at the University of Virginia, as being a city of “thievery, prostitution, murder, bribery and a thriving black market made the medieval city ripe for exploitation by those with a skill for the quick blade or picking a pocket”.


African fractals

Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design. The mathematician Ron Eglash, author of African Fractals – which examines the patterns underpinning architecture, art and design in many parts of Africa – notes that the city and its surrounding villages were purposely laid out to form perfect fractals, with similar shapes repeated in the rooms of each house, and the house itself, and the clusters of houses in the village in mathematically predictable patterns.

As he puts it: “When Europeans first came to Africa, they considered the architecture very disorganised and thus primitive. It never occurred to them that the Africans might have been using a form of mathematics that they hadn’t even discovered yet.”

At the centre of the city stood the king’s court, from which extended 30 very straight, broad streets, each about 120-ft wide. These main streets, which ran at right angles to each other, had underground drainage made of a sunken impluvium with an outlet to carry away storm water. Many narrower side and intersecting streets extended off them....

“Houses are built alongside the streets in good order, the one close to the other,” writes the 17th-century Dutch visitor Olfert Dapper. “Adorned with gables and steps … they are usually broad with long galleries inside, especially so in the case of the houses of the nobility, and divided into many rooms which are separated by walls made of red clay, very well erected.”

Dapper adds that wealthy residents kept these walls “as shiny and smooth by washing and rubbing as any wall in Holland can be made with chalk, and they are like mirrors. The upper storeys are made of the same sort of clay. Moreover, every house is provided with a well for the supply of fresh water”.

The early foreign explorers’ descriptions of Benin City portrayed it as a place free of crime and hunger, with large streets and houses kept clean; a city filled with courteous, honest people, and run by a centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy.

The city was split into 11 divisions, each a smaller replication of the king’s court, comprising a sprawling series of compounds containing accommodation, workshops and public buildings – interconnected by innumerable doors and passageways, all richly decorated with the art that made Benin famous. The city was literally covered in it.

The exterior walls of the courts and compounds were decorated with horizontal ridge designs (agben) and clay carvings portraying animals, warriors and other symbols of power – the carvings would create contrasting patterns in the strong sunlight. Natural objects (pebbles or pieces of mica) were also pressed into the wet clay, while in the palaces, pillars were covered with bronze plaques illustrating the victories and deeds of former kings and nobles.

At the height of its greatness in the 12th century – well before the start of the European Renaissance – the kings and nobles of Benin City patronised craftsmen and lavished them with gifts and wealth, in return for their depiction of the kings’ and dignitaries’ great exploits in intricate bronze sculptures.





“These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan, formerly of the Berlin Ethnological Museum. “Benvenuto Celini could not have cast them better, nor could anyone else before or after him. Technically, these bronzes represent the very highest possible achievement.”

What impressed the first visiting Europeans most was the wealth, artistic beauty and magnificence of the city. Immediately European nations saw the opportunity to develop trade with the wealthy kingdom, importing ivory, palm oil and pepper – and exporting guns. At the beginning of the 16th century, word quickly spread around Europe about the beautiful African city, and new visitors flocked in from all parts of Europe, with ever glowing testimonies, recorded in numerous voyage notes and illustrations.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace
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1897 - ENTER THE BRITISH

The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a brutal invasion by a British force comprising thousands of men under Sir Harry Rawson. The great city of Benin was bombarded, looted, and burnt to the ground, its great multi-storeyed buildings and monuments burned down to ashes, and thousands of its inhabitants killed or forced to flee the rampaging British forces. Thousands of treasures were looted from the Oba's palace and taken to England, with most still stored at the British museum in London to this day.


Will King Charles III finally APOLOGISE for the brutal, ungodly invasion and destruction of Benin City in 1897, since his mother failed to do so?
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After apology, what else?

Ussycool:
After apology, what else?

REPARATIONS.

Bini was the only empire in the South. How they achieve that greatness should be studied

Face your leaders stop the blame game

byteem:
Face your leaders stop the blame game

No, you spokesman for mass murderers. We will not 'forget' our history, and how your masters disrupted our development with their greed and evil bloodlust.

British ar full of evil. Wicked people

So bad now

They need to pay back all the resources and money they stole from Africa just like German government is paying Israeli and Poland billions every year.
Those people owned Africans trillions of dollars

15th century Benin City showing order, greenery, and ...streetlights.



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TODAY.
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Ancient Benin Bronzes, British Museum, London

bump

There is a concerted effort to see to a global movement to end the British monarchy and every other existing one in the planet and it all began from that OSU lesbian and Jeff Bezzos.

Bezzos deliberately gave that woman's tweet wings and it was to instigate a debate that will lead to protesting the monarchy towards making the transition to a Judaic neo liberal corporate order easier.

Already, igbos are leading this charge and the OP is one of them.


A people without a culture or heritage or history of monarchies wil of course want to see to an end of the proud heritage of other people.

Igbos have been foolishly proclaiming their lack of rulers just as a bastard will boast of not having a father.

Monarchies are a stumbling block to the international judean bent on a global conquest as monarchies are the very symbol of national, cultural and sovereign pride.

It is for this reason the Jewish Bolsheviks murdered the entire Romanov family to pave way for their reign of red terror.

Like the Igbo, the Jew has had no king albeit for 2,000ys.

It is even considered a polite insults from Jews if they crown you as their king just as they did to Christ and of late, Donald Trump whom Jews hated and labelled him King of the Jews. The last American president to get this label from Jews worldwide was John F. Kennedy and we all know how he ended up.

This Igbo Zionism, as I have been screaming here will cause much suffering to us as it is the major putsch for another round of Igbo Marxism which Peter Obi represents.

^^^ What is this one saying?

See mumurity.

Quintopia:


No, you spokesman for mass murderers. We will not 'forget' our history, and how your masters disrupted our development with their greed and evil bloodlust.

I think you should blame African kings and collaborators who British used to fight Benin Army.

seunny4lif:
They need to pay back all the resources and money they stole from Africa just like German government is paying Israeli and Poland billions every year.
Those people owe Africans trillions of dollars

You are right.

I reckon that Divine Judgement of some sort will befall the west at some point in the future.

Karma is a bitch, like they say.

joyandfaith:


I think you should blame African kings and collaborators who British used to fight Benin Army.

The NAZIS used Jewish collaborators in their mass murder of that group in the 1940s and 50s.

That has not removed one iota of culpability from Hitler and the Nazis for the Holocaust.

Powerful entities with superior weaponry and finance are always able to rope in collaborators in their target populations. It's the easiest thing for them. To use that as a way to exculpate them of their atrocities is actually inhuman.

Quintopia:


The NAZIS used Jewish collaborators in their mass murder of that group in the 1940s and 50s. That has not removed one iota of culpability from Hitler and the Nazis in the holocaust.

After this your long note .

Will you blame uju for harbouring hate for the queen , from her own experience?

Bontafa:



After this your long note .

Will you blame uju for harbouring hate for the queen , from her own experience?

She has traced the destruction of her family in the 1960s to the British imperialists.

Her point is simple. The British invaded her region, Igboland, killed thousands of innocent people, and forced them into a union with 250 other ethnic groups, simply for ease of administration as they exploited our resources.

After independence in the 1960s, the union showed friction and her people wanted to leave the contraption.

Britain supported and sent weapons to Nigeria to crush the rebellion and maintain the union.

Her family members were killed in the conflict.

See, for her, British imperialism isn't something one reads about in a book.

It happened to her directly, and still affects her today, live and direct.

So she has every right on Earth to say whatever she wants to say about the woman that headed the British govt as these atrocities took place.

OP, in your bid to be mischievous & clever by half, you failed to reveal to the readers what the Benin Empire did to the British to warrant such destruction.
You mischievously skipped that part in order to paint the British as evil & the Benin Empire as innocent victims of the British superior force.
We all know that even the vilest of people won't just attack & destroy another without a genuine & morally acceptable reason, not to talk of the British who were at the peak of world civilization at that time.
The Benin Empire were neck-deep in human sacrifice & other atrocious acts deemed morally unacceptable. They attacked & killed unarmed British officials on a peaceful mission in their territory in a deadly ambush.
The British had no option than to pacify them & destroy their atrocious land filled with human sacrifices.
The Benin city you were painting in your narrative was not really an Utopia of some sorts as you seem to portray.
The empire thrived by conquering others before it & it is only natural that inevitably, a more powerful & superior empire ( in this case, the British ), will one day kick it's ass.
Or will you tell me that the Benin folks never destroyed, plunder & even massacre others to form their own?

Stop blaming the British for all your woes & misfortunes, at least you got civilized & brought out of darkness through them.

Lastly, King Charles ain't gonna apologize for any shit.
Deal with it.

Uptheante:
OP, in your bid to be mischievous & clever by half, you failed to reveal to the readers what the Benin Empire did to the British to warrant such destruction.
You mischievously skipped that part in order to paint the British as evil & the Benin Empire as innocent victims of the British superior force.
We all know that even the vilest of people won't just attack & destroy another without a genuine & morally acceptable reason, not to talk of the British who were at the peak of world civilization at that time.

You are a clown of the first order. Not just a clown, but a conditioned clown and bamboozled buffoon.

Have you asked yourself what the British were doing in 'Nigeria' in the first place?

Do you know why they invaded areas known today as Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, South Africa etc?

See, if your brain reasons this deep, then you will ignore the silly excuses made by the British, for their invasions.

They invaded every where else and burnt them down if resisted. What 'provocation' led to those other atrocities?

It wasn't just Benin you know....

See, once an imperialist invader has identified your land as containing the resources he needs, the next thing is to find a way to get it off you.

If you are dumb enough to fall for his specific, published ''reasons'' or ''grievances'' for invading this or that land in your territory, then you have a real problem mentally.

Could be an IQ issue.

The Benin Empire were neck-deep in human sacrifice & other atrocious acts deemed morally unacceptable. They attacked & killed unarmed British officials on a peaceful mission in their territory in a deadly ambush.
The British had no option than to pacify them & destroy their atrocious land filled with human sacrifices.

Oh sure. These are claims made by the British. WE DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE TRUE.

Why should you believe the words of an invader?

Will he say you were just minding your business and he came in and bombarded your city for no reason?

Of course he will paint you in the worst possible light, to justify his destruction of your foremost city, and his carting away of your treasures.

Strange how NOT ONE of the numerous Dutch, Portuguese accounts of Benin over 3 centuries prior, ever mentions a 'human sacrifice'.

It just so happened to be the British who wanted to colonise and loot your resources in 1897, that saw a city covered with human sacrifices everywhere.

Try to dey use your brain small nau.

The Benin city you were painting in your narrative was not really an Utopia of some sorts as you seem to portray.

It wasn't me portraying it. It was ancient European visitors to the city.

Eyewitness testimony.

The empire thrived by conquering others before it & it is only natural that inevitably, a more powerful & superior empire ( in this case, the British ), will one day kick it's ass.
Or will you tell me that the Benin folks never destroyed, plunder & even massacre others to form their own?

There is a difference between conquest to enrich and conquest to exploit. The regions that made up the Benin Empire were largely autonomous, and prospered greatly.

The British Empire was all about exploiting the territories (colonies) for their raw materials, pocketing the proceeds, and leaving the people starving and impoverished, and their lands underdeveloped.

Stop blaming the British for all your woes & misfortunes

Bodyguard for the British, we only asked for an apology, and restitution for the crimes committed.

Do you tell the European Jews not to blame the Nazis for their ''woes and misfortunes''?

No? SO SHUT YOUR DIRTY LIPS.

at least you got civilized & brought out of darkness through them

But precolonial Benin City had streetlights, underground drainage, well-built houses, no slums, and a crime rate of zero.

People built no front doors to their houses. It was inconceivable for a person to enter another's house to steal or commit a crime. So what was the need for a front door?

Or gate?

Or fence with barbed wire and broken glass?

Like you have today in your ''civilized'' mumu existence, featuring high crime rates, corruption, armed robbery, slum dwellings, 419, terrorism, kidnapping, thuggery, and banditry.

TRUTH IS THE PEOPLE OF ANCIENT BENIN WERE 1,000 TIMES MORE CIVILIZED THAN YOU AND THE BRITISH COMBINED.

Lastly, King Charles ain't gonna apologize for any shit.
Deal with it.

No worries. He will apologise when he comes before his MAKER.

JewsAreSatanic:
There is a concerted effort to see to a global movement to end the British monarchy and every other existing one in the planet and it all began from that OSU lesbian and Jeff Bezzos.

Bezzos deliberately gave that woman's tweet wings and it was to instigate a debate that will lead to protesting the monarchy towards making the transition to a Judaic neo liberal corporate order easier.

Already, igbos are leading this charge and the OP is one of them.


A people without a culture or heritage or history of monarchies wil of course want to see to an end of the proud heritage of other people.

Igbos have been foolishly proclaiming their lack of rulers just as a bastard will boast of not having a father.

Monarchies are a stumbling block to the international judean bent on a global conquest as monarchies are the very symbol of national, cultural and sovereign pride.

It is for this reason the Jewish Bolsheviks murdered the entire Romanov family to pave way for their reign of red terror.

Like the Igbo, the Jew has had no king albeit for 2,000ys.

It is even considered a polite insults from Jews if they crown you as their king just as they did to Christ and of late, Donald Trump whom Jews hated and labelled him King of the Jews. The last American president to get this label from Jews worldwide was John F. Kennedy and we all know how he ended up.

This Igbo Zionism, as I have been screaming here will cause much suffering to us as it is the major putsch for another round of Igbo Marxism which Peter Obi represents.

Who be this hateful soul.
Someone wrote something and you are turning it to the Igbos, Are you not more satanic?

JewsAreSatanic:
There is a concerted effort to see to a global movement to end the British monarchy and every other existing one in the planet and it all began from that OSU lesbian and Jeff Bezzos.

Bezzos deliberately gave that woman's tweet wings and it was to instigate a debate that will lead to protesting the monarchy towards making the transition to a Judaic neo liberal corporate order easier.

Already, igbos are leading this charge and the OP is one of them.


A people without a culture or heritage or history of monarchies wil of course want to see to an end of the proud heritage of other people.

Igbos have been foolishly proclaiming their lack of rulers just as a bastard will boast of not having a father.

Monarchies are a stumbling block to the international judean bent on a global conquest as monarchies are the very symbol of national, cultural and sovereign pride.

It is for this reason the Jewish Bolsheviks murdered the entire Romanov family to pave way for their reign of red terror.

Like the Igbo, the Jew has had no king albeit for 2,000ys.

It is even considered a polite insults from Jews if they crown you as their king just as they did to Christ and of late, Donald Trump whom Jews hated and labelled him King of the Jews. The last American president to get this label from Jews worldwide was John F. Kennedy and we all know how he ended up.

This Igbo Zionism, as I have been screaming here will cause much suffering to us as it is the major putsch for another round of Igbo Marxism which Peter Obi represents.

How does this concern obi ?

Did your mother use you also for rituals after she finished with your father ?

Quintopia:
15th century Benin City showing order, greenery, and ...streetlights.



..........

Please from which website did you get these pictures? They’re lit!

By the way, have you read this book?

How Europe underdeveloped Africa - Walter Rodney.

That book opened my eyes to a lot!

You can get a free copy here;
https://www.pdfdrive.com/how-europe-underdeveloped-africa-d188647075.html

Booked, to modify post later.

OP, watch as the Nairaland self-styled pseudointellectuals will invade this thread and start telling you that you should rather blame your state governor and other leaders for the atrocities of the British. Such two-faced as*-licking white slaves!
Imagine that some of the stolen artifacts from Benin and elsewhere in Africa are still in British Museum till this day and people pay money to see the stolen item!

NO. QUEEN ELIZABETH 11 DID THAT WHEN SHE GAVE INDEPENDENCE TO NIGERIA IN 1960. GOD SAVE KING CHARLES 111.

Quintopia:


You are a clown of the first order. Not just a clown, but a conditioned clown and bamboozled buffoon.

Have you asked yourself what the British were doing in 'Nigeria' in the first place?

Do you know why they invaded areas known today as Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, South Africa etc?

See, if your brain reasons this deep, then you will ignore the silly excuses made by the British, for their invasions.

They invaded every where else and burnt them down if resisted. What 'provocation' led to those other atrocities?

It wasn't just Benin you know....

See, once an imperialist invader has identified your land as containing the resources he needs, the next thing is to find a way to get it off you.

If you are dumb enough to fall for his specific, published ''reasons'' or ''grievances'' for invading this or that land in your territory, then you have a real problem mentally.

Could be an IQ issue.




Oh sure. These are claims made by the British. WE DO NOT KNOW THEY ARE TRUE.

Why should you believe the words of an invader?

Will he say you were just minding your business and he came in and bombarded your city for no reason?

Of course he will paint you in the worst possible light, to justify his destruction of your foremost city, and his carting away of your treasures.

Strange how NOT ONE of the numerous Dutch, Portuguese accounts of Benin over 3 centuries prior, ever mentions a 'human sacrifice'.

It just so happened to be the British who wanted to colonise and loot your resources in 1897, that saw a city covered with human sacrifices everywhere.

Try to dey use your brain small nau.



It wasn't me portraying it. It was ancient European visitors to the city.

Eyewitness testimony.



There is a difference between conquest to enrich and conquest to exploit. The regions that made up the Benin Empire were largely autonomous, and prospered greatly.

The British Empire was all about exploiting the territories (colonies) for their raw materials, pocketing the proceeds, and leaving the people starving and impoverished, and their lands underdeveloped.




Bodyguard for the British, we only asked for an apology, and restitution for the crimes committed.

Do you tell the European Jews not to blame the Nazis for their ''woes and misfortunes''?

No? SO SHUT YOUR DIRTY LIPS.



But precolonial Benin City had streetlights, underground drainage, well-built houses, no slums, and a crime rate of zero.

People built no front doors to their houses. It was inconceivable for a person to enter another's house to steal or commit a crime. So what was the need for a front door?

Or gate?

Or fence with barbed wire and broken glass?

Like you have today in your ''civilized'' mumu existence, featuring high crime rates, corruption, armed robbery, slum dwellings, 419, terrorism, kidnapping, thuggery, and banditry.

TRUTH IS THE PEOPLE OF ANCIENT BENIN WERE 1,000 TIMES MORE CIVILIZED THAN YOU AND THE BRITISH COMBINED.



No worries. He will apologise when he comes before his MAKER.

You started by insulting me, this shows the kind of person you are.

Firstly, the reason why the British were in Benin Empire is the same reason why the Binis were in other people's land.

You said I shouldn't believe the story of the British because they were Invaders, that means I'll also not believe the Benin account because they also invaded other people at one point or the other before the British arrival.
The talk about human sacrifices in Benin Empire was also corroborated by other Europeans apart from the British.
Humans were sacrificed to the Bini god of iron.
The Dutch & Portuguese were slave traders & it is on record that the British Empire stopped slave trading worldwide.

British contribution to science & technology in terms of breakthrough inventions that forever shaped the modern world cannot be overemphasized.
They also contributed immensely in Medicine, Education, Healthcare, Financial systems, Mathematics, Engineering, Law & Jurisprudence, Military & Security, Agriculture, Literature & Arts, Music & Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, Religion, world peace, etc.
What contribution has your Benin Empire done for the benefit of mankind?


All these deceitful assertions by you just to vilify the British & blame them for your woes ain't gonna work.

America was also colonized by the British & we have never seen Americans blaming the British for their problems.
Same with Kenya, Ghana, UAE, Egypt, Zambia, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica etc.

All these countries have moved on.
Infact, America & Britain are the strongest allies & they collaborate in almost every field of human endeavour.

Why do you have to be wailing like crybabies as if you yourselves are not guilty of what you are accusing the British of doing.

As for King Charles, he will be judged in the same way your Benin Obas will also be judged by God

I feel pity for so many Africans. Imagine defending and making excuses for people who enslaved your forebears and plundered your resources (and in some cases continue to do so.)
I mean, what in the Stockholm Syndrome?

Uptheante:

You started by insulting me, this shows the kind of person you are.

I am a person who cannot stand brainwashed African slaves like you drowned in self hate and inferiority complex.

I FIND YOU REPULSIVE.

Firstly, the reason why the British were in Benin Empire is the same reason why the Binis were in other people's land.

NO IT WASN'T, YOU DUNDERHEAD.

The British were in AFRICA to loot natural resources.

They were poor, and then discovered gunpowder from the Chinese, which they then used to make guns and go round the world mass murdering whole continents in order to seize their resources and enrich themselves stupendously.

The Benin kingdom did not seize or loot the resources of regions it acquired. Or force them to speak Edo, or force them to worship Bini deities etc. QUITE THE OPPOSITE. It offered the people military protection, and material abundance. THE TESTIMONY OF HUNDREDS OF EUROPEAN VISITORS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

You said I shouldn't believe the story of the British because they were Invaders, that means I'll also not believe the Benin account because they also invaded other people at one point or the other before the British arrival.

It was not a ''Benin account'' I posted. The research was done by the Guardian UK newspaper and they used European sources.

I think your problem is low IQ. That is why you reason like a toad.

The talk about human sacrifices in Benin Empire was also corroborated by other Europeans apart from the British.

NAME the ''other Europeans''.

The Dutch & Portuguese were slave traders & it is on record that the British Empire stopped slave trading worldwide.

After engaging in 80% of the trade for centuries and profiting from it more than the Dutch, Portuguese, French, Belgian, and German combined.

Do you think they halted the trade out of altruism?

They halted it because they'd achieved their early industrial development which slavery got them, and moved on to colonial exploitation - keeping the 'natives' at home to work the raw material and export same to Europe.

British contribution to science & technology in terms of breakthrough inventions that forever shaped the modern world cannot be overemphasized.
They also contributed immensely in Medicine, Education, Healthcare, Financial systems, Mathematics, Engineering, Law & Jurisprudence, Military & Security, Agriculture, Literature & Arts, Music & Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, Religion, world peace, etc.
What contribution has your Benin Empire done for the benefit of mankind?

EVERYTHING THEY SUPPOSEDLY 'ACHIEVED' WAS DONE ON THE BLOOD AND RESOURCES OF YOUR ANCESTORS, YOU STUPID SLAVE.

IT COULD NOT HAVE BEEN DONE WITHOUT KILLING YOUR ANCESTORS IN COLD BLOOD AND STEALING THEIR LAND AND RESOURCES.

AS FOR WHAT BENIN CONTRIBUTED. MORE THAN YOUR COLONISED HEAD CAN EVER IMAGINE.


12 Amazing African Inventions and Innovations That Led To World Civilization



1 Speech

The first words by humans were spoken by Africans.

''Using statistical methods to estimate the time required to achieve the current spread and diversity in modern languages today, Johanna Nichols — a linguist at the University of California, Berkeley — argues that vocal language must have arisen in our species at least 100,000 years ago. Using phonemic diversity, a more recent analysis offers directly linguistic support for a similar date. Estimates of this kind are independently supported by genetic, archaeological, palaeontological and much other evidence suggesting that language probably emerged somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa during the Middle Stone Age, roughly contemporaneous with the speciation of Homo sapiens.''


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_language




2 Writing


In 1999, Archaeology Magazine reported that the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphs date back to 3400 BCE which "...challenge the commonly held belief that early logographs, pictographic symbols representing a specific place, object, or quantity, first evolved into more complex phonetic symbols in Mesopotamia."

Who were these original Egyptians?

The Greek historian Herodotus.. described the Colchians of the Black Sea shores as "Egyptians by race" and pointed out they had "black skins and kinky hair."

Apollodorus, the Greek philosopher, described Egypt as "the country of the black-footed ones" and the Latin historian Ammianus Marcellinus said "the men of Egypt are mostly brown or black with a skinny desiccated look."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1624_story_of_africa/page88.shtml

In his book 'Egypt', British scholar Sir E.A. Wallis Budge says: "The prehistoric native of Egypt, both in the old and in the new Stone Ages, was African and there is every reason for saying that the earliest settlers came from the South." He further states: "There are many things in the manners and customs and religions of the historic Egyptians that suggests that the original home of their prehistoric ancestors was in a country in the neighborhood of Uganda and Punt [present day Somalia]."



''Greek historian Diodorus Siculus devoted an entire chapter of his world history, the Bibliotheke Historica, or Library of History (Book 3), to the Kushites ["Aithiopians"] of Meroe. Here he repeats the story of their great piety, their high favor with the gods, and adds the fascinating legend that they were.. the founders of Egyptian civilization, invented writing, and had given the Egyptians their religion and culture.''

(1st century B.C., Diodorus Siculus of Sicily, Greek historian and contemporary of Caesar Augustus, Universal History Book III. 2. 4-3. 3)

http://wysinger.homestead.com/blackegypt101.html

To summarise:

"Ancient Egypt was a Negro civilisation. The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in the air and cannot be written correctly until African historians connect it with the history of Egypt. The African historian who evades the problem of Egypt is neither modest nor objective nor unruffled. He is ignorant, cowardly and neurotic. The ancient Egyptians were Negroes. The moral fruit of their civilisation is to be counted among the assets of the Black world."

- Cheikh Anta Diop, The African Origin of Civilisation.






3 Medicine

''The earliest known surgery was performed in Egypt around 2750 BC.... The Ebers papyrus (1550 BC) is full of incantations and foul applications meant to turn away disease-causing demons, and also includes 877 prescriptions. It may also contain the earliest documented awareness of tumors..

Homer (800 BC) remarked in the Odyssey: "In Egypt, the men are more skilled in medicine than any of human kind" and "the Egyptians were skilled in medicine more than any other art". The Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt around 440 BC and wrote extensively of his observations of their medicinal practices. Pliny the Elder also wrote favourably of them in historical review. Hippocrates (the 'father of medicine'), Herophilos, Erasistratus and later Galen studied at the temple of Amenhotep, and acknowledged the contribution of ancient Egyptian medicine to Greek medicine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_medicine



4 Architecture

The African empire of Egypt developed a vast array of diverse structures and great architectural monuments along the Nile, among the largest and most famous of which are the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Great Sphinx of Giza

The pyramids, which were built in the Fourth Dynasty, testify to the power of the pharaonic religion and state. They were built for reasons that remain mysterious to modern knowledge. The size and simple design show the high skill level of African design and engineering on a large scale. The Great Pyramid of Giza, which was probably completed c. 2580 BC, is the oldest and largest of the pyramids, and is the only surviving monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The pyramid of Khafre is believed to have been completed around 2532 BC, at the end of Khafre's reign.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_architecture



5 Mathematics

The invention of mathematics is placed firmly in African PRE-HISTORY.

''The oldest known possibly mathematical object is the Lebombo bone, discovered in the Lebombo mountains of Swaziland and dated to approximately 35,000 BC. It consists of 29 distinct notches cut into a baboon's fibula. Also prehistoric artifacts discovered in Africa and France, dated between 35,000 and 20,000 years old [respectively], suggest early attempts to quantify time.

The Ishango bone, found near the headwaters of the Nile river (northeastern Congo), may be as much as 20,000 years old and consists of a series of tally marks carved in three columns running the length of the bone. Common interpretations are that the Ishango bone shows either the earliest known demonstration of sequences of prime numbers or a six month lunar calendar.

Also, Predynastic Egyptians of the 5th millennium BC pictorially represented geometric designs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mathematics#Prehistoric_mathematics

''Numeral systems have been many and diverse, with the first known written numerals created by Egyptians in Middle Kingdom texts such as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus.

The earliest uses of mathematics were in trading, land measurement, painting and weaving patterns and the recording of time. More complex mathematics did not appear until around 3000 BC, when the Egyptians and Babylonians began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry for taxation and other financial calculations, for building and construction, and for astronomy''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics



6 Mining of minerals

The oldest known mine on archaeological record is the "Lion Cave" in Swaziland, which radiocarbon dating shows to be about 43,000 years old. Much later on, the Africans of Egypt mined malachite....Quarries for turquoise and copper were also found at "Wadi Hamamat, Tura, Aswan and various other Nubian sites"..The gold mines of Nubia were among the largest and most extensive in the world, and are described by the Greek author Diodorus Siculus. He mentions that fire-setting was one method used to break down the hard rock holding the gold. One of the complexes is shown in one of earliest known maps. They crushed the ore and ground it to a fine powder before washing the powder for the gold dust.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining#Prehistoric_mining



7 Iron Smelting

Iron smelting is a form of extractive metallurgy; its main use is to produce a metal from its ore. This includes production of silver, iron, copper and other base metals from their ores. Smelting uses heat and a chemical reducing agent to decompose the ore, driving off other elements as gasses or slag and leaving just the metal behind.

Early iron smelting:

''Where and how iron smelting was discovered is widely debated, and remains uncertain due to the significant lack of production finds.. [but] there is a further possibility of iron smelting and working in West Africa by 1200 BC. In addition, very early instances of carbon steel were found to be in production around 2000 years before the present in northwest Tanzania, based on complex preheating principles. These discoveries are significant for the history of metallurgy.''

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smelting


8 Religion

Greek historian Diodorus Siculus. From his own statements we learn that he traveled in Egypt around 60 BC. His travels in Egypt probably took him as far south as the first Cataract. He wrote about the ''Ethiopians'' south of Egypt.

"They further write that it was among them that people were first taught to honour the gods and offer sacrifices and arrange processions and festivals and perform other things by which people honor the divine. For this reason their piety is famous among all men, and the sacrifices among the Aithiopians are believed to be particularly pleasing to the divinity,"


9 Laws

Stephanus of Byzantium, who is said to represent the opinions of the most ancient Greeks, says:

"Ethiopia was the first established country on the earth, and the Ethiopians were the first who introduced the worship of the Gods and who established laws."
Quoted by John D. Baldwin, Prehistoric Nations, p. 62.



10 International Trade


In 1825, Arnold Hermann Heeren (1760-1842), Professor of History and Politics in the University of Gottengen and one of the ablest of the early exponents of the economic interpretation of history, published, in the fourth and revised edition of his great work Ideen Uber Die Politik, Den Verkehr Und Den Handel Der Vornehmsten Volker Der Alten Weld, a lengthy essay on the history, culture, and commerce of the ancient Ethiopians, which had profound influence on contemporary writers in the conclusion that it was among these ancient Black people of Africa and Asia that international trade was first developed. He thinks that as a by-product of these international contacts there was an exchange of ideas and cultural practices that laid the foundations of the earliest civilizations of the ancient world. Heeren in his researches says: "From the remotest times to the present, the Ethiopians [ancient name for blacks south of the Sahara] have been one of the most celebrated, and yet the most mysterious of nations. In the earliest traditions of nearly all the..civilized nations of antiquity, the name of this distant people is found. The annals of the Egyptian priests are full of them, and the nations of inner Asia, on the Euphrates and Tigris, have interwoven the fictions of the Ethiopians with their traditions of the wars and conquests of their heroes; and, at a period equally remote, they glimmer in Greek mythology. When the Greeks scarcely knew Italy and Sicily by name, the Ethiopians were celebrated in the verses of their poets, and when the faint gleam of tradition and fable gives way to the clear light of history, the lustre of the Ethiopians is not diminished."

http://wysinger.homestead.com/blackegypt101.html


11 Philosophy

Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational argument.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy#Ancient_philosophy

Philosophy in Africa has a rich and varied history, dating from pre-dynastic Egypt, continuing through the birth of Christianity and Islam. Arguably central to the ancients was the conception of "ma'at", which roughly translated refers to "justice", "truth", or simply "that which is right". One of the earliest works of political philosophy was the Maxims of Ptah-Hotep, which were taught to Egyptian schoolboys for centuries...Ancient Egyptian philosophers made extremely important contributions to Hellenistic philosophy, Christian philosophy, and Islamic philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_philosophy

''Ancient Egyptian philosophy has been credited by the ancient Greeks as being the beginning of philosophy''.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_philosophy


12 Art

The oldest art objects in the world—a series of tiny, drilled snail shells about 75,000 years old—were discovered in a South African cave.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

All these deceitful assertions by you just to vilify the British & blame them for your woes ain't gonna work.

SLAVE. Those who murdered your ancestors do not deserve your support.

BUT OF COURSE YOU LACK A WORKING BRAIN, SO YOU CAN'T SEE THAT.

America was also colonized by the British & we have never seen Americans blaming the British for their problems.
Same with Kenya, Ghana, UAE, Egypt, Zambia, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica etc.

YOU'RE BEYOND STUPID. The Jews who are getting reparations and getting apologies everywhere, and reminding everyone of the holocaust daily, do you scold them for ''blaming Germans for their problems''?

What is it about you that makes you not value your own self? WHO DID THIS TO YOU?

Plus you know NOTHING about those countries you listed, to say they don't hold the British to account. I have lived among those people for longer than you've been alive. THEY KNOW THE BRITISH INSIDE OUT AND THEY TREAT THEM ACCORDINGLY - WITH SUSPICION AND DISTANCE. THEY ARE NOT SLAVE MINDED DOLTS LIKE YOU AND SO MANY NIGERIANS, BRAINWASHED TO HATE THEMSELVES AND LOVE THEIR ENSLAVERS.

MOST JAMAICANS AND AFRO-AMERICANS CANNOT STAND AFRICANS BECAUSE OF THIS SICK MENTALITY YOU HAVE, THAT ELEVATES THE WHITES OVER YOURSELVES.

THEY FIND IT DISGUSTING AND REPREHENSIBLE.

All these countries have moved on.
Infact, America & Britain are the strongest allies & they collaborate in almost every field of human endeavour.

THE British did not apply a uniform policy to all colonies. AFRICA for them was a place to exploit for raw materials to power their industrial revolution. The Americas did not serve as such a place, but was rather, an English settlement. A place they went to mass murder the native inhabitants and replace them with Europeans. Like they did in places known today as 'Canada', 'Australia', 'New Zealand' etc.

So it is no surprise that that American 'colony' was not exploited or ravaged by the British. It was and is their second home.

USE YOUR BRAIN. IT IS NOT THERE FOR DECORATION.

Uptheante:

You started by insulting me, this shows the kind of person you are.

Firstly, the reason why the British were in Benin Empire is the same reason why the Binis were in other people's land.

You said I shouldn't believe the story of the British because they were Invaders, that means I'll also not believe the Benin account because they also invaded other people at one point or the other before the British arrival.
The talk about human sacrifices in Benin Empire was also corroborated by other Europeans apart from the British.
Humans were sacrificed to the Bini god of iron.
The Dutch & Portuguese were slave traders & it is on record that the British Empire stopped slave trading worldwide.

British contribution to science & technology in terms of breakthrough inventions that forever shaped the modern world cannot be overemphasized.
They also contributed immensely in Medicine, Education, Healthcare, Financial systems, Mathematics, Engineering, Law & Jurisprudence, Military & Security, Agriculture, Literature & Arts, Music & Entertainment, Sports, Tourism, Religion, world peace, etc.
What contribution has your Benin Empire done for the benefit of mankind?


All these deceitful assertions by you just to vilify the British & blame them for your woes ain't gonna work.

America was also colonized by the British & we have never seen Americans blaming the British for their problems.
Same with Kenya, Ghana, UAE, Egypt, Zambia, India, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica etc.

All these countries have moved on.
Infact, America & Britain are the strongest allies & they collaborate in almost every field of human endeavour.

Why do you have to be wailing like crybabies as if you yourselves are not guilty of what you are accusing the British of doing.

As for King Charles, he will be judged in the same way your Benin Obas will also be judged by God

In summary, the strong and crafty will rule over the weak and foolish.

Competition and dominance.

That’s the law of human nature in this realm of existence. It’s rather unfortunate.

Nlfpmod, lalasticlala please do the needful, this thread is front page material.