8 ms·
Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without trace
- ommunist 11y agoSlave trade kills cities and cultures.
- apalmer 11y agoUnfortunately although the practice is horrid, I dont see much to justify the claim
- wtbob 11y agoBack when the Brits were hell-bent on destroying the slave trade, being the capitol of a slave-trading culture was a good way to get destroyed.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- dalke 11y agoSlave trade helped make Bristol and Liverpool prosperous, so it doesn't kill all cities.
- frogpelt 11y agoThis is the fifth of a fifty-part series Jack Shenker is doing for the Guardian. So far he's cranked out one-a-day.
- cholantesh 11y agoDo you mean that he's overseeing the entire series? Each of the five installments that are up right now were written by different authors.
- adwf 11y agoI wonder whether there should be a word for the feeling you get when reading something like this and thinking "Please don't be the British again..." Dammit :(
- shaftoe 11y agoRead other sources on the history of the sack of Benin. This article romanticizes a city with human sacrifices and slave trade. From Wikipedia's article on the Benin Massacre: But the way Benin treated its slaves and the public display of large quantities of human remains hardened British attitudes towards Benin's rulers. The trader James Pinnock wrote that he saw 'a large number of men all handcuffed and chained' there, with 'their ears cut off with a razor'. T.B Auchterlonie described the approach to the capital through an avenue of trees hung with decomposing human remains. After the 'lane of horrors' came a grass common 'thickly stewn with the skulls and bones of sacrificed human beings.'
- adwf 11y agoOh I know. There's always many sides to these stories. I don't feel bad about it other than in an abstract modern moral way, it's history. But the number of times something from the 18th-20th centuries like this comes up and you find out it was our ancestors... I sometimes wonder whether this'll be the same reaction Americans will have in 200 years time. Things always look better when justified in the moral context of their time.
- bsder 11y ago
- afarrell 11y agoWhen I was a kid, I was frustrated by the absence of an RTS or city-building game set in sub-Saharan Africa. I continue to be annoyed by this.
- mozumder 11y agoHeart of Africa on Commodore 64?
- eggman 11y agoI got caught up in that C64 madness. I walked away from that game thinking that the quickest way to victory includes robbing the natives. Never again.
- meric 11y agoNot Sub-Saharan but I had fun with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharaoh_(video_game). Also "Age of Empires II HD: The African Kingdoms" is out. http://www.forgottenempires.net/aoak http://www.forgottenempires.net/aoak
- anonymous325 11y agoNotice all the hand-waving in the article about mathematics. Mathematics proper, as in the derivation of theorems from axioms by means of proof, was discovered by the Greeks, and unless the residents of Benin City, or the Maya, or any other non-Western society that biased academics seek to rehabilitate were similarly deriving theorems from axioms by means of proof as did Euclid, speaking of their supposed mathematical prowess is extremely disingenuous and misleading.
- apalmer 11y agoMathematics as far as it being a branch of logic was pretty much invented by the greeks as you say. And the mathematics mentioned in this article are definitely 'tenuous' at best. I clicked on the 'African Fractals' and didn't really see anything that I would consider mathematics, although I did see some organizing principals I guess. However the claim that mathematics is either 'theorems' or bust is not really valid standpoint in general... seeking one must by a practical definition of mathematics include at least Egyptians (at least in practical geometry), early South American (at least in practical geometry). Neither of which had any strong belief in the necessity or ideal of 'proving' theorems. Further one should include without doubt early Indian contributions which covered both practical and theoretical mathematics and early Chinese contributions although they seem grounded in theorem based approach
- anonymous325 11y ago> However the claim that mathematics is either 'theorems' or bust The theorems of mathematics are what distinguishes it from other enterprises and provides us with a degree of certainty of the correctness of our conclusions that would otherwise be unavailable. No number of (Euclidean) triangles measured, however great, would convince us equally well that their interior angles always sum to 180 degrees, nor would any exhaustive search of pairs of integers convince us equally well that the square root of two really is irrational. By exaggerating the accomplishments of Africans to a lay audience, the article is minimizing the accomplishments of Europeans.
- 11y ago
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoGoogle satellite view of modern-day Benin City shows clear evidence of past earthworks in the countryside surrounding. In particular traces of an earthen structure runs northeast out of the city starting at about St. Savior Rd, through Urhokuosa, Erua and Ethor to Irrua. A distance of 50 miles, and perhaps further. https://www.google.com/maps/@6.3474921,5.747339,27322m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@6.3474921,5.747339,27322m/data=...
- 13of40 11y agoWow, that city has one of the best visible-from-sky modern artifact collections I've seen: https://www.google.com/maps/@6.3105913,5.595516,407m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@6.3105913,5.595516,407m/data=!3...
- themodelplumber 11y agoThe way those artifacts gradually start to blend with the greenery is fascinating. It'd be fun to play there as a kid I'll bet
- MusaTheRedGuard 11y agoI had to make a HN account once I saw this title. I'm Nigerian. Benin City is clearly still there. The modern Benin city is very obviously divided into 'old Benin' and Benin city proper. So no, not 'lost without a trace'.
- OoTheNigerian 11y agoHa! I was born and grew up in Benin City!! In summary, the city definitely exist but we have refused to maintain our historical artifacts. Although it is easy to blame the "evil British" , I think we back home can do better to preserve historical stuff. But the British really messed up a lot of places. But after a while we have to take responsibility. It's really cool to discuss where I grew up in a global platform though.
- Lordarminius 11y agodomo! woyiena?
- OoTheNigerian 11y agoOyese! But I'm not Bini though. I'm Igbo, from Anambra.
- kiiski 11y agoIs the word "medieval" commonly used to refer to some African time period? My understanding is that the term refers specifically to the Middle Ages, which is a time period in European history, so it wouldn't make any sense to talk about a "medieval capital" in Africa (especially far away from the Mediterranean). The British only annexed Benin in 1897, long after the Middle Ages.
- rurban 11y agoPlenty of those early huge capital cities got lost. Angkor Wat, Edo, Vilcabamba, Troy, Helike, Ai, Aztlán, Ys, Shambhala, Xanadu, Carthago, Karakorum, Niniveh, Persepolis, Ur, Samarkand, ... See e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_city
- hutzlibu 11y agoNever heard of Benin... and after reading the article, I "knew": lost without trace, great culture, great wealth and great security for all its people..., great artists. And in the end - destroyed by the Britains. Hm ... so after reading Wikipedia, I knew, it is not lost without trace, but the great Kingdom of Benin was also the great capital of slave trade, with human sacrifices(in the end about 23 a day) and all in all a deep despotic society, etc. But the artists are indeed great.