“blá-maðr, m. A BLACK MAN, NEGRO, i.e. AN ETHIOPIAN, Al. 51, Orkn. 364 (referring to A.D. 1152), distinguished from the Saracens and Arabians; three ‘blámenn’ were sent as a present to the German emperor Frederic the Second, Fms. x. 3: in romances blámenn are mentioned as A KIND OF ‘BERSERKERS,’” q.v., Finnb. ch. 16, Kjalnes. S. ch. 15; cp. Scott’s Ivanhoe, note B. See AN ICELANDIC-ENGLISH DICTIONARY by Richard Cleasby and Gudbrand Vigfusson(1874) read more

Phyllis Galembo
Chief Oadume Uwabidie of Issele-Uku, Nigeria, 1994

Phyllis Galembo
Chief Oshodin of Benin, Benin City, Nigeria, 1994

http://www.galembo.com/kings-chiefs-women/index.htm read more

Book 17, part 3

The writers who have divided the habitable world according to continents divide it unequally. Africa wants so much of being a third part of the habitable world that, even if it were united to Europe, it would not be equal to Asia; perhaps it is even less than Europe; in resources it is very much inferior, for a great part of the inland and maritime country is desert. It is spotted over with small habitable parts, which are scattered about, and mostly belonging to nomad tribes. Besides the desert state of the country, its being a nursery of wild beasts is a hindrance to settlement in parts which could be inhabited. It comprises also a large part of the torrid zone. All the sea coast in our quarter, situated between the Nile and the Pillars (of Hercules)[Gibralter], particularly that which belonged to the Carthaginians [today’s Tunisia], is fertile and inhabited. And even in this tract, some spots destitute of water intervene, as those about the Syrtes, the Marmaridae, and the Catabathmus. read more

STRABO
GEOGRAPHY

p111 Book I Chapter 2 (end)

24 (30) The same mistake is made by those who say that Homer is not acquainted with the isthmus that lies between the Egyptian Sea and the Arabian Gulf, and that he is in error when he speaks of “the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.” Men of later times are wrong when they censure Homer for saying that, for it is correct. Indeed, the reproach that Homer is ignorant of this isthmus is so far from being true, that I affirm not only that he knows about it, but that he describes it in express terms, and that the grammarians beginning with p113Aristarchus and Crates, the leading lights in the science of criticism, even though Homer speaks of it, do not perceive that he does. The poet says: “the Ethiopians that are sundered in twain, the farthermost of men.” About the next verse there is a difference of opinion, Aristarchus writing: “Abiding some where Hyperion sets, and some where he rises”; but Crates: “abiding both where Hyperion sets and where he rises.” 31Yet so far as the question at issue is concerned, it makes no difference whether you write the verse one way or the other. For Crates, following the mere form of mathematical demonstration, says that the torrid zone is “occupied”78 by Oceanus and that on both sides of this zone are the temperate zones, the one being on our side, while the other is on the other side of it. Now, just as these Ethiopians on our side of Oceanus, who face the south throughout the whole length of the inhabited land, are called the most remote of the one group of peoples, since they dwell on the shores of Oceanus, so too, Crates thinks, we must conceive that on the other side of Oceanus also there are certain Ethiopians, the most remote of the other group of peoples in the temperate zone, since they dwell on the shores of this same Oceanus; and that they are in two groups and are “sundered in twain” by Oceanus. Homer adds the words, “abiding both where Hyperion sets and where he rises,” because, inasmuch as the celestial zodiac always lies in the zenith above its corresponding p115terrestrial zodiac and inasmuch as the latter does not by reason of its obliquity79 extend outside the territory of the two Ethiopias, we must conceive that the entire revolution of the sun takes place within the width of this celestial zone, and that his risings and his settings take place herein, appearing differently to different peoples, and now in this sign and now in that. Such, then, is the explanation of Crates, who conceives of the matter rather as an astronomer; but he might have put it more simply — still saving his point that this was the sense in which the Ethiopians are “sundered in twain,” as Homer has stated — namely, by declaring that the Ethiopians stretch along both shores of Oceanus from the rising to the setting of the sun. What difference, I say, does it make with respect to this thought whether we read the verse as Crates writes it, or as Aristarchus does — “abiding some where Hyperion sets and some where he rises”? For this, too, means that Ethiopians live on both sides of Oceanus, both towards the west and towards the east. But Aristarchus rejects this hypothesis of Crates, and thinks that the people referred to as divided “in twain” are the Ethiopians in our part of the world, namely, those that to the Greeks are most remote on the south; but he thinks these are not so divided “in twain” that there are two Ethiopias, the one lying towards the east and the other towards the west, but that there is just one, the one that lies south of the Greeks and is situated along Egypt; and he thinks that the poet, ignorant of this fact, just as he was ignorant of those other matters which p117Apollodorus has mentioned in the second book of his work entitled “On the Catalogue of Ships,” told what was not true about the regions in question. read more

Mfon Amun Ptah

If you know black history in Europe, this will not surprise you.

Right around the same time the Moors of Spain began to get things going, the Moors of Germany and the Black Reich(Holy Roman Empire) dominated central and eastern Europe. Adolf Hitler was found to have black blood of the E Y chromosome haplogroup lineage and roughly one third of all white Americans are of recent African descent. This is black German blood. read more

Nri is an ancient Igbo city-state in Anambra State Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a center of learning, religion, and commerce in pre-colonial West Africa. Historians have compared the significance of Nri, at its peak, to the religious cities of Rome or Mecca: it was the seat of a powerful and imperial state that influenced much of the territories inhabited by the Igbo of Awka and Onitsha to the east; the Efik, the Ibibio, and the Ijaw to the South; Nsukka and southernIgala to the north; and Asaba, and the Anioma to the west. The rulers of Nri did not use military conquest, but used religious authority and control of commercial routes as tactics in the spread of their city-state. Politically, Nri is known to be the most ancient origins of the Eze kingship in Igbo societies. But Nri and its rulers were also known for their occult religious Juju, an institution that instilled both awe and fear in those who made pilgrimages to the shrine.
Commercially, Nri was against slave holding. “Osu” was the name of outcasts of other communities who migrated and were accepted in Nri. Some Osu became eunuchs. During the colonial period, Nri and the regions under its political, religious, or commercial control became international markets for palm oil. In the heart of Nri influence was the Igbo Ukwu bronze castings. read more

The first people of Ireland:

One of the oldest texts composed in Ireland is the Leabhar Gabhla, the Book of Invasions. It tells a semi-mythical history of the waves of people who settled in Ireland in earliest times. It says the first settlers to arrive in Ireland were a small dark people called the Fir Bolg, followed by a magical super-race called the Tuatha de Danaan (the people of the goddess Dana) probably from Africa. Then came the Fomors, another possible African type. read more