In Part 2 of this series, we considered a few what events and transformations occurred in the intervening 8,000 (or even 8,500) years while the Dufuna Canoe stood unchanged and frozen in creative time.
Remember the broad thesis of our argument is: Nigerians, on the weight of available evidence, are not inclined toward spontaneous creative and innovative drives!
IS THE THESIS TRUE OR FALSE?
Well, we started listing the changes which took place (and still taking place) in across the globe. We would continue with the list. We would also show that there was cross-fertilisation of ideas between societies, yet there is no proof that this crossing of ideas between civilisations benefited the Dufuna canoe!
The making of fire crossed several societies by different means and routes.
It is recorded in history that the Iron Age which started in Southwest Asia around 1000 BC diffused to North Africa and then southward to sub-Saharan Africa. According to scholars, the Iron Age crossed the Sahara Desert by travelling through the Nile (across Egypt into Nubia), and may also have crossed at other points farther west.
The making of metal tools and weapons which revolutionised both agriculture and warfare also crossed through to several societies.
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| Makoko, Lagos (now demolished) resident bailing water from unchanged Dufuna style canoe (Source: AP-Dailymail.co.uk) |
The other notable changes which took place are truly astounding to every degree.
According to historians, between 1200 BCE - 500 CE, the Expanding of Networks for Exchange and Encounter occurred. In this era, the preceding developments which included several parts of the world producing food, adopting new forms of social organisation, and interacting more intensively with one another over longer distances than earlier times began to happen at a faster pace. Interregional systems of communication allowed goods, technologies and ideas to move, sometimes several thousands of kilometres. Interlocking networks of roads, trails, and sea lanes connected almost all parts of Afroeurasia and, in the Americas, extensive areas of Mesoamerica and the Andean mountain spine of South America. Among the ideas transmitted along these routes were belief systems, which invited peoples of differing languages and cultural traditions to share common standards of morality and trust.
How come these interregional systems of communication which allowed goods, technologies and ideas to move several thousands of kilometres passed the Dufuna canoe and its inventor(s) by?
Patterns of Interregional Unity emerged between 300 - 1500 CE. For millennia the population of Afroeurasia had grown steadily, forming larger and more complex political units such as the Han Chinese, Persian Achaemenid, and Roman empires. Around 300 - 400 CE this cycle of empire building came nearly to a halt, and even for a time seemed to reverse itself. The distinguishing feature of this era was its unusual demographic history - there were fluctuations with a long-term upward trend, culminating with a significant rise of the period to 400 million people globally. This number is thought to have broken the ceiling on growth that had limited the population advances of earlier agrarian societies.
Scholars have linked this population surge to the spread of innovations in agriculture, especially numerous small changes to improve irrigation, domestic animal breeds, and enrichment of the soil. These advances, which took place from Europe and West Africa to China and Japan, increased the number of people that a given acre of land could feed. Long-distance trade also supplied people with more varied diet and numerous products that at least marginally improved the quality of life.
The 'Modern Revolution' which has been weighted as a pivotal moment in human history including industrialisation and its consequences occurred between 1750 - 1914 CE. Scientists have described this period in history as "auto-catalytic" — a term referring to a chemical process, but it is also a useful historical concept. Once auto-catalytic processes got going, they tended to speed up. Overall, global changes have become self-perpetuating and ever-accelerating.
The modern revolution involved half a dozen or so interrelated factors. First, a revolutionary transformation occurred in human use of energy. Until the 19th century, the energy basis of human society had been biomass energy, mainly the burning of wood to produce heat, plus human and animal muscle power. Second, unprecedented global population growth accompanied the fossil fuel revolution. The world's population more than doubled, definitively piercing the previous limits on growth. In 1800, the global population stood at around 900 million, by itself a huge leap from the start of the previously era. By 1914, it stood at around 1.75 billion people. Third, an industrial transformation got under way. In the Industrial Revolution, humans — western Europe at first — learnt to exploit coal and steam energy to mass produce goods with machines and to sell them worldwide. The Industrial Revolution began with production of textiles and eventually spread to other areas of manufacturing, as well as to farming and food processing. Fourth, a revolution took place in communication and transport. Fifth, the modern revolution was partly a democratic revolution. Finally, sixth, the era witnessed the rise of new colonial empires. Using new technologies of warfare and political control that came out of the Industrial Revolution, the empires of several European states greatly increased in size during this era.
Even a summary of maritime history reveals that many transforming changes occurred including the growth and development of global trade bypassed the Dufuna canoe.
From its modest origins as Egypt coastal sail ship around 3,200 BC, maritime transportation has always been the dominant support of global trade. By 1,200 BC Egyptian ships traded as far as Sumatra, representing one of the longest maritime route. Access to trade commodities remains historically and contemporary the main driver in the setting of maritime networks. European colonial powers, mainly Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and France, would be the first to establish a true global maritime trade network from the 16th century. Most of the maritime shipping activity focused around the Mediterranean, the northern Indian Ocean, Pacific Asia and the North Atlantic, including the Caribbean.
With the development of the steam engine in the mid 19th century, trade networks expanded considerably as ships were no longer subject to dominant wind patterns. Accordingly and in conjunction with the opening of the Suez Canal, the second half of the 19th century will see an intensification of maritime trade to and across the Pacific. In the 20th century, maritime transport grew exponentially as changes in international trade and seaborne trade became interrelated. These trade relations were also influenced by existing maritime shipping capacity. There was thus a level of reciprocity between trade and maritime shipping capabilities. As of 2006, seaborne trade accounted for 89.6% of global trade in terms of volume and 70.1% in terms of value.
Maritime shipping is one of the most globalised industries in terms of ownership and operations.
Dufuna canoe remained crude and unmodified while all these took place.
What stopped the ideas and the technologies which helped the Egyptians in building their sail ships from the native Dhow from reaching sub-Saharan Africa?
If everything else failed, why the Dufuna canoe not benefit from design modifications during and after the infamous slave trade periods when people would have surely seen what the humble canoe could become if transformed?
A cynical observed may have wondered why none of the indigenous peoples was 'inspired' to at the very least copy the shape and design of the huge slave ships with which the slave traders so efficiently evacuated their relatives and enemies for exploitation and profit in far away lands?
No, Africa did not get left behind and adrift today. The cynics whom seem to take the dim view that the African conundrum of inherent and maddening lack of curiosity and adventurous streak can be rightfully said to be the bane of African backwardness, appear to have good grounds for their thinking.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade began around the mid-fifteenth century when Portuguese interests in Africa moved away from deposits of gold to much more readily available commodity - slaves. Human beings easily became 'commoditised'. By the 17th century the trade was in full swing, reaching a peak toward the end of the 18th century, 300 years after it first began. And why did the trade begin? Historians opine that expanding European empires in the New World lacked one major resource - a work force. In most cases the indigenous peoples had proved unreliable and Europeans were unsuited to the climate and suffered under tropical diseases. Africans, on the other hand, were found to be excellent workers: they often had experience of agriculture and cattle keeping, they were used to a tropical climate, resistant to tropical diseases, and they could be coerced into unpaid service on plantations or in mines.
Whether slavery existed within sub-Saharan African societies before the arrival of the Europeans is the source of abiding debate, but what is without dispute is that millions of Africans were subjected to several forms of slavery over centuries, including chattel slavery under both the Muslims with the trans-Saharan slave trade, and Europeans through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Even after the abolition of slave trade in Africa, colonial powers used forced labour - such as in Belgian King Leopold's Congo Free State (a massive labour camp to all intent and purpose) or as librettos on the Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde or Sao Tome.
The Congo Free State, which existed from 1885 - 1908, was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II of the Belgians. Leopold was able to procure and pillage the region, perpetrate unspeakable atrocities along the way, by convincing the international community that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work; through the use of several smoke screen organisations he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. Leopold eventually allowed the concept of a philanthropic International Association of the Congo involved in his dubious enterprise to cease. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State - an area comprising the entire area of the present Congo DRC.
What King Leopold perpetrated in the Congo Free State is studied in Yale University under its Colonial Genocide Programme.
Does the Dufuna canoe look anything like the Epic dugout canoe hanging from the ceiling in the picture above?
No. Only the Opobo War Canoe gigi from Opobo Kingdom in the present Opobo/Nkoro Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria has something close to such creatively designed and elaborate make-up.
For 8,000 (or even 8,500) years, the Dufuna canoe has stayed fixed and unaltered in creative span of time; it is still 'transfixed' as far as innovation is concerned as you read this! The world changed and left the Dufuna canoe in its creative and innovative wake, and the people did not take notice!
Now on the weight of evidence provided in this three-part series, the writer is fully persuaded that there is no spontaneous drive to create and innovate in Nigeria.
CONCLUDED.
Serialised from essay: Attitudes Toward Innovation in Nigeria: The Metaphor of The Canoe and The Paddler(s)
According to historians, between 1200 BCE - 500 CE, the Expanding of Networks for Exchange and Encounter occurred. In this era, the preceding developments which included several parts of the world producing food, adopting new forms of social organisation, and interacting more intensively with one another over longer distances than earlier times began to happen at a faster pace. Interregional systems of communication allowed goods, technologies and ideas to move, sometimes several thousands of kilometres. Interlocking networks of roads, trails, and sea lanes connected almost all parts of Afroeurasia and, in the Americas, extensive areas of Mesoamerica and the Andean mountain spine of South America. Among the ideas transmitted along these routes were belief systems, which invited peoples of differing languages and cultural traditions to share common standards of morality and trust.
How come these interregional systems of communication which allowed goods, technologies and ideas to move several thousands of kilometres passed the Dufuna canoe and its inventor(s) by?
Patterns of Interregional Unity emerged between 300 - 1500 CE. For millennia the population of Afroeurasia had grown steadily, forming larger and more complex political units such as the Han Chinese, Persian Achaemenid, and Roman empires. Around 300 - 400 CE this cycle of empire building came nearly to a halt, and even for a time seemed to reverse itself. The distinguishing feature of this era was its unusual demographic history - there were fluctuations with a long-term upward trend, culminating with a significant rise of the period to 400 million people globally. This number is thought to have broken the ceiling on growth that had limited the population advances of earlier agrarian societies.
Scholars have linked this population surge to the spread of innovations in agriculture, especially numerous small changes to improve irrigation, domestic animal breeds, and enrichment of the soil. These advances, which took place from Europe and West Africa to China and Japan, increased the number of people that a given acre of land could feed. Long-distance trade also supplied people with more varied diet and numerous products that at least marginally improved the quality of life.
.jpg) |
| Dugout boats at Kierikki Stone Age Centre in Oulu, Finland (Source - Wikipedia) |
The 'Modern Revolution' which has been weighted as a pivotal moment in human history including industrialisation and its consequences occurred between 1750 - 1914 CE. Scientists have described this period in history as "auto-catalytic" — a term referring to a chemical process, but it is also a useful historical concept. Once auto-catalytic processes got going, they tended to speed up. Overall, global changes have become self-perpetuating and ever-accelerating.
The modern revolution involved half a dozen or so interrelated factors. First, a revolutionary transformation occurred in human use of energy. Until the 19th century, the energy basis of human society had been biomass energy, mainly the burning of wood to produce heat, plus human and animal muscle power. Second, unprecedented global population growth accompanied the fossil fuel revolution. The world's population more than doubled, definitively piercing the previous limits on growth. In 1800, the global population stood at around 900 million, by itself a huge leap from the start of the previously era. By 1914, it stood at around 1.75 billion people. Third, an industrial transformation got under way. In the Industrial Revolution, humans — western Europe at first — learnt to exploit coal and steam energy to mass produce goods with machines and to sell them worldwide. The Industrial Revolution began with production of textiles and eventually spread to other areas of manufacturing, as well as to farming and food processing. Fourth, a revolution took place in communication and transport. Fifth, the modern revolution was partly a democratic revolution. Finally, sixth, the era witnessed the rise of new colonial empires. Using new technologies of warfare and political control that came out of the Industrial Revolution, the empires of several European states greatly increased in size during this era.
.jpg) |
| Precursor to the Sail ship. Dhow near Dar es Salaam, loaded with tourists. (Source - Wikipedia) |
Even a summary of maritime history reveals that many transforming changes occurred including the growth and development of global trade bypassed the Dufuna canoe.
From its modest origins as Egypt coastal sail ship around 3,200 BC, maritime transportation has always been the dominant support of global trade. By 1,200 BC Egyptian ships traded as far as Sumatra, representing one of the longest maritime route. Access to trade commodities remains historically and contemporary the main driver in the setting of maritime networks. European colonial powers, mainly Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands and France, would be the first to establish a true global maritime trade network from the 16th century. Most of the maritime shipping activity focused around the Mediterranean, the northern Indian Ocean, Pacific Asia and the North Atlantic, including the Caribbean.
With the development of the steam engine in the mid 19th century, trade networks expanded considerably as ships were no longer subject to dominant wind patterns. Accordingly and in conjunction with the opening of the Suez Canal, the second half of the 19th century will see an intensification of maritime trade to and across the Pacific. In the 20th century, maritime transport grew exponentially as changes in international trade and seaborne trade became interrelated. These trade relations were also influenced by existing maritime shipping capacity. There was thus a level of reciprocity between trade and maritime shipping capabilities. As of 2006, seaborne trade accounted for 89.6% of global trade in terms of volume and 70.1% in terms of value.
Maritime shipping is one of the most globalised industries in terms of ownership and operations.
Dufuna canoe remained crude and unmodified while all these took place.
What stopped the ideas and the technologies which helped the Egyptians in building their sail ships from the native Dhow from reaching sub-Saharan Africa?
 |
|
Haida canoe – “the Cadillac of the coast”.
(Photo: Don Hitchcock 2012; Source: Display, Museum
of Anthropology, University of British Columbia)
|
If everything else failed, why the Dufuna canoe not benefit from design modifications during and after the infamous slave trade periods when people would have surely seen what the humble canoe could become if transformed?
A cynical observed may have wondered why none of the indigenous peoples was 'inspired' to at the very least copy the shape and design of the huge slave ships with which the slave traders so efficiently evacuated their relatives and enemies for exploitation and profit in far away lands?
No, Africa did not get left behind and adrift today. The cynics whom seem to take the dim view that the African conundrum of inherent and maddening lack of curiosity and adventurous streak can be rightfully said to be the bane of African backwardness, appear to have good grounds for their thinking.
The Trans-Atlantic slave trade began around the mid-fifteenth century when Portuguese interests in Africa moved away from deposits of gold to much more readily available commodity - slaves. Human beings easily became 'commoditised'. By the 17th century the trade was in full swing, reaching a peak toward the end of the 18th century, 300 years after it first began. And why did the trade begin? Historians opine that expanding European empires in the New World lacked one major resource - a work force. In most cases the indigenous peoples had proved unreliable and Europeans were unsuited to the climate and suffered under tropical diseases. Africans, on the other hand, were found to be excellent workers: they often had experience of agriculture and cattle keeping, they were used to a tropical climate, resistant to tropical diseases, and they could be coerced into unpaid service on plantations or in mines.
Whether slavery existed within sub-Saharan African societies before the arrival of the Europeans is the source of abiding debate, but what is without dispute is that millions of Africans were subjected to several forms of slavery over centuries, including chattel slavery under both the Muslims with the trans-Saharan slave trade, and Europeans through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Even after the abolition of slave trade in Africa, colonial powers used forced labour - such as in Belgian King Leopold's Congo Free State (a massive labour camp to all intent and purpose) or as librettos on the Portuguese plantations of Cape Verde or Sao Tome.
The Congo Free State, which existed from 1885 - 1908, was a large area in Central Africa which was privately controlled by Leopold II of the Belgians. Leopold was able to procure and pillage the region, perpetrate unspeakable atrocities along the way, by convincing the international community that he was involved in humanitarian and philanthropic work; through the use of several smoke screen organisations he was able to lay claim to most of the Congo Basin. Leopold eventually allowed the concept of a philanthropic International Association of the Congo involved in his dubious enterprise to cease. On May 29, 1885, the king named his new colony the Congo Free State - an area comprising the entire area of the present Congo DRC.
What King Leopold perpetrated in the Congo Free State is studied in Yale University under its Colonial Genocide Programme.
 |
|
Epic dug-out canoe
hanging from the ceiling of Museum of Natural
History in New York City, USA. It
came from Alaska in the late 1800s.
|
No. Only the Opobo War Canoe gigi from Opobo Kingdom in the present Opobo/Nkoro Local Government Area of Rivers State, Nigeria has something close to such creatively designed and elaborate make-up.
For 8,000 (or even 8,500) years, the Dufuna canoe has stayed fixed and unaltered in creative span of time; it is still 'transfixed' as far as innovation is concerned as you read this! The world changed and left the Dufuna canoe in its creative and innovative wake, and the people did not take notice!
Now on the weight of evidence provided in this three-part series, the writer is fully persuaded that there is no spontaneous drive to create and innovate in Nigeria.
CONCLUDED.
Serialised from essay: Attitudes Toward Innovation in Nigeria: The Metaphor of The Canoe and The Paddler(s)
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