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WEST AFRICANS & NAVIGATION

CANOES & NAVIGATION: Oliphantes to Ogowe

This is to be seen as a companion piece for “East Africans & Navigation” that
in turn is one of a series of papers discussing aspects of whether Africans ever went to
sea or were too much in terror of it to do so. Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before
Columbus 1976) wrote against the latter opinion when saying Africans were not the
“boatless” people they are frequently described as. As many of the other negatives of
voyaging around African shores are listed in “East Africans & Navigation”, there is
little point in repeating this here
Otherwise we begin here with the dugout-canoe. Such canoes were scarce
relative to other types over most of east Africa. They originate the Before Common
Era (= BCE) were still around in Common Era days to be reported by the unknown
author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME). An addition to this 1 st c. CE reference
would be those that James Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror 1948) thought were exampled in
Egypt by scenes in the tomb of Queen Tiye. Long journeys by canoes are put forward
as having taken the Polynesian ancestors of the Maoris to New Zealand. More canoe-
borne migrants are those from the part of east Africa that is now called Tanganyika
getting to Fiji according to Fijian tradition cited on the Balson Holdings site (online).
There is general opinion groups going under the several labels of Khoikhoi,
Khwe, San, Khoisan, Queyna, Bushmen, Capoids plus umpteen others did not use
boats. More of the same comes with a contributor to the New Advent Encyclopaedia
confidently saying the Khwe did not fish. Contrary views are not helped by the faults
of “Bushman’s Art” by Erik Holm (1987) being pointed out by John Parkington in the
South African journal called “The Digging Stick” (1988). These faults are such that
Holm’s book has been withdrawn by the publisher.
Somewhat ironically, points made by Holm (ib.) are akin to some by
prominent African scholars. Holm regarded scenes in rock-art at Siloswane
(Zimbabwe [= Rhodesia]) attest Khwe fishing from boats. Nudukuya Ndlovu
(Incorporating Indigenous Rock Art in KwaZulu/Natal online) says the same of rock-
art at uKhahlamba (in the Drakensberg Mountains, South Africa). Blake Whelan
(Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 1938) compared simple multi-use tools of
banjo-shape that he felt were for boat-building. In line with this will be that Khwe/San
on the River Okavango so adept at fishing from boats that they called River San.
The neighbours of the Khwe across much of southern Africa were speakers of
tongues the Niger/Congo (= N/C) family belonging to the N/C sub-group called
Bantu. Signs that the Proto/Early Bantu were relatively few in number seem shown by
excavations at Bambandyanalo (South Africa), Mapungubwe (South Africa), etc, of
material showing both Khwe and Bantu affinities. They are discussed in such as “A
fragmentary skull cranium & dated Later Stone Age assemblage from Lukenya Hill,
Kenya” by messrs. Gramley & Rightmire (Man 1973); in “Expansion of Bantu-
speakers vs. development of Bantu in situ” by Richard Gramley (South African
Archaeological Bulletin 1978); Chami (2006), etc. More hints of early date would
come with Graham Campbell-Dunn (Maori: The African Evidence 2007) giving an
ancestry in reduced Bantu prefixes for the archaic Khwe clicks. The N/C ancestors
evidently came south as growers of yams plus palm-nuts not cereals.
Here we plainly have expert opinions relatively few in number but apparently
growing when arguing against details of what is called the Bantu Migration Theory (=
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BMT) that begins to resemble the Aryan Invasion Theory (= AIT) in India. This all
tells us Bantu were in parts of southern Africa millennia before they were supposed to
be. This goes against the received wisdom on such matters but dopes accord with a
number of European maps. Some of these maps are cited by Hall & Neal (The
Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia 1902), Cooke (Human migration from Rock-art of
Rhodesia [Africa 1965]), “African Floods, Lakes & Random Matters”, etc.
Among the cited European map-makers are messrs. Sanuto/Sanudo (13 th/14th
c. Italian), Vesconte (13th/14th c. Italian), Mauro (15th c. Italian), Barbosa (15th
Portuguese), Santos (16th c. Portuguese), Johnstone (16th c. English). The Santos/
Vesconte Maps appear to attest the surprising detail of Robben Island in near-perfect
relationship to the Cape Town and Table Bay locations of western South Africa. The
most prominent feature of the Cape/Bay region is probably Table Mountain
overlooking Cape Town.
How a European myth was grafted on to Table Mountain in some of my other
papers but it also has a Bantu name but we should perhaps worth questioning why.
Nor is this the only question. Another is just when the earliest Bantu got to the
Cape/Bay region? This is usually regarded as belonging to no earlier than the 1850s.
Some of the cited European maps attest the Bantu-ruled Mwenemetepe (=
Monomatapa for the Portuguese) Empire reached down to Table Bay way before the
first Europeans got there. This would mean that once again Bantus were present in
parts of southern Africa long before academics would allow them to be.
One question from the above relates to an African name for Table Mountain.
That name is Umlindi Wemingizimu (= Watcher of the South) and it is fully Bantu.
Such a name could accord with the original term of Cabo da Tormentosa (= Cape of
Storms) for what was renamed as Cabo da Boa Esperanca (= Cape of Good Hope).
This would attest Umlindi warning against bad weather for African sailors (esp. given
Bantu fishermen apparently still invoke him as a tutelary protector). Otherwise, he is
warning off would-be invaders of southwest Africa.
That this may again indicate this region was attractive to non-Africans at dates
that are very decidedly Pre-European. Holm (ib.) felt the Bushman/Khwe rock-art he
discussed; attest a white presence in southern Africa. This was what got his book
banned. Yet we also saw that this was taken up by African writers. Good examples
are the several works by Credo Mutwa, Felix Chami (The Unity of African Ancient
History 2006), etc. For the Bantu Mutwa, they were Phoenicians but the Tanzanian
Chami was inclined to look to the Phoenician colony of Carthage (= Puni in Latin).
This Phoenico/Punic element is even harked to by some for the antecedents of
the west African Iron Age. John Taylor (Oxford Journal of Archaeology =OJA 1987)
and John Sutton (OJA 1988) are among those doing so and both do so via Carthage.
Taylor tied the date of ca. 600 BCE for the Periplus (= Voyage) of Hanno to that for
the early Iron Age site in west Africa at Nok (Nigeria).
Unfortunately for this theory, the Carthaginian methods of iron production
differ radically from those of west Africa in terms of moulds plus furnaces. In any
case, ca. 600 BCE is far too late for such as the carbon-14 dates (=C14-dates) for Iron
Age sites from west African sites far to the south in Gabon. These Gabonese C14-
dates run between ca. 1000-600 BCE for what are apparently not the primary stages
for this technology but attest ironworking as a developed tradition.
Taylor’s article does at least allow for some iron technology having arrived by
sea, a theme further touched on shortly. However, this also brings us to the matter of
west African sea-craft. The dominant vessel here is the dominant vessel is the dugout-
canoe about which Europeans complained loud and long. This was because the long
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narrow canoes were regarded as very unstable. They can achieve stability by a second
vessel being attached that became reduced over the years to mere floats called
outriggers. The double-canoe and/or those with outriggers appear on both sides of
Africa, may originate in India but are known across both the Indian and Pacific
Oceans.
Another African method of achieving stability was by sheer size. It is known
that Polynesian traditions tell of the Proto-Maori getting to New Zealand in such giant
canoes. So there is little reason to reject Fijian traditions cited on the Balson Holdings
site (online) of east Africans from Tanzania also undergoing transoceanic journeys in
such canoes when going across the Indian Ocean to reach the Fiji Islands in the
western Pacific. As to unstable canoes in west Africa, opinions cited by John Vlach
(The African American Tradition in the Decorative Arts 2007) west Africans sitting
dexterously in their vessels.
In short, the Europeans were sitting in vessels they were not used to. This
writer had a not a dissimilar experience when getting into a currach off Galway in the
west of Ireland many years ago. A comparable underestimate of African canoes seems
to be the origin of Europeans saying the west African canoes could not navigate the
tricky channels between the Bissagos Islands and mainland Guinea-Bissau. Reclus
(ib.) and Lacroix (ib.) say much the same about African sea-craft unable to cope with
the currents between the Cape Verde Islands and Senegal on the mainland. This is
despite abundant evidence to the contrary. On the basis of wrecked European ships
that as skeletal remains combined with the actual bones that led to part of the
Namibian coast being named as the Skeleton Coast, it would be equally appropriate to
suppose Europeans never got to western South Africa because they too could not cope
with the conditions.
What was Sud-west Afrika/is now Namibia was under German control in the
late 19th/early 20th c. They quickly manoeuvred the Hereros into war in which superior
firepower won victory, the Germans took Herrero land and wanted to settle it with
Germans. It will be very obvious there was no great German love for Africans yet
there is a surprise about who the Germans chose to ferry the precious cargo of would-
be colonists from ship to shore. They were taken through the dangerous swell that had
wrecked so many European ships in canoes that were standard issue far to the north in
west Africa according to the Swakopmund entry on Wikipedia.
Another German was Leo Frobenius (Voice of Africa 1913). His concept of a
unitary state from Angola to Morocco is unlikely and it was seen substituting a
commercial unity over the same extent of west-facing Africa on the strength of what
is said by Jean Barbot would be equally rejected by messrs. Hair, Law & Jones (ib.).
Frobenius is not alone in theorising about such. So too did the African scholar
named Carl-Christian Reindorf (History of Asante & the Gold Coast 1896) about
Congo to Ghana. A Swede called Knut Knudson (Swedish Ventures in Cameroon ed.
Shirley Ardener 2002) wrote of an extent from Cameroon to an unnamed distant
north.
It was seen there are real problems in attributing a Phoenico/Punic origin via
Carthage and the Sahara for the west African Iron Age. That the Voyage of Hanno is
best seen as a commercial venture emerges from the study of Hanno by such as Jona
Lendering (online). So again, that the Carthaginians had to conform to west African
trade-modes matches the much later “Portuguese Adaptations to Trade Patterns
Guinea to Angola” shown by Eugenia Herbert (African Studies Review =ASR 1974).
Moreover, the overland route claimed for Saharan iron resembles the claim of
Saharan copper coming via Saharan copper at Tazelik (Niger) to the mouth of the
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River Niger. As John Fage (Cambridge History of Africa 1977) points out, the ca. 600
miles between Azelik and the Niger Delta approximates to that of the Congo to the
Niger. Having seen that the commerce of an earlier period may be illustrated by that
of the Portuguese adaptations referred to by Herbert (ib.), there is still the objection
already seen as being raised by messrs. Hair, Law & Jones (ib.). This is readily
answered by Fage (ib.), Roger Smith (Journal of African History 1970), Kevin
Patterson (The North Gabon Coast 1975), Herbert (ASR ib., Red Gold of Africa
1984), Chami (ib.), etc.
Hints of antiquity emerge from Lacroix (ib.), Lendering (ib.), Patterson (ib.),
etc. The first two regard it as likely that a word for gorilla from the language of the
Bakongo also naming the Congo passed to the outer world via Hanno. Lacroix further
suggested that the Congo is the most westerly of the African rivers listed in “The
Aethiopica” by Heliodorus of Emessa (3rd c. CE Greek). More Bakongo words came
to the Mahongwe/Mpongwe traders of Gabon according to Patterson (ib.) who in turn
were also traders with the outside world.
An aspect of Hanno not often touched on is the sea-craft in which his Periplus
took place, as they were of penteconter type. As the penteconter is a warship, they
make unlikely carriers of passenger that is made even more improbable when read
they totalled 30.000. What the penteconter indicates is a need for speed and here we
have what may be another echo passed down to much later times, namely the west
African desire to prevent incursions on their internal waterways. One such was the
dramatic encounter between a native canoe-fleet and the Portuguese squadron led by
Alvise Cadamosto leading to Cadamosto being forced away from the mouth of the
Gambia, as shown by Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus 1976).
If one group of seagoing Bantus were operating on these coasts as early as
Hanno, those of Gabon were clearly absorbed or replaced by the Mahongwe. They
were evidently very proud of their canoe-building skills to judge from remarks made
by an experienced captain of the Royal Navy. He was Thomas Botteler (A Narrative
of a Voyage to Africa & Arabia1835) and wrote that Mahongwe canoes were built for
“speed, symmetry & solidity”.
It begins to look as if the Mahongwe are the west African equivalent of the
Mantenos in the Ecuador-to-west Mexico trade of West-coast Americas. Nor should it
not go unnoticed that once again there is once again the implication of a requirement
of speedy sea-craft. Botteler’s (ib.) admiration was picked up by the better known
Richard Burton (Two Months in Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 1870)
Messrs Burton (ib.) and Barabe (The Religion of the Iboga/Bwiti of the Fang
online) are among those holding there was a religio/spiritual dimension to this when
Mahongwe shamans went into the Spirit-world. Barabe compared Gabon in Africa
and Tibet in Asia for religio/spiritual development. Back in this world, Burton thought
Mahongwe canoes could have navigated to the Americas and that they carried 10/12
tons, so is close to the capacity guesstimated for the wreck excavated at Uluburun
(Turkey). Patterson adds the detail that they could carry 80/100 people.

CANOES & NAVIGATION: Brazzaville to Benin Republic

The alliterated title of the previous section took us from the River Oliphants in
western South Africa to the River Ogowe in Gabon and this section equally has a
alliterated title. Incorporated under the alliterations of this section it is mainly the
parts of Africa facing the Gulf of Guinea that are under discussion.
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The suggestion here has been that what some writers regard as political
systems stretching from Angola to as far north as Morocco has to be set aside and that
commercial ties are more probable. In this it seems Gabonese traders played as major
a role in Atlantic-west Africa as that of the Mantenos in the trading of West-Coast
Americas from Peru/Ecuador to west Mexico.
Serious doubts exist as to whether East-coast Amerinds ever had sails. Jack
Forbes (The American Discovery of Europe 2007) refers to the story of a Father
Blaseus as told by an Englishman named John Stoneman. Thus to Amerinds of
Mesoamerica held not to know anything about sails is added Stoneman recording this
Spanish priest as having taught use of sails to the Caribs.
As far back as Julius Caesar (1st c. BCE Roman), questions about the form
and material of the sails of the Atlantic Celts were being raised. Caesar was writing
about the sails of the Celts of that part of Gaul (= France & Belg.) that was
Armorica/is Brittany. He wondered if the sails of Veneti of Gaul were of leather
because Celtic Europe knew nothing of cloth-making.
There are several descriptions of Africans knowing nothing about sails. This is
said of Africans of the open waters of the Great Lakes of east Africa. Of west
Africans in canoes, probably the closest attention has been paid seems to have paid to
those on the River Niger. In fact, it may even be wondered if the crews on the great
rivers of actually needed to know anything sails.
As to Celts not knowing how to manufacture of cloth, we need only refer to
the Manapi. The Manapi were Celts of what is now mainly Belgium, were known in
Britain as Manaw and Monapia with another branch of the Manapi in Ireland. They
made cloaks that became very well known to the Romans. In any case, Caesar himself
felt the Venetic leather sails result directly from Atlantic conditions.
Amerinds of West-coast Americas are proven to have had sails and following
the Circum-Caribbean Culture theory of Julian Steward (The Handbook of South
America 1946-50), the spread of sails to the Caribbean seems no difficulty. More on
this are Pacific-like sails of the Brazilian jangada and Mayan Motul words of Pre-
Spanish date of bub (= sail) plus bubil (to sail/to navigate under sail).
Nor can west Africa be charged with not knowing how to make cloth. Not
only was/is there an enormous variety of west African fabrics but such as Columbus
and Cortez wrote of almaizor being exported to Iberia and Mexico. If the Portuguese
truly brought sails to the west of Africa, a question arising is why the form plus
material of European and west African differ so much.
Moreover, nor do the sails of local form, being of matting, methods of the use
of masts and sails, etc, of west Africa greatly resemble those of sailing-ships of
Portugal or any other part of Europe. Bradley (ib.) pictured vessels with masts and
sails in the Congo and more on the Niger. Those on the former river can be assumed
to be in what today are the Democratic Republic of the Congo (=DRC) plus Congo.
The more so as early Europeans record fleets of canoes engaged in fishing here and as
seen, west Africans reportedly went fishing at some distance from the nearest coast.
Unfortunately, Bradley does not give a source or date for his pictorial
testimony but Lacroix does mention Ichthyophagi (= Fish-eaters in Greek). He notes
Ptolemy (150 CE Egypto/Greek) citing the Aethiopiae Ichthyophagi of somewhere
around Cameroon. This incorporates the Greek term of Aithiopes (= Burnt/Black-
faces) for the darkest of Black Africans. It is uncertain why the African fishermen of
this region were regarded as blacker than any of the others in the regions immediately
adjacent to where the Aethiopiae Ichthyophagi were first recorded.
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One of the adjacent countries is that called Nigeria. Here were fishermen that
were not confined to the river giving Nigeria and the more inland Niger their names.
In the way that it seems more was going on around the Cape/Bay region of western
South Africa, so it may be that this was also so with coastal Nigeria. Indeed “The Ijo
Genesis” (= Ijo-Gen.) site has it that at least part of the makeup of the Ijo people of
south Nigeria originated in western South Africa; so on this view would involve more
long-distance voyages.
So too would those seen to have involved the territory of ancient Nigeria
variously called Benin, Edoland or Biafra. Thus those already theorised to have
stretched south towards to possibly Angola is added the traditions behind voyages
northwards to Gold Coast/Ghana. Yet another writer, Livio Stecchini has invoked The
Periplus of Hanno (online) as a relevant connection. Reindorf (ib.) is a major source
about Biafran sea-craft on their northward navigations that can assumed to date to the
period of Phoenico/Punics in Atlantic-west Africa when Stecchini wrote of the
Carthaginian admiral named Hanno trying to contact what he described the great
civilisation of Benin.
A major difficulty with anyone neutral trying to make sense of the Nigerian
material is the welter of theory and counter-theory. This is hardly helped when writers
of the separate ethnia are propagandising and/or point-scoring on behalf of their
particular ethnic group. Equally unhelpful are the diverse interpretations about deities
with a case in point being Olokun.
Olokun is a Yoruba deity described variously as a goddess and/or a god.
Making for further complications is Olokun even more severally seen as the lover,
brother, son, brother-self, etc, of Yemoya on the Black Phoenix Arts Lab (= BPAL)
by someone writing under the online name of thedragoncharmer. Besides a
connection with water, another point in common is the latter showing the vulture as a
symbol of Yemoya/Yemoja and the Vulturine Fish Eagle shown as symbolising
Olokun in “Olokun Mud Art” by Paula Amos (African Arts 1973)
A Kenyan story has Tumbainot in the Noah role dispatching a vulture to espy
land instead of dove plus raven in a version of the worldwide Great Flood myths. This
same east African version also marks the cardinal points of the world to north, east,
south plus west. These four corners of points of the world are also marked by vultures
in Yoruba ritual according to Yuya Assaan Anu (The Sadulu House online). This also
relates to the igha-ede (= junction/crossroad) according the “Chalk Iconography of
Olokun” by Norma Rosen (African Arts 1987). Also to the equally cross-shaped
images of Olori Merin (= Lord of the Four Heads) that as Olori has heads of godlings
at the end of the arms of the cross of this god who is again the god of way-finding on
land.
The names of these lesser gods are also the names of winds from north, east
south and west according to “The Religion of the Yorubas” by Joseph Olumide Lucas
(1948). Godling-names as those of winds attach too to the Horologion (= Tower of
Winds) designed by Andronikos of Cyrrhus [= Kyrrhos]). If the Horologion (1 st c.
BCE) marks the 8-point form of early compass called a wind-rose, the writer of the
Eden Saga site attaches the 16-pointer to the 16 nuts of Yoruba divination type Ifa
type.
Olokun was seen as the Yoruba equivalent of the Greek god of the sea called
Poseidon by Frobenius (ib.). He also looked at the extent of the lagoons first recorded
in the 19th c. as stretching from south Nigeria to modern Ghana and felt they were the
origin of the canals of Plato’s account of the Atlantis form of Great Flood myths.
Frobenius further cited stories of golden cities under the sea at some distance from
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Yorubaland that again convinced him Yorubaland was the original Atlantis. With the
riches of Atlantis in mind, he might also have mentioned that Olokun was not just a
sea-god but also the Yoruba god of wealth, so recognises wealth coming from the sea
(including fishing?).
Somewhat smaller than the surmised size of the island-empire called Atlantis
was Lagos Island identified with the so-called Great Island described in the report of
west African adventures of Hanno of Carthage by Hanno. This episode has been
variously interpreted. One of them is that this represents a warding off of a perceived
invasion by the Carthaginian fleet of Hanno. If the latter, this may not have been the
only example of the inhabitants of Lagos Island doing so, as standard histories of
Lagos Island tell of the seeing off of an attempted conquest the Benin Empire at its
Height. However, it is to be noticed the island did come under Bini/Benin rule.
Aromire is a Yoruba term meaning Lovers of the Water and that Beni-Otu is
an Ijo term meaning People of the Water according to Ijo-Gen. The same source has it
that not only did some of the mix making up the Proto-Ijo came from as far south as
western South Africa but also that some of the same group(s) went even further to
affect the speakers of languages of the Krio/Kru family of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Sierra
Leone but mainly Liberia.

CANOES & NAVIGATION: Benin to Bissagos

This Benin Republic to the Bissagos Islands portion sees us leaving northern
ports of the Gulf of Guinea for the island section of Guinea-Bissau. The Benin
Republic (= ex-Dahomey) to Ghana (= ex-Gold Coast) section of this region again
shows evidence of long-distance voyagers, extensive sea-fishing, gods of the sea, etc.
The god of the sea of the Ewe people centring on Ghana is seen under various
spellings of Wu/H-nu/Hwu given by Knappert (ib.). According to Knappert (ib.), the
Ewe distinguish between Wu as the god of the sea and Avaiki as the god of fishing
and that sea-fishing was seen as stealing from Avaiki. This strongly suggests not just
fishing at sea but also deep-sea fishing at some distance from the nearest shore.
There is some evidence of continuation of pre-existing traditions passing to
proto-tribal stages. Ouaouadagou/Wagadu/Wakar is the first recognised imperial state
in west Africa having a ruler called a Ghana that was to become that of the state and
Ghana was adopted by as the name of the Gold Coast on gaining independence. The
proto-tribal of the Soninke branch of the Mande/Mandinka grouping(s) was probably
the major founding element of the Wagadu/Wakar Empire and Mandinka Danso
names passed to the Akan-speakers dominant in modern Ghana. Wakar and Ghana
also practical matrilinear succession, spoke to subjects via intermediaries, had whisks
symbolising power, etc. Scripts of Saharo/Maurusian type may appear to be echoed
by the shape of some Akan gold-weights.
Messrs. Henderson-Quartey (The Ga of Ghana 2000) and Meyerowitz (The
Sacred State of the Akan 1951) also mention groups absorbed into others and passing
on canoe-building, sea-fishing, star-names tied to this, etc. The Guan god of the sea
called Nai became that of the Ga people researched by David Henderson (ib.). This
but one of numerous instances of a conquered people passing on maritime traits to
their conquerors and this was seen as far south as Gabon and according to Eva
Meyerowitz (ib.), another Ghanaian example would be the Etsi overrun by the Akan-
speaking Akans.
Meyerowitz (ib.) says that from the Etsi-turned-Fanti came boat-building, sea-
fishing, linked star-names, etc. In the online article titled “The Akan, Other Africans
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& the Sirius Star Systems”, mention is made of west African ethnia associate
themselves to Sirius in various ways. A good example is Sirius as the Yoruba Irawa-
oko (= Canoe-star) that might almost be pictorially glossed by “Proto-Polynesian Art:
The cliff-paintings of Vatuele, Fiji” by Rod Ewins (Journal of the Polynesian Society
1995). Here a canoe seems to be being steered towards a star that Ewins (ib.) wrote
may have been Sirius. With Fiji being part of Melanesia (= the Black Islands) plus
having legends of Africans reaching Fiji in large canoes, it may be that this belongs
here too.
Sirius also seems part of what passed from the Etsi to the Fanti. The Etsi name
for Sirius and nearby stars was Etsi and soon after the appearance of Sirius, Orion,
etc, fish were abundant. Whether the name of the people being the same as that of the
star-systems reflects the importance of the fishing to the Etsi is left unsaid by
Meyerowitz but she does call attention to Akan gold-weights some of were already
said to bear elements of ancient Saharo/Libyan scripts. Another theme is that of
bunched hawk’s feathers seen by the Akans as triangles combining with cross-shapes
marking north, east, west and south. In short, birds once again attest the cardinal
points of the compass.
Side by side in Cote d’Ivoire (= Ivory Coast) are more Akans plus speakers of
languages of the Grebo type. Not all voyages of west Africans along Atlantic-west
coasts of west Africa were long-distance. Examples of shorter distances include ones
from Benin (Nigeria) Lagos Island (Yorubaland, Nig.); from Yorubaland to Ghana;
those of the Sea Grebos when joining the Land/Bush Grebos in Liberia where the
Grebos are a dominant element. These would seemingly attest passages of
approximately five days on the basis of what is written by Carl Christian Reindorf
(History of the Gold Coast & Asante 1895).
The most famous of Grebo seafarers has surely to be those of the
Krao/Krio/Kru sub-group. Lacroix (ib.) argued the interpreters cum navigators that
came south with Hanno stopped being useful to him about the vicinity of Liberia and
that they were replaced by these Krio-speakers. If so, this would not be the only
example of non-Africans appreciating Krio/Kru maritime skills. Far to the south of
Liberia is the corner of Africa now called Namibia. As seen above, it was once under
German rule. Having stolen Herrero land, Germans were sought to farm it but a major
difficulty in getting passengers ashore in pre-jetty days meant going through Atlantic
so fierce that part of the Namibian shore was named the Skeleton Coast because of
just how many European ships came to grief on these shores. Given the Germans
clearly had little love for Africans, so it is a surprise as to who the Germans chose to
beat this problem.
Africans were chosen and those Africans were Krio/Kru-speakers and they did
the ferrying of what the Germans regarded as the valuable cargo of would-be settlers
from ship to shore. They did so in canoes typical of their Liberian homeland. Yet
these are the same canoes that early Europeans complained were unstable and liable
to capsize To this can be added such as the remarks of James Hornell (Man 1941) that
Negroes were too feeble-minded to have evolved their own canoe-forms. However,
John Vlach (The African American Tradition in the Decorative Arts 1990) cited
American opinion saying Negroes sat comfortably in canoes that they handled
“dexterously”.
Even if he is sparing in praise of African canoe-forms, Hornell (MM 1928)
does compare the paddles of Krio boatmen for length, design plus elegance with those
used in the Pacific by Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands. Another
Africo/Pacific linkage comes with legends of giant canoes from east Africa getting
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across the Indian Ocean to yet more Pacific islands but this time of the Fiji group
according to Fijian tradition. Another indication of African canoes as a trans-oceanic
vehicle comes with that called Liberia II successively taken across the Atlantic by
Hanes Lindemann (Alone at Sea 1958).
Not only were there these constant complaints by Europeans about unstable
African canoes but also to be noted are the comparisons of the smaller and lighter
canoes of the Grain and the Gold Coasts contained in “The Description & Historical
Account of the Gold Kingdom of Guinea” by Pieter de Marees (1602). This was
translated for the British Academy by Albert Van Dantzig and Albert Jones (1987).
Those of the severally labelled Malaguetta/Pepper/Grain Coast (mainly Liberia) from
exports of grains of Malaguetta pepper were lighter and smaller than those of the Gold
Coast (mostly Ghana) and yet there are other interesting comparisons for these Grain
Coast/Liberian canoes of the Kru.
One was seen to have been the addition of the Krio/Kru-type that have been
seen as trans-oceanic is that on the successful voyage undertaken by Lindemann (ib.).
His vessel was typical of the Krio; was of the size normal for the Krio/Kru; his mainly
fish-based diet was that leading to the ancient Greek term of Ichthyophagi (= Fish-
eaters) for many African coastal groups. Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror 1928; Water
Transport 1946) described the occupant of a Kru vessel bringing home two
monstrous fish of a type today involving sportsmen catching them using elaborate
tackle in large boats. Yet this Krio/Kru vessel was of the1/2-man size and light
construction normal for Kru fishermen and this event recorded by Hornell was treated
as nothing special and as an everyday happening. Elizabeth Tonkin (in Africa & the
Sea ed. Jeffrey Stone 1985) says some Krio/Kru are known as the Fishmen.
It was also the Stone (ib.) book that cited Frenchmen saying west Africans did
not go to sea because of fear. It will be said that French opinion seems largely
responsible for something very similar about the more specific case of west Africans
not being able to access the Bissagos Islands off Guinea-Bissau plus the Cape Verde
Islands west of Senegal.
Coming past that remote part of the Liberian coast now called Cape Palmas
held brought Europeans almost on to the Gulf of Guinea where they thought the seas
could not be navigated on. Yet Krios/Krus not only went hundreds of miles east
towards Cameroon but also traded westwards to the Senegal coast. If the above is
correct, the Krios/Krus were impressing non-Africans from the 1 st millennium BCE
onwards. To what was said already about them impressing Germans can be added that
they also impressed the 18th c. British sufficiently for them to continue inducting
Krios/Krus into the Royal Navy throughout the 19th into the 20th cs. according to
Wikipedia on “Siddees & Kroomen” which was to take them on to the Indian Ocean
Region (= IOR).
Where the reports of west African non-access to certain small island-groups of
west Africa came from seems noted by Pamela White et al (Exploration in the World
of the Middle Ages 2005) and George Brooks (Eurafricans in Western Africa 2003)
respectively. They may originate in problems of a Portuguese ship in the narrow
channels between the mainland and the islands and the islands themselves. The
captain of the French ship employed an expert Bissagan to aid piloting these channels.
That he apparently could not do so seems to have led the notion of these channels
were too treacherous to navigate.
When the Portuguese first got to the islands they found west Africans there. If
the Africans could not access the Bissagos Islands, we might wonder where the
inhabitants of the islands that the Portuguese met came from. Their arrival on the
 10

islands clearly long antedated the Portuguese getting there. Also an all-male
population will last only as long those males live, so the continuation needed females
to be present. The Wilson article (Journal of West African Languages 2003 & online)
on “Vowel Harmony in Biyago” makes obvious the Biyago language of the islands
had so diverged that some dialects were unintelligible to their fellow islanders and
had almost emerged as a separate language. This is further good testimony for
Africans there as very settled for a considerable antiquity.
Moreover, once again we will find west Africans involved in a widespread
canoe-based commerce, this time it is the Bissagan dugout-canoe. Nor were the
Bissagans shy of raiding European ships out at sea, this despite the dangers that
European cannons represented (so offer an early parallel for the modern Somali
pirates?). The Bissagan fleet was also the mainstay of a resistance to attempted
conquest of the islands by the Portuguese that was stayed between the 1530s and the
1930s, so was probably the most effective resistance to would-be European
conquerors in west Africa.

CANOES & NAVIGATION: Dar to Dra

Indian sea-craft came past those of Africans on the strength of what several
African plus other scholars cited in “Ancient India, West Africa & the Sea” say.
Instances of monsoons linked to Indians range from the “The Story of the Half-
drowned Sailor in Egypt” to the musum-baza (= monsoon-boats) possibly part-
naming Mozambique. This brackets most of IOR-facing east Africa and for such as
messrs. Senghor, Sergent, Sawandi, etc, Indian contacts occurred in west Africa as far
north as Senegal/Mali in contexts that Sergent wrote were proof positive of having
come by sea. India seems to have been important in the evolution of such as the dhow,
jangada, kattu-maran, etc, any one of which could have been what brought early
Indian sailors to west Africa. Later ones are shown on the Mauro Map (14th c. Italian).
The severally named Austronesians, (= ANs), Indo-Malays, “Indonesians”,
Nusantarans, etc, were mainly from Island Southeast Asia (ISEA). Going eastwards,
they were the main ancestors of the Polynesians of the Pacific islands and going
westwards, they were the main ancestors of the Malagasy of Madagascar. A raft-
first/canoe next the early stages in the west Pacific was argued for by messrs. Haddon
& Hornell (The Canoes of Oceania 1936-8). Interpretations of the IOR vessels called
rati (= rafts) by Pliny (Natural History 1 st c. CE) may lead to conclusions of the same
for the AN forebears of the Malagasy. If gaps in our knowledge of early AN types in
Africa is filled by claimed AN affinities of the mtepe, we note they were of coasts,
shallow seas and leaked badly, yet brought ANs to west Africa.
Also known on African coasts were Phoenicians from Phoenicia (= Lebanon),
Carthage (Tunisia), Gdr/Gadir (= Gades = Cadiz, Spain), Lixos (sth. Mor.), etc. At
about the same time (?) it seems Phoenicians left Egypt en route round Africa;
Carthage sent Himilco to west Europe; Carthage sent Hanno to west Africa; Gadir
sent craft to fish off west Africa that may end up as wrecks in east Africa. The latter
were of the hippoi among the forms crossing fierce Biscay tides; were depicted on an
Aliseda (Port.) jewel; took days to reach west Africa; fished there for days in Atlantic
seas, reached east Africa. George Rawlinson (History of Phoenicia 1889) saw
Phoenician ships as “tiny & frail” and Strabo saw hippoi as very poor.
The two most famous of Celtic sea-craft are the ponti of the Celts of Gaul (=
mainly France) called the Veneti plus the skin-boats of the Irish Celts called currachs.
If Garrett Olmstead (The Gundestrup Cauldron …&… the Tain Bo Cualgne 1979) is
 11

correct Venetic ponti were also plying the ferocious Bay of Biscay tides laden with
cargoes as much as the Phoenico/Punic vessels referred to by Alan Villiers (The
Western Ocean1957). Skin-boats plying Atlantic seas include the Inuit umiak and
kaiak/kayak plus the Celto/Irish currach. The Inuit boats did so making the relatively
short hop between east Canada and Greenland. The most famous single skin-boat
called is the Brendan successfully crossing the Atlantic in 1978.
Probably the ancient Greeks are well known to western readers as seafarers.
Mycenaean Greece had the vessels described as the “Black” ships in the much-cited
“Catalogue of ships” contained in Homer’s “Iliad”. They were compared with vessels
from the Bismark Islands by Bjorn Landstrom (Ships of the Pharoahs 1970). Hesiod
wanted his brother not to become a Greek sailor (as Diana Topham-Meekings in The
Hollow Ships 1976). Homer is cited by Lionel Casson (The Ancient Mariners 1991)
shows Nestor praying to Zeus for having survived the 50 miles between the islands of
Lesbos and Euboea. This pattern repeated among the later Classical Greeks is shown
by Peter Green (A Concise History of Ancient History 1991).
Viking ships were better constructed than Greek ones according to Casson
(ib.). He concludes this is because the Viking ships were built for ocean travel. The
island-hopping of Greeks in the Mediterranean Sea is matched to some degree by that
of Vikings on the Atlantic Ocean coming via the Shetlands, the Faroes, Iceland,
Greenland, the Americas, etc. Once more we have analogies pointed out between
European ship-forms and canoe-based sea-craft of the west Pacific but this time by
James Hornell (Water Transport 1946). Vikings called Rus (& named Russia) were
called Varangians by the Byzantine Greeks. The Rus/Varangians used log-canoes
when raiding Byzantine coasts across the Black Sea.
Also in the Americas were the pre-existing population called American
Indians (= Amerinds/Native Americans). Dominique Gorlitz (Abora articles on
Migration & Diffusion online) felt use of guaras/guares is shown by Egyptian rock-
art. Thor Heyerdahl (Ra Voyages 1971) took an Egyptian reed-boat across the
Atlantic. En route the steering-oar broke. It was replaced by an oar thrust through the
reeds to act as a proto-guare of the type that in fully developed form was the major
steering apparatus used by West-coast Amerinds when sailing on the long distances
between Peru/Ecuador in northwestern South America and west Mexico. When doing
so, these Amerind voyagers went against prevailing currents and winds.
Indian types argued by several expert opinions to have been capable of getting
from the IOR to west Africa are presumably strengthened by the jangada on the far
side of the Atlantic. Likewise, those bringing such as Indo-Malay/AN varieties of
banana, the disease called elephantiasis, certain forms of primitive instrument to the
coast of Atlantic-west Africa. Phoenicians and their Punic colonists were seen on both
sides of Africa on both sides in sea-craft shown to have been described as tiny, frail
and in the case of the hippos, very poor. Yet not one of these vessels can said to be
superior to sea-going west African canoes.
If they are superior what is usually dismissed as the dugout-canoe, they are not
markedly so. Indeed two very expert maritime historians were seen to inform us that
the famous Black ships of Homeric Greeks and the Viking drakarr have rather more in
common with the dugout-canoe than might be realised at first glance. The
circumstance of Odysseus (= Ulysses) given by Homer as a shipbuilder but knowing
how to construct a raft might easily be compared by groups of Vikings knowing how
to build the superb looking drakarr (= dragon-ship = longship) but also knowing the
value of the dugout-canoe.
 12

Moreover, from Michael Bradley’s (ib.) research, the west African dugout-
canoe was superior to the Viking drakarr of like length in respect of being generally
of single-piece construction rather than the several planks put together in the case of
the Viking craft. The seamanship of the West-coast Amerinds on their balsa-log rafts
is rightly much admired and as part of this, it was seen they went against prevailing
currents when doing so. Phoenico/Punic vessels going north/south on west African
coasts did the same, as did the west African canoes described in “The Canoe in West
African History” by Roger Smith (Journal of African History 1970)
The Villiers (ib.) reference to laden Phoenico/Punic vessels coming across the
Bay of Biscay was in connection with their possibly coming round the southern tip of
Africa. He thought both were probable and we have seen this thought to have
included hippoi shown quite close to Biscay at Aliseda (Portugal) and others from
Gades that we saw took days to get to Atlantic seas, fished in those same waters for
days was also deemed able to turn the southern tip of Africa.
On such a basis, there is no reason why west Africans did not do so as well.
The guesstimated carrying capacity of the wrecked ship Canaanite/Proto-Punic type
excavated at Uluburun was 10/12 tons. This stands close to that estimated for sea-
going west African canoes from as far back as Richard Burton (Three Months in
Gorilla Land & the Congo Cataracts 1876). Sea-craft of that part of ancient
Gaul/modern France that was Armorica (=Land by the Sea)/is now Brittany were
those of Celts called Veneti. A re-creation of them by Craig Weatherill (Cornish
Archaeology 1985) is no less theoretical than those of Michael Bradley (Dawn
Voyage 1991).
Yet once again the non-African vessels are labelled ships but Bradley’s tank-
tests demonstrate west African sea-going were every bit as seaworthy as most of those
shown so far in this section. In these contexts, we return to whether west African
canoes could have ever reached the Cape Verde Islands as per the comments by
Reclus (ib.) supported by Lacroix (ib.).
This non-access of islands from west Africa has already been touched. In the
case of the Cape Verdes, this is said by Reclus to be because of currents sweeping
west African canoes back to the Senegalese coast. The matter of whether west African
canoes has been touched on and was seen to even include possible turnings of the
most southerly point of Africa at Cape Agulhas (Sth. Af.). In any case, this ignores
what is said by Luis Feijo (19th c. Bishop of the Cape Verde Islands) who is cited by
Reclus as saying such Senegalese ethnia as the Serers, Wolofs, Lebous, etc,
seasonally fished in the Cape Verdes.
Even more to the point is that none other than Columbus also cites Portuguese
sources saying that laden west African canoes were seen leaving the Cape Verde
Islands for points west with only the open Atlantic and the Americas in front of them.
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, again according to sources noted by
Christopher Columbus there were blacks in canoes trading in islands of Caribbean.
So to re-pose the question of whether west Africans from Senegal could have
navigated to the Cape Verde Islands? West Africans were recorded as fishing “100
leagues” (= ca. 300 miles) out to sea by Pacheco Periera (cited by Bradley ib.) and
this approximates to the 350/400 miles of the Cape Verdes from Senegal
So the answer seems yes and we should probably extend this to a lot further
afield than the Atlantic-facing coasts of Africa. If it is correct that relatively little
reached the non-African world about Atlantis-west Africa between Hanno and the
Portuguese, what is written by Dennis Rawlings (online) summarising his research on
the Geographia by Ptolemy becomes very interesting.
 13

Coordinates are given by Ptolemy for what is usually seen as the Canary
Islands. An account of an expedition passing from Juba II of Mauritania to Pliny (1 st
c. CE Roman) the Makaron Nesoi (in Greek), Insulae Fortunata (in Latin), Jaza’ir al-
Kualidat (in Arabic) or Blessed/Fortunate Isles in English are usually identified as the
Canaries.
There are several reasons why this is unlikely. Simplest is that the coordinates
are wrong for the Canaries according to Lacroix (ib.), Rawlings (ib.) plus many others
but do fit those of the Cape Verdes. If it is correct that such as Juba (via Pliny) plus
the Mugharrirun (= Adventurers [via Edrissi]) found islands with buildings but no
people, it is worth noting the islands cited by Pliny has become one island by the time
of Edrissi (11th c. Magrebi). That island was Laqa for Edrissi and it was vaguely set
somewhere in the Atlantic (& anyone wanting to observe mobile islands & wrong
locations in the Atlantic could do worse than look at the story of the wanderings of St.
Brendan’s Isle still occurring on maps into the 19th c.).
If it is correct that there are Egyptian and Phoenico/Punic affinities for much
of Canarian prehistory, this indicates a long-standing population long antedating
Juba’s expedition. The islands having buildings but no people thus make no sense if
they are to be the Canary Islands but do fit the location of the Cape Verde Islands.
Also the buildings but no people do accord with the Cape Verde Islands as having
been seasonally fished by the west African ethniae described by Feijo (& possibly
paralleling the apparent defence of asset on Lagos Island by the Awori [see above]).
Rawlings (ib.) compared the discoverer(s) of the Cape Verdes with Leif
Eriksen or Christopher Columbus for daring. As to who was responsible for the non-
African knowledge of these islands, something of an analogy may lie with Robben
Island. It occurs in near-perfect relationship with the Bay/Cape region of South Africa
on the Sanudo/Vesconte Map(s) of the 13th c. The possible sources of this information
could be anyone of the above-seen suggestions with Indian plus Indo-Malay crews
reinforced by later evidence of Indians (as the Mauro Map) and Indo-Malays (as
Diego Couto cited by Hornell [JRAI 1938]; The Beal-led Burobudur voyage in west
Africa.
More locally, Africans are the most likely source. With canoes being to the
fore here, it is noteworthy that the word of sunugal (= canoe/boat) from the Wolof
language of Senegal seems to give us the name of Senegal. This is well shown by
Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origins of Civilisation 1984) saying that Djahi was
one of the Egyptian names for Phoenicia/Lebanon and one of the Wolof names for
Senegal. Diop (ib.) underlines this when further writing that Djahi means Place of
Navigation in both Old-Egyptian and Wolof.
More than one means of protecting assets has been shown above and to them
can be added misinformation. The kind that would lead on to the here-be-monsters
variety was still around till the 18th c. We can further observe Sultan Mohammed
Bello of Sokoto (Nig.) telling Hugh Clapperton (19 th c. Brit.) the Niger flowed west
into the Atlantic but gave him a map showing this river as flowing east as part of age-
old concept of the Niger/Nile. A much-seen tale has a Phoenico/Punic captain
wrecking his ship so as a following Roman ship did not find the trade-route to Britain.
A Bissagan pilot suddenly losing his expertise when guiding a French ship through
his native waters sounds very suspicious, so may prompt us to wonder if there is
another case of attempted deliberate wrecking to keep secrets secret.
For Egypt, an enhancement of commerce came with the Red Sea/Nile Canal
while a prime example of protection is provided by the Egyptian victory in the Battle
Nile Delta. It will be immediately no Islamic or European stimulus was needed for
 14

such as the war-fleet of the Kushite/Nubian Africans so feared by and so dangerous to

Egypt. Axumite Ethiopia placed the people called the Solates in overall charge of
Axumite anti-piracy policy with the overall charge under an admiral-type called the
Barnagash (= Lord of the Sea). Another admiral-type seems to have the original
officer of the severally named Swahili, Zanj, Shirazi, etc, was the Mkuu wa Pwani (=
Master of the Shore).
Zanj slaves were taken to parts of the Umma (= Islamic world) as part of
Trans-Islamic slavery. Some were taken to the Persian Gulf according to Iraj Bashiri
(Muslims or Shamans online) but others were taken to south Iraq. Here they often
rebelled against their slave-masters culminating in the Great Zanj Revolt. The 3rd
Slave War (73-1 BCE) led by Spartacus stopped all-conquering Roman armies for ca.
18 months and the Great Zanj Revolt (868-883 CE) led by Sahib al-Zanj stopped all-
conquering Arab armies for ca. 15 years.
Messrs. Burns & Collins (A History of Sub-Saharan Africa 2007) show just
how low the status of slaves was in the Islamic world when showing dead slaves were
thrown into pits alongside dead dogs. It thus can be readily understand why an east
African with an African title of Sahib al-Zanj (= Man of the Zanj) would introduce a
decidedly non-African Islamic background/parentage. The particular point about the
enslaved east Africans is that absolutely key for the Zanj successes in the south Iraqi
marshes was the expertise as boatmen, sailors and fishermen that made them so
attractive as slaves to their Arabic masters and which was to boomerang on them
when the Zanj seized control of the south Iraq waterways.
There are recent efforts dismiss the trans-Islamic and trans-Atlantic slave-
trades. They would dismiss the former entirely and minimise the latter as no more
than an extension of that within Africa. However there are several points in common
between both. The atrocious conditions of Zanj slaves in the Iraqi marshes appear
matched by those of enslaved west Africans building 19th c. Mississippi levees;
Bashiri (ib.) cites Zanj slaves thought their masters captured them for the purpose of
eating them and when Cadamosto met the Niominka at the mouth of the Gambia they
were hostile because they too held they were being captured for White cannibals.
A little on the positive side emerges from something written by Peter and
Ginger Neimann (The Voyage of Marcy: Madagascan Canoes online). They refer to
the construction of Malagasy/Madagascan canoes has affinities with Chesapeake Bay
(U.S.) canoes. This brings us to a comment made by John Vlach in superb “The
African American Tradition in the Decorative Arts” (1990). This is that a west
African origin for most of what west into the building of Chesapeake Bay canoes.
Whether this means a now-lost African tradition is identified remains moot.
To the resistance of the east Africans outlined above is added that of the
Niominka seen just above against the Portuguese fleet led by Alvise Cadamosto (15 th
c. Italian in Port. employ). This driving off of perceived threats was seen to have
possibly happened in Yorubaland (Nig.), more directly in the Bissagos Islands and
now in Senegal where the Niominka were possibly in a Solates-type role but this time
for the Malian Empire that ruled over Senegal at this time. Equally to the point, what
were apparently originally also were admiral-type figures in west Africa include the
Aromire (= Friend of the Waters) of the Yorubas, Hari-forma of Mali, etc.
The Red Sea/Nile was seen as an enhancement for the navigation of Egyptian
waterways. The lagoons seen by Reclus (ib.) as stretching from Nigeria to Ghana
were seen as aiding navigation in much the manner of the Egyptian canal and their
being seen as the equivalent of canals was part of what convinced Frobenius (ib.) that
Yorubaland was Atlantis.
 15

Unfortunately for Frobenius and all believers, Atlantis has been placed almost
everywhere. Africa has had several suggested locations. One of them centres on the
Agadez (in what today is Niger) region once on the eastern edge of the Malian
Empire, as Senegal was on its western edge. However, the Great Flood myth attached
to Senegal by Florence Mahoney (Stories of Senegambia 1982; 1995) is not that of
Atlantis but that of Noah in Genesis when linking it to the stone circles of the Gambia
plus Senegal (= Senegambia).
Senegal as a place of navigation and once part of the various mighty west
African empires links with what lies behind the claimed vast store of astronomical
knowledge of the Dogon at one end and the Senegambian stone rings at the other.
These circles would decidedly antedate the rise of the great empires in west Africa of
Wakor/Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc. Especially on land-use arguments of Andis Kaulins
(Ancient Europe & Africa Land Survey prior to 3000 B.C. online) that he dates
between 3500 and 3000 BCE. If so, ring-building in Senegambia went on for
millennia on the basis of attached C14-dates. Of all the Kaulins (ib.) conclusions, his
most convincing is his comparison of the ground-plan of the Wassu (Gambia) stone-
ring complex and the Virgo star-system. This puts on a par with the comparisons of
the Pyramids on the Giza Plateau (Eg.) and the Orion star-system.
Important in French-ruled Senegal was what the French called St. Louis but
still bears its pre-French name of N’Dar for the Wolofs. The Dar syllable also occurs
as a Wolof name for the River Senegal. Dar/dra-names stretch up to the Wadi/Oued
(= river) Draa (Morocco). This extent of coast is not just part of the western fringe of
the Sahara, it is also most of the coast of modern Mauretania (not anc. Mauritania
[more or less mod. Morocco] & note the slight difference of spelling). It is also more
or less what was called the Ganar/Gannar/Canar Coast stretching roughly between
southern Dar/Dra (= Senegal) and the northern Dar/Dra (= Oued Draa).
The northern Dra/Oued Draa is generally but not universally accepted as the
Lixos/Lixus of the Periplus (= Voyage). According to Michael Skupin (The
Carthaginian Columbus online), the Lixus is a river of Aithiopia/Aethiopia not of
Libya. By “Aithiopia” is more or less what is what we term Sub-Saharan/Black
Africa, whereas by “Libya” is actually is now called north Africa, Sahara, Magreb,
etc. Aithiopia is an interesting compound of the Greek words of aithios (= burnt) and
ops/opes (= face) giving Aithiopes (= Burnt-faces = Africans). If this river is of
Aithiopia, probably so too are the Lixitae people living on its banks and this has
significance. This was because Hanno chose the Lixitae as his first pilots-cum-
interpreters to at least as far south as Liberia according to Lacroix.
That oddities abound in the Hanno text has long been recognised. One that
does not appear to be discussed very often is the presence of the penteconter. The
penteconter would probably have been an inappropriate vessel to have carried
passengers. Even if they did, the number of 30,000 would-be colonists make this even
more unlikely. A fleet of 60 penteconters seems more like a war-fleet as a fast
warship; the penteconter implies a need to be faster than something else.
Elsewhere on these same coasts there have been the suggested driving off of
threats that in the case of the Bissagans was in tandem with piracy. It is tempting to
also connect this with Pieter de Marees saying that in calm seas, west African canoes
could outspeed European sailing-ships. It is worth further saying that as with the
Bissagan raids on European ships, European cannons would be dangerous for the
faster west African sea-craft. To this can be added that that the Liberia II dugout-
canoe of Lindemann (ib.) was faster across the Atlantic than the ship in full European
rig of Amerigo de Vespucci.
 16

Whether this can be attached to yet more Aithiopes called the Bafours on these
same shores is at best uncertain. However, their label of Imraguen (=
Fishermen/Fishmen) mirrors that of the former importance of the Krio/Kru also now
just called Fishmen. Belonging here too are probably Ganar/Canar and its possible
variants of Gana/Ghana, Gannarium, Kanuri, Canari, etc.
Groups absorbing outsiders when en route to becoming proto-ethnia have
already been touched on. Another would appear to be the Kanuri. They would appear
to have absorbed Afrasians, Nilo/Saharans and evidently are seen as neighbours of the
vast Mande-speaking linguistic grouping itself apparently relating to the Niger/Congo
languages of even greater extent.
The Gana/Ghana variant occurs as the title of the ruler of the Wakor Empire
but over the course of time came to be that of the state itself. The name connected to
that the Ganar Coast seemingly give the Wakor/Ghana Empire a coastline not usually
discussed but emphasised by the Gannaria extremis (= Cape Gannaria? = ex-Cape
Blanc = Ras Nouidibh) of Ptolemy. If the latter is connected to the Wakor Empire,
this is yet another hint that west African empire-building antedated the conventional
dates given for the proto stages of the Wakor Empire founded by the Mande-speaking
people called the Soninke.
Both the names of the Canari people and the Canary Islands have long been
accepted as having been linked to Latin canes (dogs). However, this is nothing like as
certain as oft-said. Other meanings identify the islands with seals or dog-headed folk.
The latter may signify masks of a variety for which Africans have long been famous.
Of further note is an Irish story of the Leinster/Fenian Cycle having the Fianna
fighting “Dog-heads” in Ireland. In common between Ireland and the Canaries is that
they are islands on the far-west of Europe and Africa respectively from the Classical
world.
Thus it can be assumed that the name of the Canary Islands owes more to
African sources than Classical ones. The more so given that there were also the
Canari of the relatively nearby Dyris/Atlas region where the inhabitants are regarded
as Aethiopes by Strabo. Moreover, there is Richmond Palmer (The Carthaginian
Voyage to the West Coast of West America 1931) has the word of Mansa (= Ruler)
from the Aithiopian/African language of Mande occurs as the Canarian word of
Mencey (King, Lord).
Dyris evidently relates to Greek douros and Atlas to Greek atlao. Both have a
general meaning of enduring, hard to bear, etc, so fits the pattern of Dyris folk as
constantly moaning about the sun and as Aithiopes. The people from Dyris/Atlas that
Herodotus especially says complained about the sun burning skin plus face were the
Atarantes yet so far as is known to this writer they are never called Aithiopes by
Herodotus. Livio Stecchini (re. the “Sahara” online) wrote that it is the Atlantes who
are described as having so complained according to Pliny and Pomponius Mela.
Moreover, Stecchini (ib.), Richard Smith (ib.), Skupin (ib.) are but a few of the
modern writers wondering why Herodotus separated the Atarantes/Atrantes and the
Atalantes/Atlantes. One suggestion is that pronunciation misheard may be at work.
Further is that even if Herodotus does not use Aithiopes of Dyris-folk, Strabo does.
Atlantes relates to Atlas, Atlantes, Atlantic, Atlantis, Atlantides, etc. The
Atlantides (= Atlantic islands), Pleaides (= islands to sail to?), Hesperides (Western
islands), etc, are all “daughters” of Atlas but really refer to islands of the Atlantic to
the west of Africa. As to Atlas himself, it is worth saying straightaway that the earliest
tradition(s) we have about him do not portray him as the moronic giant so loved by
makers of Hollywood films. Sources cited in “West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity”
 17

attest the original as probably one of several famous ascetics climbing into the High
Atlas for the purpose of meditative contemplation.
Diodorus Siculus has Atlas as the father of astronomy and who taught the
Greeks about the sphericity of the world. Among the descriptions of him by Homer
was he was a master-pilot who knew the depths of the sea. Van Sertima (1976) shows
the sphericity of the globe was known in Mali, as is shown by the world represented
as a gourd/calabash (as it was to the Polynesians & for whom seafaring was essential).
The Pre-Wakor to Wakor/Ghana imperial sequence was followed in time by
that of the Malian Empire. The ruler of Mali sent fleets on to the Atlantic and for
some writers, there is evidence for them having reached South America but al-
Omari/Umari says only the captain of one was known to have returned to Mali. That
he too knew the depths of the sea appears shown by his report of the stream under the
sea. This seems to indicate somewhere near where Canarian Current becomes that
called the North Equatorial hundreds of miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. His
being able to return home from so far out into the Atlantic seems to indicate he too
was a master-mariner.
This gives us a basis for regarding a considerable continuation of maritime
lore over much of west Africa. This familiarity with sea-routes did not prevent
mishaps is nicely exampled by the frequent Egypt-to-Punt voyages that did not stop
such as the wrecks detailed in the like of “The Story of the Shipwrecked Sailor”.
Among other journeys that were probably more numerous ancient texts and/or now
allow us to accept are of west Africa to the Americas; passing ocean to ocean; those
across the Sahara. Felix Chami (The Unity of African Ancient Africa 2005) is an
African scholar among those strongly arguing for the vessels taken ocean to ocean.
Pre-Columbian voyages across the Atlantic as a sea of salt compare with the
more ancient travels across the Sahara as a sea of sand. That methods of way-finding
across the Atlantic and the Sahara are very much the same is nicely exampled by an
account from a prisoner in the hands of the Berbers recorded by Gomes Zurara (15 th c.
Portuguese). It tells us stars plus birds were used by Berbers to navigate across the
Sahara Desert.
That this too was both widespread and long-lived in Atlantic-west Africa
seems shown from Homer to Omari. The chariot-trails across the desert attest earlier
crossings of the Sahara. There are also contrasts of Persians and Greeks in the desert
to the oracular shrine at Siwa (Egypt). The Persians were going to destroy Siwa and
Herodotus says all of them were lost and destroyed. A party led by Alexander the
Great were also lost but were rescued by black “birds” according to Diodorus Siculus.
Animal-like attributes have been applied to Africans for millennia. The masks
of west Africa have been noted and Richard Smith (What Happened to the Ancient
Libyans? online) alludes to more of the same in the Magreb. Herodotus adds to this
when saying that both Siwa (Egypt) plus Dodona (Greece) were founded by black
birds that he explains as Africans with what was deemed to be bird/bat-like speech.
He also attributed such a mode of speech to the Aithiopian Troglodytes (= Cave-
dwellers) and this continues down to the Tibu (= Rock-dwellers?) of the Tibesti
Mountains (Chad/Libya), so there seems to be no problem in tracing this among even
the remnants of the once extensive populations of Saharan Africans. Animal-like
attributes have been applied to Africans.
Back with the “black” birds of the Magreb/Sahara, we can now identify those
succeeding guiding the group led by Alexander the Great to Siwa as Saharan
Africans. The more so given that Charles Meek (Journal of West African History
1960) is one of those holding that Siwa was in the territory of a people called the
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Nasamones seemingly to incorporating a version of the Egyptian Nahasy/Nehasy (&

umpteen other spellings). It is as well to remind ourselves that Herodotus also tells us
that Nasamones crossed the Sahara. This means they too were Saharan Blacks
knowing how to traverse the desert. As were those that Ivan Van Sertima (1976) says
were way-finding for the great camel-trains across the Saharan sands according to the
Arabic text of Toffut al-Alab (11th c. CE).
Harry Bourne (mainly 2011)
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