In analyzing the Igbo Ukwu bronze objects unearthed British by archaeologist Thurstan Shaw in the early 1960s, we were attracted to a sacred object that featured a nude man and a nude woman on opposite surfaces, surrounded by what looked like writings executed in the form of curves of a snake. In other words, we found that the letters were formed with the curves of a serpent (plates 2, 3 ). As we studied the letters more deeply, we found close connections with the alphabetical system/orthography of an ancient language of Southern India, a language still in use in the state of Kerala, called Malayalam. Malayalam is spoken by Dravidians, Blacks who belong to the ancient tribe of Hindu Kush. Kush was the first son of Ham, the inheritor of the African continent among the three sons of the Biblical father of nations, Noah. The Kushites and their relatives the Canaanites were known to have been at the substratum of the civilizations and cultures of Nubia, Ethiopia, the Levant (Middle East), Nubia, Egypt, Babylonia or Sumer, Assyria, Palestine, Asia as early as the times before the Flood, which Oriental scholars and recent discoveries have placed at ca. 11,000 B.C.
Laird Scranton, (The Science of the Dogon, p. 171), noted that the ancient Hindu were conversant with “serpent science” whereby letters of the alphabet were formed with the curves of a serpent, just as we see in the Igbo Ukwu artifacts. But what is the connection of the Igbo with all this? While Kush was the globally accepted ancestor of the Nubians of East and Central Africa, our findings indicate that his brother Canaan was the ancestor of the Niger-Congo language family which includes the Bantu of West, Central, East and Southern Africa, and the Kwa of West Africa. Adiele Afigbo wrote that “historical linguistics using the methods of lexico-statistics puts the beginning of the separation of Igbo language from its sister languages in the Kwa sub-family at around … 3,000 B.C. to 2,000 B.C.” and that the emergence of “an autonomous Igbo culture” took place “5,000 to 6,000 years ago”. (Afigbo, Igbo History and Society p. 147) Then why do we find, everywhere we turn, Igbo words forming the root words in languages that existed before 3,000 B.C., even before the Flood of Noah (11,000 B.C.)? And why does the dispersal of Igbo words continue in far-flung cultures of Asia, Middle East, Europe, long after the Igbo nation had settled within the cultural geography where they now find themselves and where they have remained since the last 6,000 years? Is it possible that Igbo language is a direct offshoot of a proto-proto language shared by all mankind or that it, among all the languages spoken by the members of the human family, has retained the basic characteristics of the Mother language? Or is it that Igbo people were Pre-historic world travelers, colonizers and conquerors? Is it also possible that what is true of Igbo language in this regard, is not just an Igbo Phenomenon, but a general Kwa phenomenon? The answer to this last question can only be supplied when ample research has been conducted on all Kwa languages, but for the mean time we shall concern ourselves with our findings with regard to the global dispersal of Igbo language and what it connotes for the origins of the Igbo people.
There are two or more basic attributes that link the Igbo Ukwu inscriptions on the bronze artifact under reference (plate 2) with Dravidian or Hindu culture. One is the plain fact that the letters are Dravidian, the second is the fact that the letters were formed using serpents (a known phenomenon identified with ancient Hindu history) and the third is that the man whose image is featured among the inscriptions bears a concentric circle on his forehead which could be said to be reminiscent of the dot borne on the forehead of Hindu women and gods. These cultural features would have led one to conclude that the Igbo Ukwu sacred object might have been an item of trade rather than an indigenously produced item. But there is one snag – the woman on the opposite side from the man (plate 3) bears the characteristic ichi marks – a well known ‘trademark’ of the Igbo titled men (and women, as recorded in Acholonu’s Motherism the Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism, 1995). Again this fact attests to the antiquity of the cultural phenomena portrayed on the artifact, going back to the times when women, not men, bore the ichi and alluding to a period of the reign of the goddess.
The “serpent science” of Hindu legend has a curious parallel in Phoenician mythology. The invention of the Phoenician written character is credited to the god Taaut or Thoth. The oldest Phoenician character has the form of a snake curling itself up… Philo adds that the letters of the Phoenician alphabet “are those formed by means of serpents”. The forms and movements of serpents were employed in the invention of the oldest letters, which represent the gods. (Laird Scranton, The Science of the Dogon, p. 171) This is exactly what happens in the case of the Igbo Ukwu inscriptions – the movement of the serpent is employed to form letters and words. Here is undeniable evidence that we are dealing with the “oldest letters” invented by man. The link with Phoenician (Canaanite) culture and with Egyptian gods in addition to the Hindu writing system is not lost on us. Our interpretation of the symbols that grace the Igbo Ukwu sacred artifacts unearthed by Thurstan Shaw revealed that the finds could be described as a library of Pre-historic universal symbols held in the of the ancestors of the Igbo nation from time immemorial, as a statement of ownership, an ethnic identification mark transferred from generation to generation, sometimes reproduced from one medium to another to prevent the sacred letters from being lost, until it was finally unearthed in Igbo Ukwu. This was a library of symbols originally written on stone as can be seen from similar symbols on the monoliths of Ikom situated more than one hundred and fifty kilometers away – a pre-historic library of mankind’s first writing.
The most common symbols found in the Igbo Ukwu (as well as on the monoliths) are spirals, concentric circles, quadrangles, columns (lines), stars and crosses of various shapes (the equal-armed cross, the swastika and the square cross - Plates 1, 2, 4 and 5). For us, these finds point to prehistoric cultural connections between the Igbo/Kwa and the rest of the world, and tell us of the need for research beyond the narrow borders of Igbo-land, to unearth the rich hidden past of the Igbo nation, a people that as we shall show in this work, have never ceased to be world civilizers.
Laird Scranton, (The Science of the Dogon, p. 171), noted that the ancient Hindu were conversant with “serpent science” whereby letters of the alphabet were formed with the curves of a serpent, just as we see in the Igbo Ukwu artifacts. But what is the connection of the Igbo with all this? While Kush was the globally accepted ancestor of the Nubians of East and Central Africa, our findings indicate that his brother Canaan was the ancestor of the Niger-Congo language family which includes the Bantu of West, Central, East and Southern Africa, and the Kwa of West Africa. Adiele Afigbo wrote that “historical linguistics using the methods of lexico-statistics puts the beginning of the separation of Igbo language from its sister languages in the Kwa sub-family at around … 3,000 B.C. to 2,000 B.C.” and that the emergence of “an autonomous Igbo culture” took place “5,000 to 6,000 years ago”. (Afigbo, Igbo History and Society p. 147) Then why do we find, everywhere we turn, Igbo words forming the root words in languages that existed before 3,000 B.C., even before the Flood of Noah (11,000 B.C.)? And why does the dispersal of Igbo words continue in far-flung cultures of Asia, Middle East, Europe, long after the Igbo nation had settled within the cultural geography where they now find themselves and where they have remained since the last 6,000 years? Is it possible that Igbo language is a direct offshoot of a proto-proto language shared by all mankind or that it, among all the languages spoken by the members of the human family, has retained the basic characteristics of the Mother language? Or is it that Igbo people were Pre-historic world travelers, colonizers and conquerors? Is it also possible that what is true of Igbo language in this regard, is not just an Igbo Phenomenon, but a general Kwa phenomenon? The answer to this last question can only be supplied when ample research has been conducted on all Kwa languages, but for the mean time we shall concern ourselves with our findings with regard to the global dispersal of Igbo language and what it connotes for the origins of the Igbo people.
There are two or more basic attributes that link the Igbo Ukwu inscriptions on the bronze artifact under reference (plate 2) with Dravidian or Hindu culture. One is the plain fact that the letters are Dravidian, the second is the fact that the letters were formed using serpents (a known phenomenon identified with ancient Hindu history) and the third is that the man whose image is featured among the inscriptions bears a concentric circle on his forehead which could be said to be reminiscent of the dot borne on the forehead of Hindu women and gods. These cultural features would have led one to conclude that the Igbo Ukwu sacred object might have been an item of trade rather than an indigenously produced item. But there is one snag – the woman on the opposite side from the man (plate 3) bears the characteristic ichi marks – a well known ‘trademark’ of the Igbo titled men (and women, as recorded in Acholonu’s Motherism the Afrocentric Alternative to Feminism, 1995). Again this fact attests to the antiquity of the cultural phenomena portrayed on the artifact, going back to the times when women, not men, bore the ichi and alluding to a period of the reign of the goddess.
The “serpent science” of Hindu legend has a curious parallel in Phoenician mythology. The invention of the Phoenician written character is credited to the god Taaut or Thoth. The oldest Phoenician character has the form of a snake curling itself up… Philo adds that the letters of the Phoenician alphabet “are those formed by means of serpents”. The forms and movements of serpents were employed in the invention of the oldest letters, which represent the gods. (Laird Scranton, The Science of the Dogon, p. 171) This is exactly what happens in the case of the Igbo Ukwu inscriptions – the movement of the serpent is employed to form letters and words. Here is undeniable evidence that we are dealing with the “oldest letters” invented by man. The link with Phoenician (Canaanite) culture and with Egyptian gods in addition to the Hindu writing system is not lost on us. Our interpretation of the symbols that grace the Igbo Ukwu sacred artifacts unearthed by Thurstan Shaw revealed that the finds could be described as a library of Pre-historic universal symbols held in the of the ancestors of the Igbo nation from time immemorial, as a statement of ownership, an ethnic identification mark transferred from generation to generation, sometimes reproduced from one medium to another to prevent the sacred letters from being lost, until it was finally unearthed in Igbo Ukwu. This was a library of symbols originally written on stone as can be seen from similar symbols on the monoliths of Ikom situated more than one hundred and fifty kilometers away – a pre-historic library of mankind’s first writing.
The most common symbols found in the Igbo Ukwu (as well as on the monoliths) are spirals, concentric circles, quadrangles, columns (lines), stars and crosses of various shapes (the equal-armed cross, the swastika and the square cross - Plates 1, 2, 4 and 5). For us, these finds point to prehistoric cultural connections between the Igbo/Kwa and the rest of the world, and tell us of the need for research beyond the narrow borders of Igbo-land, to unearth the rich hidden past of the Igbo nation, a people that as we shall show in this work, have never ceased to be world civilizers.