To: West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity

To: East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity

To: West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity

ABUBAKRI II--- WHO HE?

After looking at the maritime history of west Europe for some 40 years (esp. that of sea-going Celts), my attention has turned to similar matters pertaining to African coasts. This research has resulted in such as East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity; West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity; West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity and Abubakri II: Who He? All are accessible on www.africanarts-webpage.com .

In these papers, such terms as Alexandria (Egypt)/Antakya (= Antioch, Turkey)/Athens (Greece) or A/A/A-arc of the east Mediterranean; Messina (Sicily)/Marseilles (Med.-facing south France)/Malaga (Med.-facing east Iberia) or M/M/M-arc of the west Mediterranean, the Magreb (= north Africa west of Egypt); Indian Ocean (= IOR) are to be found.

These terms are part of laying out something of the background for the other papers and for this article When researching for the papers of this series, the name of Abubakri II was constantly encountered and anyone having read the other work(s) will find that some of it is repeated here.

Taking us directly to the IOR are the Laws of Manu that are generally acknowledged to have originated in the earlier 1^st millennium B.C. This basically indicates 1000-500 B.C. and represents the codification of the basic tenets of Hinduism. Amongst other things, they tell the Brahman not to go to sea and if they were to do so, they would stop being Hindus.

George Hourani (Arab Seafaring on the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times 1995) says early Caliphs at Baghdad tried to prevent Arabs going to see because it was unnatural. In this respect, the Arabic phrase for the Straits of Mandeb (= Gate of Tears) for when Arab crews were leaving the relatively sheltered Red Sea for the open IOR begins to make sense. So too do the various Arabic terms of Bahr al-Muzlim (= Sea of Darkness) plus Bahr al-Zulamat (= Dark Sea) for the Atlantic Ocean

Still with the Indian Ocean but now those shores making up the eastern parts of South Africa. Cape Agulhas is the most southerly point of Continental Africa and east of it is eastern South Africa facing the Indian Ocean. For Pre-European vessels, the Agulhas Current was considered to be dangerous. Something of the same led to the names of the Wrecks Coast between Port Elizabeth and East London and the Wild Coast to what is otherwise that of the Transkei.

Part of the coast that is now Mozambique has been called Ophir and/or Sofala. The latter is regarded as derived from Arabic sufala/soffail (= shoals). It refers to the shoals marking the approaches that with such as Cabo Corrientes (= Cape of Currents) were labelled as dangerous. A particularly famous shipwreck here concerns what was anciently recognised as a Phoenician or Carthaginian (= Punic) type called a hippos. This Phoenico/Punic hippos was found by Eudoxus (2^nd c. B. C. Greek) according to Strabo (1^st c. B.C. Greek) at Cape Delgado (on the Moz. /Tanz. border) according to messrs. Cary & Warmington (The Ancient Explorers 1963).

Idrissi (14^th c. Arab) plus Strabo appear to say east Africa south of the Horn of Africa (= Sub-Horn Africa) and north of the Horn (= Above-horn Africa) respectively, did not possess ships. What the Greeks knew as the Straits of Deire is known as Bab el-Mandeb (= Gate of Tears) in Arabic. This seemingly refers to going into the Gulf of Aden and the Erythraean Sea (= western Indian Ocean) from the relatively sheltered Red Sea. Even here were dangerous shoals according to the unknown 1^st c. author of Periplus Maris Erythraei (= PME = Voyage on the Erythraean Sea) between the Alalious (= the Dahlak Isles) and the coast of Eritrea. Strabo notes Egyptian doubts of sea and sailors and this is enough for Alessandra Nibbi (Discussions in Egyptology 1997) to say Egyptians did not go to sea.

West of Cape Agulhas, the Indian Ocean becomes the Atlantic Ocean. Dennis Montgomery (Seashore Man and African Eve 2007 & personal correspondence) is of the firm opinion that the subtropical parts of the western or Atlantic side of Africa are very difficult for navigation in non-powered craft. This is also where the Benguela Current begins and it too is deemed to be dangerous for non-powered vessels.

So too was Cabo Tormentosa (= Cape of Storms but renamed as The Cape of Good Hope). The Namib Desert of nearly 1000 miles long is nearly as long a stretch of desert as the Atlantic-facing frondes of the western Sahara. It is mainly the coastal fringe of present-day Namibia and part of it was so littered with the stark remains of wrecked ships plus human cadavers, that it was called the Skeleton Coast.

From Namibia/Angola to Morocco would have been what was defined as the Northwest Atlantic Culture by Leo Frobenius (Voice of Africa 1913) but the term sounds too American. Moreover, there never was a unitary culture stretching most of the length of west Africa. Moreover, this would have meant using Pre-European dugout-canoes that would have had difficulties rounding Cape Lopez (Gabon). Donald Harden (Antiquity 1943) simply dismissed Frobenius as a fantasist.

Messrs. Bridges (in Africa & the Sea ed. J.C. Stone 1985) plus Lacroix (Africa in Antiquity 1998) are also amongst those discussing African maritime matters. Roy Bridges (ib.) cites French opinion saying west Africans never went to sea because of "que`lle horreur" (= great horror/fear) of the sea. Sir Alan Burns (History of Nigeria 1968) quoted the following doggerel of "The Bight of Benin, few come out but many go in". Various writers cite 18^th c. British captains saying that the people of what is Nigeria were too scared to come past the bar at the mouth of the River Niger and go out to trade at sea.

It might be thought the above noted Frobenius theories would get some support from what is said by Pieter de Marees (17^th c. Dutch) currents. However, it can be observed that messrs. Hair, Jones and Law (Barbot on Guinea 1999) wrote that de Marees was simply in error about the "Guinea"-to-Angola voyages. Further is that they regard him as equally mistaken about the biscuit-like unleavened bread known as kankey that he says was taken on these trade-trips.

Even more to the point is that getting from "Guinea" (= mainly modern Ghana) to Angola meant going against the prevailing currents in the simple dugout- canoe. In the same light, is that according to the author of the Wikipedia article on Guinea-Bissau is that there are suggestions that dugout-canoes could not cope with the narrow channels between the islands making up the Bissagos Archipelago from whence came the Bissau part of Guinea-Bissau. Lacroix also tells us west African dugouts could not reach the Cape Verde Islands because such frail graft would be swept back to the west African mainland.

The Atlantic was described as the Mare Tenebrosum (= Sea of Darkness) by the Romans and directly Arabised as the Bahr al-Zulamat. Another Arabic simile was Bahr al-Muzlin and presumably takes us back to what is surmised to lie behind the Arabic term of Bab el-Mandeb and the suggested fear of going to sea itself reinforced by religious warnings about going to sea shown issue forth from India and Arabia.

The dugout-canoe would have been used if the Trans-Atlantic voyages from those claimed for the African influences on Olmec-era Mexico to those of Abubakri II ever took place. To say the least, such claims have prompted considerable scepticism and matters are hardly helped by what the cited writers have been shown to be saying about the inadequacies of the west African dugout-canoe. Nor when it is realised that this also is the type made familiar to us by the films in which Tarzan so easily overturns them. Also as early as Columbus, comments were being made that sheer distance ruled out any connection between west Africa and East- coast Americas.

The author of the Wikipedia article on Abubakri II (= Abubakri II (A) retrieved on 28/6/07, as opposed to Abubakri II (B), retrieved on 17/7/07) tells us that there is no reference to Abubakri by name in our main source about the fleets allegedly sent by Abubakri II. That major source is al-Umari (14^th c. Arab) in an account labelled here as "The Returned Captain". He described the ruler usually identified as "Abubakri II" as having sent a fleet of 200 vessels plus auxiliaries across the Atlantic "to find the other bank of the ocean and the Lands Beyond". Only one ship returned and this was followed by another expedition of 2000 vessels led by "Abubakri" himself but nothing was ever heard of them again.

Thus not only is there no sign of just who the unnamed Emperor of Mali was but can it be believed that the impoverished Mali could really mount two such major events? The more so given that according Abubakri II (A), the story seems unknown to the griotic/oral-history tradition of Mali. Also the Wikipedia author seems sceptical about the role of the "professors" in that they are described between inverted commas, thus is indicative of just what their professorial and intellectual status at Timbuctoo really was. This is further confirmed by the scorn lying behind the use of the term of the "so-called" University or Sankore at Timbuctoo (Mali).

At best, the notes attached to the Abubakri II (A) seemingly indicate, that the whole may be no more than a mix of migration plus morality tales. Such morality-tales are well-known and in the form of Great Flood are fully discussed in "Folklore in the Old Testament" by Sir James Fraser (1920).

That belonging here has it that the 400 ships of the first expedition having only one surviving vessel was a warning from Allah. Having then ignored the divine warning, all of the second fleet vanished. The folkloric connection would be reinforced by the fact that the single survivor (or ship, in this case) is a worldwide device whereby someone needs to survive the disaster in order that the tale be told.

Probably the most famous migration-tales in the west are those originally called sagas by the Norse or Vikings. There are Celtic forms that particularly mean the Irish immrama (= voyage-tales). In both cases, it is the sea that dominates and several tale-cycles result. This puts into perspective the frequently asked question of "Where are the African Lands Beyond stories?"

To the north lie the western fringes of the Sahara. They are as long a piece of desert drear as the Namib Desert of somewhat further south but still on the coasts of Atlantic-west Africa and seen as very dangerous to early vessel-forms.

The western fringe of the Sahara is also the western fringe of the Magreb (north Africa west of Egypt = Tunisia/Libya/Algeria/Morocco/Mauritania). The northern coasts of the Magreb are said by no less an Afrocentric authority than Chancellor Williams (The Destruction of Black Civilisation 1984 & 2002) to have been of little interest/concern to the Saharan Africans.

From the forgoing, it seems legitimate to pose the question as to whether anyone actually had the nerve to approach the coasts of any part of the Indian Ocean to anywhere on the coasts of Africa. The answer is very clearly in the affirmative. Otherwise, how do we account for the very considerable nautical reputation of such as the Swahili of parts of east Africa, to give but a single example?

If Alessandra Nibbi (Revue Egyptology 1997) is correct, Egypt may have had skinboats. She has compared the images of some vessels depicted on Naqada-type pottery from Pre-Dynastic Egypt with photographs of skin-boats with the sun behind them belonging to Inuit (= Eskimo) in Canada. This was coupled with a report of a Celtic skinboat in 18^thc.Ireland reported by Paul Johnstone (ib.).

Inuit skin-boats include not just the umiak but also the rather better known kayak/kaiak. Of the two, the umiak was definitely a sea-going vessel used during whaling. When used for inshore whaling, Johnstone (Sea-craft of Prehistory 1980.) says "Yankee" whaling captains were so impressed that they swapped their heavy wooden Bedford bull-nosed boats for the umiaks that just skimmed over the water.

The umiak has also been called the "Women’s" boat. This has interest in the light of emigration from eastern Canada to Greenland. In this light, it should be realised that all-male settlements continue only to the last surviving male, so women definitely were amongst the colonists.

More skin-boats held to have reached Greenland are those of the Celtic form called currachs but the currach is more definite on Iceland according to Norse texts. Celtic skin-boats also tend to fall into two main classes. They are the bowl-shaped coracle plus the boat-like currach/curragh. The coracle tends to be treated as the riverine/lake-based version of the currach. This is correct in a general way but not completely so, currachs have been recorded on Irish rivers.

For the relative skills needed by men of coracles and those using the currachs see James Hornell (Mariner’s Mirror 1936 & 1938). This specifically means the stories of Julius Caesar (1^st c. B. C. Roman) and Diarmait Ua Suilebheann/Dermot O’Sullivan (17^th c. Irish) escaping enemies in Iberia and Ireland respectively. They had skin-boats built and escaped their enemies by crossing rivers in them to safety.

It is generally theorised that the Celtic skin-boats became more boat-like from the needs of going to sea. Such Classical authors of both Greek and Roman traditions as Timaeus (3^rd c. B.C.), (?)Julius Caesar (1^st c. A.D.), Pliny (1^st c. A.D.), Solinus (2^nd c. A. D.), Rufus Avienus (4^th c. A.D.), Sidonius Apollinaris (5^th c. A. D.) etc, record British currachs at the southern end of the Irish Sea. According to Roger Penhallurick (Tin in Antiquity 1984), the fullest account of the trade in British tin from Cornwall is by Diodorus Siculus (1^st c. B. C. Greek) but it is Avienus who links the tin-trade at the southern end of the Irish Sea with currachs.

The Irish source that is Cormac’s Glossary was written by Cormac Mac Cuilennain (8^th/9^th c. Irish). The Glossary is as reliable as any of the just-cited writers from the Greco/Roman or Classical world and has the advantage of genuinely Celtic, albeit under Classical influence. As such it is part of the third oldest vernacular literature in Europe (after that in Greek & Latin) and the earliest literary corpus in western Europe. Whether this can be taken as meaning that the Irish saved "Civilisation" as a recent has it is quite another matter but it is worth noting that Cormac’s Glossary is thought to be the first attempt at a European dictionary.

So when the Glossary records more trading by currachs on the Irish Sea but this time at the northern end, it is probably authentic. This involved the 50 currachs belonging to Breccan trading between that part of Ireland that was/is Ulster and that part of Britain that was/is Scotland went down in a whirlpool or current. A currach was built by the University of Santiago (Spain) was taken for several hundred miles down the west coast of Iberia. This especially means the Bay of Biscay that is one of the roughest seas off Europe, as reported by Richard Mac Cullagh (The Irish Currach Folk1992) but even more famous is "The Brendan Voyage" by Tim Severin (1978).

Brendan of Clonfert came from Kerry (in s/west Ire.) and is one of the most famous of the early clerics of Christian Ireland. His adventures are recounted in both Old-Irish and Latin versions and on them was based the attempt to recreate his voyage by Severin and his crew. They did this successfully by crossing the Atlantic in a skin-boat of currach type.

Another of the adventures of Tim Severin was to sail across the largest of the world’s oceans, the Pacific. This was to try to prove that to many other achievements, the Chinese also had the ability to traverse the Pacific Ocean from China to West-coast Americas. This was undertaken by Severin as "The China Voyage: A Pacific Quest by Bamboo Raft".

West-coast Amerindians may even have traded with them but Richard Callaghan (Antiquity 2002) shows that they more certainly traded between Peru/Ecuador and west Mexico. The term of Amerindians is preferred here to the more cumbersome one of Native Americans and those of West-coast Americas traded by sea and in doing so went against prevailing winds and currents. This was on rafts.

Also leaving Peru was the famous Kon-Tiki expedition led by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947. It may well be that to the great glee of most Establishment academics, that Heyerdahl has been proven wrong in his major contention that the main population(s) of the Pacific islands were of Amerindian origin but he did prove one thing. This was to demonstrate that it was possible to cross the Pacific on a raft.

On the point of where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet is Nusantara (= the Islands = Island s/east Asia). The Nusantarans were from the Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore plus Malaysia. They are shown by Robert Dick-Read (The Phantom Voyagers 2005) as regularly plying between Nusantara and Madagascar plus east Africa. This means the entire Indian Ocean. According to Pliny, they came on rafts. On some arguments, they would have been part of a series of voyages rounding Africa to as far north as Ghana bringing such as bananas, plantains plus types of musical instruments with them.

Related vessels are noted by Thomas Bowrey (17^th c. Englishman). He is but one writer suggesting this and is quoted by Paul Johnstone (The Sea-craft of Prehistory 1980) as showing this in parts of India. Presumably the words in the ancient Sanskrit language of India that was considerably strengthened by the military/political/cultural/commercial mix would have been spread by users of these raft-like vessels. Certainly from northeast India and the Jaffna Peninsula there are the Nagas who are said by the author of the Wikipedia article on the Jaffna Nagas to have been great traders. The earliest of the Indian traders came on vessels that were probably more raft-like than rafts.

In east Africa, it seems lay the region that the Egyptians called Ta-Neter (= God’s-Land) or Punt and probably to be identified with Somalia. For the Egyptians, there was a long history of the Punt-trade dying then being revived and this went on for millennia (as did that of West-coast Amerindians). In Tomb 143 at Thebes (Egypt) are two Puntite craft probably plying the Red Sea. They may be rafts.

Hippoi is the plural of the Greek word of hippos (= horse). The word seems to derive from the fact that both stem-posts plus stern-posts were horse-shaped; were the work-horses of the sea or a combination of both for Johnstone (ib). In passing, it may be worth noting the camel-necked dhow of the Erythraean Sea as the camel of the sea (as opposed to the camel as the ship of the desert).

Famous hippoi include that in which King Lulli fled his native city in Phoenicia (= Lebanon) of Tyre from the might of Assyria plus those that Strabo (1^st c. B.C. Greek) says regularly went for four days to reach fishing-grounds.

The hippoi trying to get to these rich fisheries mainly represented Phoenicians or Gaditanians settled at Gadir (= Gades in Latin/Cadiz in Spanish) but also some from Carthage (nr. Tunis, Tunisia). They were a poor and simple type of craft according to Strabo and were mainly for inshore, lighter plus harbour work (hence the workhorse label).

However, it has also been indicated that they could be used for longer distances, as possibly shown by the one depicted on a jewel found at Aliseda (Portugal). This probably means Phoenician and/or Gaditanian hippoi on west Iberian coasts well to the north of Gadir/Gades. Otherwise, the longer distances are exampled by those heading for aforesaid rich tunny-fisheries of Morocco off the west Magreb and entailed four days on the open sea.

The hippos that bids fair to be the most famous of them all has been mentioned already. It is that allegedly found by Eudoxus in the 2^nd century B.C. at what was also seen to have been identified as a find-spot at Cape Delgado in east Africa. Felix Chami (The Unity of Ancient African History 2006) has placed this alongside the Periplus (= Voyage) of Necho and the Periplus of Hanno.

Of these Periploi (= pl.of Periplus), that of Necho was made by Phoenicians at the behest of Pharoah Necho (7^th c.) and went east-to-west, whereas, the Voyage of Hanno was on behalf of the City Elders at Carthage west-to-east and for a few ancient writers successfully rounded Africa.

If this could be proven to be correct, the Delgado hippos was part of much more regular circumnavigations of at least Cape Agulhas than generally supposed. Some of the uncertainties about this have been pointed out and include that only Pliny, Martianus Capella plus a few unknown anothers regard it as probable that Hanno made it right round Africa. On the other hand, it does acceptable that a hippos made it round Cape Agulhas and was wrecked at Cape Delgado, where it was found by Eudoxus on the occasion of his being shipwrecked at the same point of east Africa.

EARLY WOODEN VESSELS: DUGOUTS

The raft has been mentioned as a type of sea-craft used by inhabitants of the Pacific islands but rather more famous is the prau/proa (& umpteen other spellings). They are a refined form of dugout-canoe and have been recorded as being three times as fast over the same distance as European ships, even when those European ships were in full sailing-rig.

The dugout-canoe also features in some parts of the coast of West-coast Americas. This is particularly true of the Northwest Coastal Culture (= NCC) and more specifically, Amerindians of the Haida tribe. The Haida occupied Queen Charlotte Island and regularly went on to the open sea to fish, travel and trade.

In the early 1900s, a Haida dugout-canoe was bought by a Captain Voss, rigged as a schooner and taken on a round-the-world voyage and survived perfectly. Another has been sailed between Queen Charlotte Island (off British Columbia in west Canada) and the island of Hawaii to demonstrate that North American Amerindians were in decidedly Pre-European contact with the Pacific islanders.

More Amerindians but of the East-coast Americas are those of Post-Saladero times. Saladero is a famous Amerindian archaeological site in South America near the mouth of the River Orinoco (Venezuela). From the Orinoco, it seems sailed the ancestors of the Arawaks/Tainos plus the Caribs. The antecedents of these ethno-groups has raised considerable controversy but then so has so much else.

It is probable that that the Tainos and the Caribs were related and that the difference is chronological rather than anything else. Douglas Peck (Yucatan: Prehistory to the Great Revolt of 1546 [2006]) shows that the Caribs are reported by Spanish historians as going the considerable distance of 150 leagues (= c. 450 miles) in order to complete their raids on islands of the Caribbean and/or Mayab/Mayaland (= most of sth. Mexico, Belize, Honduras & Guatemala) or what for convenience will be called Caribo/Mayab.

Peck (ib.) regards it as likely that an account of a failed invasion of that part of what are now south Mexico, Belize, Honduras plus Guatemala that was once called Mayab (= Mayaland) belongs here. This was recorded by the Mayan Amerindians in the text called The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel. Eric Thompson (History and Religion of the Maya 1971) indicates that a firm distinction is made between the trading along inland waterways and that of sea-going merchants. Thompson (ib.) and Peck (ib.) between them, demonstrate that Mayan traders reached as far south as Panama and as far north as Florida (USA).

Peck (ib.) also cites Spanish writers saying that that they were told by islanders in the Caribbean that what seems to have been Mayaland as seen from those islands was c. 300 miles away. He further cites a Mayan document saying much the same, namely that the "islands" were about 10 days sail and roughly 300 miles away. Callaghan (ib.) has proven that the Maya not only had sails but also that they possessed the ability to navigate at night.

The Mayas may have had forms of dugout-canoe but Peck literally illustrates just how elaborate some of them would have been. Clinton Edwards (The Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 1965) describes then as surely worthy of being described as small ships

The great god of most Amerindians of Pre-Columbian Mexico and/or Central America was some variant of Kukulkan or Quetzalcoatl that both mean Flying-serpent. Peck (ib.) is of the opinion that devotion to this deity was such that worshippers were wont to try to seek the homeland to which he had come from and to which he had retreated. His homeland plus retreat were to the rising sun.

There is some indication of what may lie behind some of this. Alexander Curle (Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 1937) excavated the Neolithic settlement of Jarlshof in the largely treeless Shetland Islands to the north of Scotland. The use of pinewood there he attributed to logs drifting from North America. Alexander Von Humboldt (Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America 1799-1804 & online) had arrived at much the same conclusion regarding American plant material reaching other group of Scottish islands to the north of Scotland, the Orkneys. Baron Humboldt (ib.) also cites Peter Correa (Governor of Porto Santo & brother-in-law of Columbus) also arriving at not dissimilar conclusions about large pieces of bamboo arriving in masses in the Atlantic islands of the Azores.

Sometimes the pieces of wood had been worked and occasionally, these crafted timbers were in the form of boats and even scarcer are boats with people that had come across the Atlantic. There is a long history of "los Indios" being on the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Pomponius Mela (1^st c. Latinised Iberian) plus Pliny (1^st c. A. D. Roman) are Classical writers recording that "several Indians" were caught in a severe storm, taken across the ocean and landed in what is now western Germany. That part of Germany is what was once called Suebia/Swabia and the king of the Suebi sent them on to Metellus Celer (1^st c. B. C. Roman Governor of Gaul). Antonio Galvao (15^th c. Portuguese) says that "Indios" were taken from the sea in 1153 and sent to Lubeck at the time was the leading city of the important European trading-bloc called the Hanseatic League.

The friend/confidant, confessor and early biographer of Christopher Columbus named Bartolome de las Casas (15^th/16^th c. Spaniard) reported what he found in notes written by Columbus. Las Casas says that Columbus refers to a boat that washed up in the island in the Atlantic archipelago called Flores. In it were humans having facial features that were neither those of Africans or Europeans.

There are also the stories about what have been variously described Eskimo or "Finn-men" reaching Scottish islands. Given what has been said about these "Indi/Indios" reaching Germany and that the German tribes were neighbours of the Finns, it seems unlikely that these stories attest "Finn-men". Nor does this work geographically, as the part of Germany involved is the side furthest from the Baltic Sea and "Finn-men" territory.

Inuit/Eskimos remain a possibility but given what has been said already, so too are Amerindians. The above-made comments also mean that if the latter are indicated, these Amerindian vessels are probably from Mayab/Mayaland (= most of south Mexico/Guatemala/Belize/Honduras). The more so given the sophistication plus the seaworthiness of Mayan dugout-canoes is proven by Peck. We might also remember that these Mayan vessels prompted the Edwards remarks about them qualifying as small ships.

Another pair of writers discussing dugout-canoes is messrs. Law (Journal of African History 1967) plus Malloy (in Blacks in Science: Ancient & Modern ed. Van Sertima 1983). To this is added "The Fishing Canoes of Ghana" by Nichola O’Neill (1996). East Africa & the Sea in Antiquity; West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity plus West Africa & the Atlantic in Antiquity may also prove useful.

Something else that may be useful is to follow the international comparisons for the capabilities of the west African dugout-canoe listed in West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity. One of them was with the earliest Greek ships that following what is described in the Catalogue of Ships in the long narrative poem on the Trojan War by Homer (?10^th c. B.C.Greek). Homer shows that hero of the Trojan War called Nestor praying to Zeus (Father of the Gk. Gods) for having survived the short voyage between two Aegean islands. Ships of the time depicted on the Aegean island of Thera (= Santorini) attest the same kind of paddling standard for west African canoes.

The rafts/raft-like vessels from Nusantara can definitely be proven as far west as the large Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. They can also probably be seen as having reached even west further to east Africa below the Horn of Africa (= east Africa below south Somalia = Sub-horn east Africa). It has already been said that according to some authorities, the Nusantaran rafts may have been known on the coasts of west Africa. If this is so, they would have to be deemed as capable of rounding Africa, of traversing the deserts of the Namib (inc. the Skeleton Coast) as has been suggested of the Phoenico/Punic hippos and the west African dugout-canoe.

Also seen to belong here are religio/cultural influences from India. The Sanskrit name of Naga seen from Nagaland (India) to Jaffna (Sri Lanka) occurs as that of people (? c. 4000 B.C) eating large stones and of meaning snake in the oldest Indian literature. Snake-worship on more islands links Madagascar and the "Punt" of The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (12^th c. B.C. Egyptian). Messrs. Pankhurst (online) and Sawandi (online) compared Naga (India) and Gurage (Eth.) megaliths (= large stones) and the ayurveda of India and the Yoruba Ifa of Nigeria respectively. If this is Indian-tied, they too came round Africa in craft as simple as African canoes.

Felix Chami (The Unity of African Ancient History 2006) was seen shown in West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity to regard the simple Phoenician type of vessel called the hippos as capable of rounding Cape Agulhas at the very southern tip of Africa. This took them from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean (& vice-versa). He is also of the firm opinion that this occurred frequently. To this can added that this applies equally to African dugouts. Moreover, there are arguments the latter may also have borne the first Fat-tailed sheep from Namibia/Angola to western parts of South Africa and given what will be seen, this is not a major difficulty.

Michael Bradley (Dawn Discovery: The Black Discovery 1992) has also made pertinent comparisons of the Norse drakarr (= dragon/longship) and west African dugout-canoe. The excavated Gokstad (Norway) longship was replicated as the Viking and sailed across the Atlantic. Magnus Anderson (the captain) reported that "the hull worked a lot" (= leaked badly). Despite this, all was said to have gone well. The seaworthiness of the giant west African dugout-canoes more than matches this, specially being one-piece constructions. Bradley (ib.) further demonstrates that the largest west African dugout-canoes exceeded the length of the Viking drakarr.

In the papers shown above to be online at www.africanarts-webpage.com, there are numerous other comparisons for the dugout-canoe. One of Haida type was seen to have been faster over the same distance as a steamer. Dugouts elaborated into the Pacific prau/proa were reportedly three times faster than European ships, even when the European ships were in full sailing-rig.

Pieter de Marees (17^th Dutch) tells us that a dugout-canoe of the 1/2-man size normal for fishing in west Africa was faster in calm waters than a European ship in full rig. Ivan Van Sertima (They Came Before Columbus 1976) directly compared the distance covered by Amerigo de Vespucci (15^th/16^th c. Italian working for Portugal) and Hannes Lindemann (Alone at Sea 1958) in a fully-rigged European sailing-ship and a one-man west African dugout-canoe respectively. Over a near-identical distance, de Vespucci took 64 days and Lindemann took 55 days.

Lindemann’s voyage was in a dugout-canoe that was bought "off the peg" and not one of the many specially-made replications based on ancient models. It is also seen that he as a single paddler/oarsman comes close to the 1/2-man crews seen as the norm for west African fishing-canoes. Lindemann (ib.) also tells us that he ate nothing but fish and drank nothing but fish-juice and we may observe that this all-fish diet brings us close to the ancient Greek label of Ichthyophagi (= Fish-eaters) for several west African fishing-groups.

The study of African water-craft by Stuart Malloy (ib.) already referred to shows canoes lengthened by other lengths sewn on and others were turned into double-canoes in almost Polynesian fashion. Harold Lawrence (in African Presence in Early America ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1992) says planks added to the sides gave extra width. De Marees is further cited by Bradley (ib.) as saying that west African canoes could be as big as shallops. The dimensions of a shallop are given as 30 feet long, five feet wide and three feet high.

This makes them the equal in size of any Norse/Viking drakarr and twice the size of the replicated Celtic skin-boat of currach type called the Brendan. It will also be recalled the Brendan was another of the replicated forms successfully taken across the Atlantic and this is equally so for the west African dugout-canoe.

My constant use of the term of dugout-canoe has been quite deliberate. It helps to make the point that simple craft were a lot more seaworthy and more complex than generally surmised. In any case, Van Sertima (They Came before Columbus ib.) comments that these are not the frail African craft beloved of Hollywood films and overturned by Tarzan so easily.

It is worth our time to observe the comments of Sir Richard Burton (online version of Two Visits to Gorilla Land the Cataracts of the Congo). Burton particularly cites the admiring remarks of an experienced British seaman by the name of Bottelaer. Captain Bottelaer thought that the canoes of the Mpongwe of Gabon were constructed for "strength, symmetry & solidity". Bottelaer further added that the Mpongwe were especially proud of their canoe-building. It also begins to look as if they were the basis of a largely unknown sea-trade of considerable extent.

The Nusantaran/Indonesian connection with so strongly urged by Dick-Read (ib.) to have brought plantains, bananas, etc, to east and west Africa but if so, on the basis of banana phytoliths found in Cameroon, this occurred before c.1000 B. C. So too Indian megaliths, phallus-linga, naga/snake-cults of 4000-1000 B.C. linked to Madagascar, Ethiopia, Egypt (in east Africa), the Yorubic Ifa (as Tariq Sawandi in Yorubic Medicine online) of Nigeria (in west Africa), etc. Chami (ib.) was seen to consider the known records of periploi (= voyages = nautical expeditions) by the Phoenico/Punic as showing but the tip of iceberg as to just how many times that the very tip of southern Africa was traversed.

At the beginning of this article there was much stressing of just how impossible it was for Africans to have navigated on any part of the continent of Africa. This was part of what was called the Negatives but from the four papers of this series but in the more specific pages listed in the section called the Positives onwards, something else has been emphasised.

That something is that from what has been written above, the Positives are to be stressed. It may come as a surprise just how frequently it can be suggested that Cape Agulhas was rounded. If this holds good, this was achieved by several cultures. They did so in vessels not usually markedly superior to the dugout-canoe of west Africa. In fact, we might consider that the west African canoes are not in any whit inferior to the raft-like and hippoi types put forward as having achieved navigation around Cape Agulhas at the southern tip of Africa.

West African canoes were also seen to have been capable of carrying sheep, cattle, loads of up to 10/12 tons, 80/100 men, etc. Here the bearing of sheep and/or copper from Namibia/Angola looms large. If the carrying of sheep could be confirmed, then it will be obvious that the occupants of the canoes could way-find or navigate past the long stretch of desert that we have seen was called the Namib Desert. This means that they had navigated past the long stretch of the Namib Desert and could have gone round southern Africa in the manner of much later Africans.

Something of the antiquity behind this emerges from the pages of messrs. Frobenius (The Voice of Africa 1913), Patterson (The Northern Gabon Coast 1975), Fage (Cambridge History of Af. 1977), Herbert Red Gold of Africa1984), etc. The Leo Frobenius concept of a unitary culture is discussed elsewhere in these pages. His term of the Northwest Atlantic Culture was replaced there by that of the West African Atlantic Complex. This recognises there may be something belonging to Atlantic coasts of Africa but is not part of a unitary culture and is probably best regarded as a series of overlapping trade-spheres.

As already said near the beginning of this article, the transporting of large amounts of the "red gold" (= copper) from mines in Namibia and/or Angola that prompted the title of the book by Eugenia Herbert may underline this. The point is fully made when we realise that the title of the Herbert book is the "Red Gold of Africa" (ib.) but also see just below.

If what we are told by Richard Burton (online version of Two Trips to Gorilla Land & the Cataracts of the Congo) is correct, then "way-finding" was also a part of the Bwiti mysteries. The Bwiti cults have a long history among the Pygmies of central Africa (esp. those called the Mbuiti, hence the term of Bwiti) but are now mainly practiced by Bantu groups of what are Gabon, Congo, DRC (= Democratic Republic of Congo = ex-Zaire), Cameroon, etc. There is a particular association of Bwiti with the Mpongwe of Gabon. This being so, means a maritime aspect to the way-finding.

The more so when it is remembered that Burton (ib.) was shown to have quoted the admiring comments of Bottelaer as to the seaworthiness of Mpongwe canoes. If what is said by messrs. Patterson (ib.) and Lacroix (ib.) is correct, words denoting commercial traffic passing from Kikongo language(s) to the outside word have some antiquity behind them.

It does appear that Hanno (? 6^th/5^th c. B. C.) tried to bypass his west African aides and deal directly with matters, he came unstuck. It is the episode when Hanno tried to seize some apes/ape-like creatures and finally captured three females that bit and scratched so much that they had to be killed. Lacroix says these animals were described in the Kikongo language of the Bakongo people naming the Congo. The words were ngo didda (= violent chest-beater). Lacroix (ib.) says this became gorilla.

Patterson (ib.) looked to the Kikongo words of Mani (= Ruler), malaffa/mallifa/malassa (= mead), matandi (= bark-cloth), etc, passing to the Mpongwe. Also that commerce was the medium by which they came to the Mpongwe. This would probably continue something very shadowy for the ancient past but in which copper from the Lower Congo played a large part.

Here the theories of John Fage (ib.) loom large. As just said, copper-trading in the remote past remains largely hidden from us but Fage (ib.) has an interesting sidelight on this. It has long been accepted that copper reaching the mouths of the Rivers Cameroon and Niger originated in the mines of Azelek/Takeda in the Sahara. The distance from Azelek/Takeda (Niger) to the Niger Delta is c.650/700 miles and Fage (ib.) points out that from the mouth of the Congo to the mouth of the Niger is equidistant. We also have the expert opinions of Patterson plus Herbert about the giant canoes used as trade-vessels between Namibia/Angola and "Guinea" and this tells us that whatever the problems of non-powered vessels getting round Cape Lopez, they clearly achieved it.

Night-fishing at sea is recorded from at least, Angola to Ghana/Ivory Coast. This will have meant night-time navigation at sea and in this respect, there is Sirius known to the Yorubas (of Nigeria) as Irawa-oko (= Canoe-star) that seems almost represented in pictorial form in Polynesia where this would prompt little comment. Patterson (ib.) says the Mpongwe were as brave at sea as the sailors of what is now Ghana taken as the measure of west African maritime prowess by Europeans.

There is also what is said by Barbot about the trade south from "Guinea" towards Angola but against this is what is said by messrs Hair, Jones plus Law (ib.) yet in turn another trio of Fage, Patterson plus Herbert have been seen to have met these objections. What this means is that these writers have detailed the north-going trade that is the other side of the coin touched on by Barbot. The Barbot comments have also been accepted in "The Canoe in West African History" by Roger Smith (ib.). It is Smith (ib.) who says that this meant navigating against prevailing currents but then we have seen that so-called "simple" sea-craft elsewhere also did this.

This will mean that Barbot was also correct about the special bread called kankey, as well as the fact that west Africans could navigate against prevailing currents. The doggerel seen to have been quoted by Burns (ib.) about the problems of getting into Benin cannot have been achieved by west Africans, because we seen that they had a great horror of the sea and that this applies to all the peoples of what today is Nigeria. Yet Benin had a god of the sea called Agwe and so did another Nigerian ethno-group called the Yorubas but the Yoruba sea-god was Olokun.

Another Yoruba god was Olori Merin (= Lord of the Four Heads). His images are usually cross-shaped with the heads of minor gods or roundels marking the ends of each arm and the god-names are also those of the winds from the same direction. There are Greek and Mayan analogies for this kind of thing. Roundels or circles tied to crosses in various ways are widespread but the cross-in-ring/circle is probably the best-known. The basic cross-shape not only relates to cardinal points of the compass but has also prompted such terms as cross-in-ring/cross-in-ring, Atlantis Cross, Mariner’s/Sailors Cross, etc.

Surely the most significant of these terms is Sailor’s/Mariner’s Cross but if west Africans from what is now Nigeria were too scared to go to sea, why the need for a means to navigate at sea? Why the need for a god of the sea? Olokun (= Lord of the Sea) so impressed Frobenius (ib.) that he was directly compared with Poseidon (the main Greek sea-god). Further is that Frobenius also wanted Yorubaland (now part of Nigeria) to be Atlantis. Barbot contradicted his British colleagues by saying Nigerian groups did trade at sea and this fits with the Yorubas also having a god of the sea. So too does that Olokun was not only the god of the sea but was also the Yoruba god of wealth. This carries the implication that what is being recognised here is that wealth came from the sea.

More interesting questions arise from the supposed inability of west Africans to reach such offshore island-groups as the Bissagos and the Cape Verdes. The Bissagos Islands were mentioned in reference to the Wikipedia article on Guinea-Bissau. There the suggestion is made that the narrow channels from the mainland to the islands and between the islands of the Bissagos/Bijagos Archipelago were too treacherous for west Africans in dugout-canoes to master.

When we realise that when the first Portuguese got to the region and found the islands inhabited, an immediate question arises. If west Africans could not reach the islands, where did the islanders come from and how did they get there? Clearly, the answer to these questions is that the people came in canoes from west Africa. Most of the islands apparently had their own dialects of the basic language but one has been isolated from the others for so long that it that the dialect has become a separate language. Following what philologists have laid down as the laws of how languages develop, it seems we have to allow approximately 1000 years for this to have happened. This at the very least would take us back to possibly late years B.C. (?) but definitely early times A.D., probably 0-500 A.D.

As to the Cape Verde Islands, there are two major relevant reports about the Canary Islands. The first is the famous one by Ptolemy (2^nd B.C.) and relates to the geographical coordinates given to the Canary Islands. The other report is by al-Idrissi/Idrissi (12^th c. Arab) and in it, Idrissi tells us about buildings but no people on islands that are usually accepted as being those of the Canary group.

There are good reasons to seriously doubt that it is the Canaries taking our attention here. Lacroix (ib.) says the coordinates given by Ptolemy for the Canary Islands do not accord with their position but does agree with that of the Cape Verde Islands. The Canary Islands have had a permanent population for millennia, so surely cannot have been the un-peopled islands described by Idrissi. It is probable that we should consider the Cape Verde Islands as seasonal fishing-camps and this answers the matter of buildings but no people.

As to west African canoes being unable to reach the Cape Verdes, this is answered by the friend of Columbus that we have seen was named las Casas. This is when he was told of canoes in the Cape Verdes by inhabitants of Fuego/Fogo in the Leeward group of these islands. The only island of this Leeward group that is not an islet is Brava and yet it too is too small to have had much of a population, so would hardly had been much of an attraction for traders and yet las Casas also records more canoes heading west of Brava with only the open Atlantic in front of them.

The west African coasts nearest to the Cape Verde Islands are those of Senegal. The name of Senegal seemingly comes from the word sunugal (= [place of] our boats) in the Wolof language of Senegal. The Old-Egyptian word for Phoenicia was Djahi and a Wolof word for Senegal was Djahi. The point being made comes home when we read that Cheikh Anta Diop (The African Origins of Civilisation 1984) translates Djahi as Place of Navigation. When we realise that this includes Phoenicia and there is absolutely no difficulty in regarding the Phoenicians as ancient seafarers, it suddenly becomes much less of a problem applying this to west Africans.

In this light, there are certain curious maps. One of them has an immediate interest for us here. It was complied by Piri Reis (15^th/16^th c. Turk). Of 20 source-maps, he regarded eight as dating to at least as the time of Alexander the Great (4^th c. Greek) Only a fragment is still extant and seemingly illustrate coasts on both sides of the Atlantic. That of west Africa seems fairly accurately, the position of the Atlantic island-groups of the Cape Verdes, Azores plus the Madeiras. The longitude of the Canaries is off by one degree according to messrs. Hapgood (Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings 1979 & other editions) and plus Covey (in African Presence in Early America ed. Ivan Van Sertima 1992).

Parts of East-coast Americas are mapped almost up to modern standards in terms of latitude plus longitude but others are equally not so. The studies of Charles Hapgood (ib.) have become attached to UFO/God-as-Spaceman theorists. This has proved to be a very handy peg on which academics to hang hats and dismiss Hapgood’s conclusions. Messrs. de Montellano, Haslip-Viera plus Barbour (see West Af. & the Sea for refs.) consider Joan Covey (ib.) as Hapgood’s disciple in the Afrocentric school of Van Sertima. This is not meant to be complimentary; indeed, this trio have very deliberately put themselves in the van of anti-Afrocentrism.

The earliest European maps are those of the Greeks and they their T/disc/O-maps are totally unlike anything those mentioned by Hapgood plus Covey. The Greek knowledge was distilled into the Geographika of Ptolemy (2^nd c. A.D. Egypto/Greek). Ptolemy was very influential for a very long time but for all this, many writers have pointed that his work is riddled with errors. Three of his fellows in the Greek-speaking world were the unknown author of PME (1^st c. A. D. Egypto/Greek), Cosmas (6^th c. A.D. Egypto/Greek) plus John Malalas (6^th c. A.D. Byzantine Greek).

Malalas was probably the leading Greek geographer of his day but George Stokes (Ireland & the Celtic Church 1892) is but one of several later historians pointing out that his errors make his writings a joke. The PME-author plus Cosmas Indicopleustes both wrote accounts of voyages on the Indian Ocean, indeed, Indicopleustes actually means voyager to India. Cosmas seems to have been one of the first to turn the Greek disc/O-maps horizontally and this was to lead to flat-earth concepts and notions that if you went too near the edge, you simply fell off.

Medieval European cartography all too frequently tended to be to be of Heaven with the Earth below in secondary position with gaps filled in with such as hic sunt dragones (= here be dragons/monsters). The knowledge of how to set latitude gave Columbus and his contemporaries all sorts of difficulties and the attempts to set longitude at this date in Europe are shown by Hapgood plus Covey to be way off.

Things were improving by the 18^th c. but still were sufficiently bad to have prompted the contemporary satirical poem by Jonathan Swift (18^th Irish) quoted in West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity. Nor was it until the inventions of John Harrison (18^th c. English) that Europe was able to set longitude and do so accurately. Covey (ib.) felt that Hapgood’s (ib.) Sea Kings may have been west Africans; from the foregoing it will be obvious that they were not Europeans.

Africans or "Aethiopes" (= Burnt-faces) with sing-song/bird-like voices are also to be identified with black "birds" seen as oracles according to Herodotus (5^th c. B. C. Greek). Herodotus reports more Aethiopes with what the Greeks deemed to be bat-like/bird-like speech in what is now called the Sahara Desert. It is worth comparing what is said by Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus (1^st c. B.C. Greek) about non-natives in the Sahara.

Herodotus tells us that the King of Persia named Cambyses in 525 B. C. sent some 50,000 troops to take the Shrine of Ammon/Amon at Siwa (now the village of Aghurmi, Egypt). However, their guides left them and without their guides, all the Persians are said to have perished. Diodorus says that Alexander and his group trying to reach Siwa/Aghurmi also nearly went the same way but that black "birds" suddenly appeared to lead Alexander to Siwa. Van Sertima (1976) cites the Toffut al-Alabi (12^th c. Arabic) as saying Aethiopes/Negroes were still acting as guides across the desert sands but by this time on a grander scale, as they were leading the great caravanserai across the entire Sahara.

It will be recalled that master-mariners from the western fringes of Africa are attested from Atlas to the Returned Captain. Several historians doubt that Herodotus was correct to separate Atarantes/Atalantes and Atlantes/Atrantes and that they are the same people. Here we observe that this means that not only do they incorporate much of the name of Atlas but that the original Atlas was a native of a region named by other locals that would "atlao" (= Gk. for suffer or bear) and that they suffered because the sun burnt skin plus face). This brings us back to the origin of the Greek term of Aethiopes meaning Burnt-skins/faces and applied to all Black Africans by the Greeks, therefore, it follows the Atlas prototype was also one of their number.

It was shown that Blacks were noted as guides across the Sahara for millennia, indirectly by Greeks and more directly by the Arabs. It is said that this was because they knew the ways of the birds and the stars. This is confirmed by James Hornell (Antiquity 1946) citing Portuguese evidence that birds and stars were used to navigate across the hundreds of miles across the Sahara in the way that they were used to way-find across the hundreds of miles across the Atlantic.

According to Van Sertima (1976), the principle of "Birds as Navigational Aids" (as per the title of Hornell’s article) was also known to what the author of Abubakri II (A) was seen to designate as "professors" between inverted commas to denigrate in the same way as the phrase "the so-called University or Sankore at Timbuctoo" (Mali). It was widespread in Africa. Thus Cosmas wrote of large seabirds marking the eastern coasts of Africa that appear to have been identical to those that Barbot says attest the western coasts of Africa.

The quality of what were described as the so-called professors at the Madrassa/Sankore at Timbuctoo is usefully summarised by Chancellor Williams (ib.). In antiquity, astrology plus astronomy were one and the same and the separation seems not have started much before the 17^th c. Not for nothing are these same scholars harked to by Van Sertima (ib.) as the intellectuals providing the theoretical science for the sailors then to practice the applied science of their day.

They also knew that the world was gourd-shaped not disc-shaped. This particular "fact" may have been doubted by Columbus but apparently not so by the crews of the ships of his fleet. The crewmen evidently shared what was the prevailing opinion even of the leading academics plus intellectuals of the day in Europe, that of the world being in the form of a flat disc and that if you sailed too near the edge, you simply fell off. This seems to have popularised by none other than Cosmas Indicopleustes (already seen as Cosmas the Traveller to India).

In this light is the Thebe Medupe (Africans studied astronomy in medieval times online) research on what is contained in the 200 libraries surviving from the Malian "Golden Age". So far, he has revealed that in one such library there are 37 books dealing with astrology/astronomy and here we should simply recall the long acceptance of just how close are these subjects with maritime navigation.

The close of this section comes with it being said that more of this will be seen in the next section and there will be some confirmation of the antiquity behind this. Also there is reason to argue for some kind of continuity. The latter may in turn lead to conclusions of the beginning/decline/revival sequence known for the West-coast Amerindians and the rather better known Egypt-to-Punt equally applies to Atlantic-facing parts of Africa.

Having seen that use of birds to aid navigation at sea occurred on both sides of Africa, it can be further noted that voyages by Africans also took them from Atlantic waters in to those of the western Indian Ocean (= Erythraean Sea). Here were such as Mosambuco (= Place of Boats) leading to Mocambique/Mozambique; tanga (= to sail or navigate) plus nyika (= place or shore) giving Tanganyika (= Place of Navigation = mainland part of Tanzania); Shirazi (= Dwellers by the Sea = Swahili); Mombassa (= Place of Boats).

The voyages would mostly have been in forms of the dugout-canoe and they were still being by the unknown author of Periplus Maris Erythraei (= Voyage on the Erythraean Sea). They stretch from South Africa to Somalia, where they overlap with another type on these same coasts.

That other type was the mtepe. Among those that have studied the mtepe is Neville Chittick (International Journal of Nautical Archaeology = IJNA 1980). It seems they long antedate the arrival of groups from Nusantara (= The Islands = Philippines, Malaysia & Indonesia = Island Southeast Asia) in the Erythraean Sea. Chittick also says they appear to be absent from the Indian Ocean island-groups (esp. the Maldives). This led him to conclude that that the mtepe was of east African origin.

This is also the type that is considered to ancestral to the mtepe-dau itself becoming the dau/dhow. The dhow is the major vessel-type of the Swahili of most of the coast of east Africa below the Horn of Africa facing the western Indian Ocean (= Sub-Horn east Africa). The dhow is shown as capable transporting an elephant from east Africa across the Indian Ocean all the way to China.

The mtepe is definitely seen as a Swahili form by both Chittick (ib.) and in the Huntingford translation of PME (1985). Huntingford (ib.) refers to other Indian Ocean types, notably the kolandiophunta. Huntingford (ib.) gives two possible sources. One is the Tamil kulinta (= hollow) plus otain (= boat), so parallels the "hollow" ships of the Greeks. Certainly, the Sanskrit/Tamil names at opposite ends of the Indian Ocean attest the Indian influence this suggests. They include Dvipa Yava (= Island of Barley = Sumatra), Dvipa Lakshma (= 100,000 Islands = the Laccadives), Dvipa Mal (= 1000 Islands = Maldives), Dvipa Sukharadara (= Island of Success = Socotra), etc.

The Indian presence already attested in parts of Africa seems confirmed by finds at such as Berenice (c. 600 miles sth. of Port Suez & close to the Egypto/Sudan border). They are best seen as Indian teak first coming as ships the remains reused for houses. Messrs. Munro-Hay (Aksum: An African Civilisation…1991) plus Pankhurst (Ethiopia on the Red Sea & the Indian Sea online) sought Indians in Ethiopia. John Speke (19^th c. Eng.) was apparently helped to become the first European to find the source of the Nile by an "ancient" Indian map (= the "Hindu" map). Felix Chami (The Unity of Ancient African history 2006) refers to Indian finds at sites on the east African islands of Mafia plus Zanzibar.

The other source suggested by messrs. Christie (as Huntingford) plus Huntingford (ib.) is in kunlun-po. The latter term is also discussed by Pieter Derideaux in an online site of amazing detail entitled "Medieval Authors on East Africa". He is of the opinion that kunlun was originally a word used by the Chinese to describe Nusantarans trading with China and that when Papuan slaves were also brought to China, they too were called kunlun. In one of the short articles on his site, Derideaux (ib.) claims that kunlun cannot refer to blacks from Africa but in another article says it applies to both the fuzzy-haired Africans plus fuzzy-haired Papuans.

The Nusantaran presence (mainly indicating some part of what is now called Indonesia) in the western Indian Ocean is secure. Having seen that that of Indians is well attested the length of the Red Sea from Egypt to Socotra, Nusantarans in the Erythraean Sea is on even firmer ground. The most notable example of this is the primary settlement of much of the eastern parts of the large island in the western Indian Ocean called Madagascar and the major artifact here is the Malagasy language.

Seperately, Chami (ib.) points to a series of documents beginning c. 400 B. C. They are Chinese in origin and Chami (ib.) is particularly interested in the places in east Africa that are referred to. They include Ximangwu that may indicate Wamungu (= People of God & yet another term for the Swahili) and also mentions the Kunlun region that Chami (ib.) identifies with the Rift Valley parts of east Africa.

Chami (ib.) shows excavations by himself plus his colleagues in east Africa shows the Iron Age was producing what was in effect high-grade steel and that the exports from east Africa to elsewhere. This east African ironwork underlay what was otherwise Uccu/Wootz steel in India and Damascene steel in Syria that underwent Indian-Ocean development according to Idrissi (12^th c. Arab).

This also gives us a background for the prototypes of the kolandio (= Ships of the Blacks) being of east African origin and again undergoing Indian Ocean development. Again and again, these papers have proven that supposedly "primitive" African vessel-types could traverse oceans and this merely adds another to the list. TO LANDS BEYOND

The basic text about the individual who has been called Abubakri II was made available in an English translation by Basil Davidson (The Lost Cities of Africa; 2004 edition) many years ago. It is a record of a conversation between Kankan Musa (King/Emperor of Mali) and Ibn Amir Hajib (Governor of Cairo, Egypt) that is known in a version coming down to us mainly via the pen of al-Umari/Omari (14^th c. Arab).

It runs: "We are from a dynastic house where succession passes from father to son. The previous ruler did not believe that it was impossible to locate the other side of the great sea and wanted to know if there was another bank to the ocean. He proceeded with plans for 200 ships with another 200 supply-craft filled with water plus victuals. The captains were told not to return until the other bank had been reached or the food and water had run out."

The second part of the al-Umari account refers to the segment mentioning what above was called "The Returned Captain" who was talking to his ruler and runs: "We sailed for a long while until we came to great river in the midst of the sea with a very violent current and our vessels came on it, they all vanished, one after the other. However, my predecessor did not believe him and 2000 more ships were built, 1000 for the ruler and the crews & another 1000 to take food plus water."

Kankan Musa was in Egypt en route to Mecca on hajj and it was then that Ibn Amir Hajib had his conversation with him. What particularly brought the Malian Emperor to Egyptian attention was the Malian largesse with gold and so profligate were they that the price of gold in Egypt were depressed for years after this. This answers the question of whether ancient Mali had the resources to send large fleets across the Atlantic. Van Sertima (1976) and Harold Lawrence (in African Presence in Early America ed. Van Sertima ib.) have pointed out that Mali was also able to put together very large fleets.

What in my other papers has been called the Periplus/Voyage of Necho was so-called from the sponsor, as the account about it by Herodotus (5^th c. B.C.) nowhere gives the name of the leader. The only name that Herodotus gives is that of "King Necos" and who is generally and readily identifiable as Necho of the 26^th Dynasty of Pharoahs of Egypt and my giving the Herodotean account the title of the "Voyage of Necho" was shorthand for this episode reported by Herodotus.

At about the time that the Carthaginian elders were sending Hanno down the Atlantic-facing coasts of Africa, it seems they also sent Himilco along the Atlantic-facing coasts of Europe. We have the name of the leader of "The Periplus of Himilco" but few details of what happened and what does exist has been mangled for the purposes of Latin poetry. For the document that we have seen was called PME for brevity, the reverse is true. In the case of PME, there is a very full record of what occurred but despite this, the author remains anonymous.

Anonymity remains so for the pre-Musa Malian ruler in the book by al-Umari; for most of the writers published in the Times of London until well into the 20^th c. and is the absolute norm for the contributors of Wikipedia articles. Does this mean all should be dismissed because their names are unknown? Of course, we clearly do not.

The article on Abubakri II (A) was plainly out to dismiss all notions of west Africans being on the Atlantic before Columbus in 1492. It might have been a good idea for that writer to have looked at the Wikipedia listing of Keita-dynasty kings of Mali. The former author tells us that al-Umari’s story gives no name for the immediate predecessor of Kankan Musa, whereas the listing does and that name is Abubakri II. The dates for his reign are given as 1307-12.

Critics frequently look for what have been called "Lands Beyond" tales. There are Celtic versions that are best known from the Irish immrama (= voyages) and that of the above St. Brendan in particular. There is an extensive Greek range and surely the best known of them is another of the long epic poems by Homer called the Odyssey. However, likely to be as well known in the west are those of Nordic Europe/Scandinavia that the Norse/Vikings originally called sagas.

Now that the L’Anse-aux-Meadows (Newfoundland, Canada) excavations have now given some archaeological respectability to the Viking sagas and proven the Norse presence in North America, it usually is presumed that there were non-stop voyages between Norway and North America. Not a bit of it.

Far more probable is the so-called island-hopping from Norway to Orkney or Shetland then the Faeroe Islands and then on to Iceland. From Iceland, they then went on to the Americas and this is evidently shown by the similarity of the Viking sites in Iceland and at L’Anse-aux-Meadows. At no stage did the Vikings sail intentionally more than 500 miles at one go. If the Cape Verde Islands were approached from Mauritania, this approximates to that distance. It was shown that canoes of elsewhere regularly exceeded that distance and in the case of the west African dugout-canoe, this was well and truly surpassed and in doing so was shown to do this on a diet leading to west African groups being given a name by the ancient Greeks that represented that their major economic prop was sea-based.

The performance plus seaworthiness of the west African dugout-canoe shows they were/are no whit inferior to the Viking drakarr that draws such admiring comments from maritime historians. Some writers profess to be seeking west African stories of the type being labelled here as those of "Lands Beyond" in the happy phrase of Santos (ib.). If they were really doing so and not merely dismissing the west African end of things, they would reach a different conclusion. Had they taken the bother to really study the subject, their conclusion would have been that west African forms of these stories do exist.

Nor would it have taken too much delving to find them. As far back as the days of Sir Clements Markham translating the Book of Knowledge for the Hakluyt Society (1912) some knowledge of Islamic explorers of Atlantic islands has been available. To this can be added what is said by Leo Wiener (Africa and the Discovery of America 1920-2); They Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima (1976) and Abdullah Hakim Quick (Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas & the Caribbean Before Columbus 1998). Online sources giving more or less the same information include The Muslim Legacy in Early America by Jose Pimiento-Bey; Pre-Columbian Muslims in America by Youssef Mroueh; Muslims in the Americas & the Caribbean by Abdullah Hakim Quick.

Something not allowed for by our critics are the effects of slavery on parts of west Africa. The slewing of trade towards the Europeans was clearly very deliberate. The raiding for slaves took not only slaves but in particular usually took the young away from the region. Very often whole villages would be emptied and where there was the talking-book system of record-keeping that had the griot/story-teller achieving this by history as stories, this would be devastating. This would be because once the griot was removed, the history disappeared also.

If the reference to the islands described by Idrissi is to neither the Cape Verdes nor the Canaries, they could be the Madeiras or the Azores. The latter start as favourites and there have been suggested Phoenico/Punic finds in the Azores in the form of coins, the famous statue pointing towards the Americas, etc. The rediscovery of the Azores by the Portuguese is said to have happened when the ship concerned followed the flight of birds. This is known across the world, most famously in the birds of the Noah story but also in the Norse rediscovery of Iceland.

The birds involved in the Portuguese story are said to have been goshawks and from the Portuguese word of acor is held to have come that of the Azores. Unfortunately for this theory, Robert Santos (Azores Islands online) tells us that Pre-Portuguese ornithology did not include goshawks. Santos (ib.) suggests that Semitic raca/raka (= bird of prey) is a more probable origin and the most immediate derivation being Arabic. Santos also cites August Vaz (1965) saying that that an Arabic text shows the word of raca/raka as a placename in the position of the Azores.

Nor do the critics of our theories apparently realise that when reading the al-Umari account that contained in it is just one of the very stories that they have said they wanted to find in west Africa. It is also very interesting just how many parallels there are between The Shipwrecked Sailor and The Returned Captain.

The Shipwrecked Sailor is an Egyptian story of c.2200 B.C. It contains very obvious testimony of the presence of both mythology and folklore especially in terms of the so-called benevolent Naga or Serpent-King (see also above re. possible Indian & Malagasy analogies). However, despite this, it looms large in serious discussions about the commerce between Punt that is probably Somalia and Egypt. It also figures prominently in serious studies of Egyptian maritime history.

The analogies of The Shipwrecked Sailor and The Returned Captain are several. They include (a) large elements of folklore; (b) both concern parts of Africa; (c) both concern voyages from their respective parts of Africa; in both cases, these are long-distance voyages; (d) these voyages are sponsored by rulers; (e) serious difficulties being encountered: (f) these problems leading to the destruction of ships; (g) the single survivor of "Sailor" and the single ship of "Captain"; (h) the Sailor and the Captain being unnamed; (i) the stories being told to their respective royal sponsors (the Egyptian Pharoah in Sailor & the Malian Emperor in Captain).

If the story of The Shipwrecked Sailor can be treated as serious history, it seems there seems absolutely no valid reason why this should not also apply equally to what has been called here The Returned Captain. Nor is this the only example of considerable antiquity for elements of The Returned Captain, as is shown by the stories about the figure called Atlas and his daughters called The Pleiades.

Atlas is best known as the moronic giant who led his fellow giants called the Titans in rebellion against the gods of Olympus led by Zeus. The Titans lost and the final fate of Atlas was to be turned to stone in his dealings with Theseus. The dates for his appearance in Homer rest on when Homer is regarded as having been alive. The dates for Homer range from the 10^th c. B.C. and the 5^th c. B. C., therefore, those for Atlas at the beginning of the Odyssey already seen as one the two great epic poems by Homer is also to be held as running between the 10^th and 5^th cs. B.C.

Atlas is held by Homer to have had navigational skills so great that they seemed to be magical. In addition to his being thought to have been a magician, Homer tells us that he knew the depths of the sea and Diodorus Siculus (1^st c. B.C. Greek) tells us that he had worked out the science of astrology/astronomy. The word Atlas may come from the Greek word of atlao (= to bear, suffer or endure). This might relate to his bearing the world on his shoulders but this said to have a late development and originally shown as bearing a globe.

If atlao relating to Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders is a mistake, then we come to words of suffering or enduring also applied to the Atlas region but this time used by Herodotus (5^th c. B.C. Greek). Herodotus describes the people of the Atlas in terms having faces and skin burnt by the sun and the normal Greek term for this was Aethiopes (= Burnt-faces) that is otherwise the general Greek label for all Africans. This means that the people of the Atlas region were blacks and the surmise has been that the prototype of Atlas was a local individual who had ascended to high points to commune with the gods and/or star-gaze.

In West Africa & the Sea in Antiquity, more of the background is touched on and it will be seen that Atlas would not have been alone in having a mountain retreat in the High Atlas for being near his deity. This was also the case for the founder of what in the west are known as the Almoravids. Despite the apparent scepticism of the Wikipedia writer on Abubakri II about the quality of the intellect that the ruler of Mali could draw on, there is every reason to believe that it was considerable. This much becomes very evident from the brief summary of what occurred there by Chancellor Williams (ib.). Thebe Medupe (ib.) has undertaken a study of the various books in what would have been the ancient libraries of Mali. The one library has reported on by Medupe so far contained 37 on astronomy/astrology. It should also be borne in mind that in the personage distilled in "Atlas" is astronomy, navigation plus knowing the depths of the sea. Not only did The Returned Captain know of the "river" in the depths of the sea but was also something of a master-mariner too, as shown by his returning from some considerable distance out to sea to his own harbour.

Nor should it be overlooked that it has been shown in a general way there was considerable maritime navigation in west Africa and it should be borne in mind that the other papers further illustrate the same points. Something else said there are the considerable lengths that ancient traders would go to obtain certain items. A famous example has to be the efforts that were made to get the plant called sylphium. It was so valuable that it was the economic mainstay of the Greek colonies of what is now Libya yet it seems that attempts at obtaining it by other means constantly failed. Those other means would most obviously have included growing it in home soils.

There is another parallel for this in the Punt-trade of Egypt. It apparently begin with Pharoah Snefru (5^th Dynasty) but it would decline and revive time and time again and this occurred over nearly two millennia. Easily the most famous records attesting this trade are inscribed on the walls of the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari (Egypt). The depictions on the tomb-walls there include not only the well known pictures of ships but also the taking of Puntite plants back to Egypt. Whatever the reason for those plants not taking to Egyptian soils, Egyptian ships returned to Punt (= ?Somalia) many times despite this being very costly in terms of resources.

It was shown that there are other parallels for this kind of thing, most notably what was shown of West-coast Amerindians trading from Peru/Ecuador to west Mexico. The last still has much to be revealed about it but then it must be said that much about the last that is unknown but in the case of Egypt, more can be said. There are clues to this in the strenuous efforts made to obtain the plants from Punt and in what is said by messrs. Johnson-Romuald (online) and Van Sertima (1976) has interest for us here.

It has been come increasingly obvious that to what has long been accepted about the aromatic plants should be added that those with narcotic properties were also sought. It is against this background that we place the finding of such as nicotine plus cocaine in the bodies of Egyptian mummies. The mental gymnastics of Establishment academics in trying to avoid acceptance of these findings have been quite interesting since the 1990s (especially the consequences of finding South American drugs in the mummy of an Egyptian Pharoah).

It might be reasonably expected that as west Africa had its own orgiastic cults plus hallucinogenic drugs, there was no need for the importing of such as cannabis. In line with this would be messrs. Pela & Ebie (UNODC Report on Drug abuse in Nigeria: a review of the epidemiological studies online) plus Sagoe (UNODC Report on Narcotics Control in Ghana), respectively referring to cannabis as wee-wee in Nigeria and wee in Ghana. This is said by Sagoe (ib.) to be a corrupt pronunciation of weed by sailors and to indicate recent introductions. On the other hand, all other parts of Africa had these cults and linked drugs but that part of Africa was seen to apparently go through the costly and strenuous process of going hundreds of miles to obtain narcotics from east Africa and the Americas. It is worth noting that Johnson-Romuald (UNODC Report on Narcotics Control in the Republic of Togoland online) allows the Phoenicians a role in the furtherance of this drugs-trade.

From Van Sertima (1976), it seems Jaime Ferrer (15^th/16^th c. Spaniard) had an interesting career and a high reputation. He was an international businessman and dealt in jewels, gold, drugs, etc, obtained from "Arabs, Hindoos" plus "Ethiopians from the Equinoctial Regions. We have encountered the term of "Equinoctial Regions" already as part of the title volumes written by Baron Von Humboldt and saw this refers mainly to the Americas (esp. Sth. America). Some confirmation of this comes with Ferrer being made the chief negotiator on the Spanish side at the Council of Tordesillas in 1494 that divided what became known as the New World between Spain and Portugal by establishing the Tordesillas Line. This was because of his expertise with those of the "Equinoctial Regions".

As Ethiopians means Africans, this again tells us that there were west Africans in the Americas before Columbus. So too do the Hull Bay (St. Johns, U.S. Virgin Islands). Here were found two skeletons plus other objects that included a nail plus a clay armlet. They are Africans and because of this, seawater-affected C14-dates plus the iron nail, all have been assumed by many to be of Post-Columbian date and attach to the slave-trade.

The iron nail is particularly interesting, as the comments cited by Van Sertima (1976 & other places) imply Africans did not possess the technology to work iron before the time of Columbus. It also stands as a good test of what is and what is not acceptable to the Academic establishment.

Early ironworking in any part of Africa is still a very vexed matter. Claims are that it spread from Meroe (Sudan) and Carthage (nr. Tunis, Tunisia) but attached C14-dates tell very strongly against this. In areas once adjacent to Carthage, el-Zouhi (10^th c. Arab) could write that Wakar (= Old Ghana) defeated enemies "that knew not iron" and this is not to be expected if Carthage were the source of the dissemination as some have claimed. The attached C14-dates indicate a line from Gabon to Cameroon as having the oldest dates for African ironworking. The quality of ironworking across southern Africa is such that what was being made by 100 BC/200 AD in Uganda/Tanzania was unsurpassed anywhere in the world until the Bessemer process of 19^th c. Europe.

Also of the greatest interest on this count is what is said by Jean Libby in "Technological and cultural transfer of African ironworking and its relationship to slave resistance" (online). Libby (ib.) shows that African clans worked gold and silver alongside iron and members of those clans were specifically targeted during slave-raids. When they turned up on the Americas side of the Atlantic, their highly-praised skills meant their price and value was appreciably higher than that of other slaves. They were also the backbone of New-Word technology and industry from South America up to North America.

So much then, for Pre-Columbian Africans not being able to make an iron nail and having asked hard questions of the Hull Bay dates based on it, we come to the filed-teeth of the skeletons there. This is widespread across Africa and as such, would be part of the African cultural identity and in European eyes would probably spoil the look of what for them was a piece of valuable merchandise. So unless such dentition belongs to a very early phase of the Atlantic slave-trade, it is unlikely to be Post-Columbian. According to Van Sertima (ib.), this accords with the age of the soil in which the Hull Bay bones were found.

Confirmation seemingly lies with the aforementioned clay bracelet, as it is of an Amerindian type that archaeologists tell us went out of use before the mid-13^th c. In short, a date of 1250 A.D. and this is some 250 years before Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Also decidedly Pre-Columbian would be the mainly Mande-based voyages of the Malian Empire that would antedate Columbus by up to 150 years. Probably what may have begun with American-derived substances found in Pharoahonic mummies continued to as recently as the career of Ferrer that was a little anterior to Columbus.

This gives us a long background against which to place any such traders and there are at least some hints of what was being traded for. The uncertainties are sufficient for objectors to happily seize on. Another reason for doubts is the supposed absence of stories about the Lands Beyond in west Africa. However, we may very seriously doubt that those claiming this are sincere and not merely looking for another weapon to aim at Afrocentrism. In accord with this is the claimed ignoring of inconvenient facts. Yet as said in my other papers that even if true, this is hardly the unique preserve of Afrocentrics.

The more so given that anti-Afrocentrics are themselves prone to ignoring or overlooking the significance of what is said by certain older writers but also of where they came from. The lacking of stories about west African sea-voyages was seen to be illusory and those that were listed included the ones shown to centre on the personage of Abubakri II. There is also what Lawrence (ib.) plus others cite such as Columbus (15^th/16^th c. Italian working for Spain), Cortes (15^th/16^th c. Spaniard), las Casas (15^th/16^th c. Spaniard), etc, saying about the cloth called almaizor in the Mande language dominating the Malian Empire.

Columbus (via las Casas) spoke of almaizor being from "Guinea" (usually taken to be mainly modern Ghana, not ancient Ghana =Wakar/Wagadu, some 400 miles to the north) plus the rivers of Sierra (= Sierra Leone). Cortes reported it in Iberia and Mexico and Columbus/las Casas in the Caribbean. The designs plus colours, symmetrical weave, being exported abroad, those exports occurring over hundreds of miles, etc, are part of this international pattern. All reading this will be familiar with bits of paper acting as money in the form of banknotes but less well known is that strips of cloth have also had this role in the past. Lawrence (ib.) shows these currency-strips were widespread in west Africa but in Caribo/Mayab too.

This cloth as currency-strips on both sides of both of the Atlantic is not the only use of almaizor that is so shared, as the loin/breech-cloths and kerchiefs of the Malian Empire are echoed in Caribo/Mayab. Almaizor has various spellings but rather more numerous are those of the material called guanin. Lawrence (ib.) traced it in several west African languages and as placenames plus ethnonyms in Caribo/Mayab.

The description of auricalchum in the works of Plato (6^th c. B. C. Greek) does make it sound very like that of guanin. It is curious that Hanno (6^th c. B. C. Carthaginian) does not mention west African gold, or at least is unknown in the surviving versions. However, Herodotus (5^th c. B.C. Greek) does and "Roman" interest in west African gold is cited by Richard Jobson (17^th c. Eng.) attracted by the weapons of gold but it should be borne in mind that Herbert’s (ib.) "Red Gold of Africa" means copper and that for Pre-colonial Africans, copper was more valuable.

This will give us a background of profligacy for what we have seen Africans regarded as the less valuable metal of gold. We have stories of gold used for dog-collars, horse-tethers, the weapons that we have seen are claimed to have attracted Roman interest. Egyptian interest in Malian gold forms the basis of the account of Mansa Musa en route to hajj at Mecca seen to have been described by al-Umari. European interest in Malian gold is shown by the fact that most of the early Post-Roman gold coinages in Europe, the King of Mali figured as being on a throne holding an enormous nugget, etc.

The profligacy with gold and the making it part of weapons is known in the islands of the Caribbean. This was as the spearheads of the type obtained by Columbus from Amerindian inhabitants of Hispaniola (now divided between the Dominican Republic & Haiti) called either Tainos or Arawaks. Columbus sent them back to Spain for analysis. This proved them to be of the west African mix of 32 parts (28 parts of gold, eight of silver plus six of copper).

Quite why the excellent cloth-makers, metal-smiths, etc, of Caribo/Mayab needed to import west African materials is at best, uncertain. However, we have read that al-Umari tells us of Malians on the open Atlantic and there are the several sources cited some years ago by Van Sertima writing about west African vessels on the Americas side of the Atlantic. With al-Umari being an Arab and the other witnesses being from parts of Europe, not one is a west African seeking to raise the status of the history of west Africa to give it a vainglorious past.

A crucial question here is how reliable are these writers and more especially, las Casas but this is not just a question for those following what has been expressed here. Those of a contrary opinion have to decide what is credible and what is not in such as las Casas. Or is it really proposed that las Casas is believable on all counts but unreliable on the matter of Pre-Columbian Africans in the Americas?

On assuming that what Columbus wrote in the notes utilised by las Casas is authentic, we return to what was said by Columbus about the "golden" spearheads that he got from the Pre-Columbian Amerindians of Hispaniola. The Tainos/Arawaks of Hispaniola in turn got them from "black traders in canoes" in the Caribo/Mayab region(s).

In short, there is the situation of (a) Pre-Columbian blacks in canoes leaving west Africa leaving for the Americas; (b) Pre-Columbian blacks in canoes off the Americas; (c) those blacks supplying weapons that on analysis of their metal content proves that content to be identical with that of the west African guanin; (d) several Pre-Columbian place and/or ethnic names based on the word guanin and/or its variants in Caribo/Mayab.

This kind of discussion can relate closely to the Piri Reis map(s) but Piri Reis is also one the many using the Arabic term of Zanj-e-Bahr. This gives us Coast or Sea of the Blacks from Arabic zanj that is one of the many Arab words for Africans and bahr/bar for sea. This fits with the Indian and Chinese words of koland and k’un-l’un also meaning Africans and in turn led to the terms of kolando plus k’un-l’un-po. They both mean ships of the blacks.

A stretch of sea named Zanj-e-Bahr leading to the term of Ocean/Sea of the Blacks for the Indian Ocean has a precise western parallel. This is in the term of Mare Ethiopium that also translates as the Ocean/Sea of the Africans/Negroes/Blacks from what has been shown of Aithiopes/Aethiopes meaning Blacks/Burnt-faces and still to be seen on the far side of Africa in the modern state-name of Ethiopia. Mare Ethiopium also arises from the perceived greatest number of users in the eyes of those giving name. The term of Mare Ethiopium was in general use to define the Atlantic till about 1700 when it seems to have passed out of fashion.

Thus it is that seems that the negatives with which we started are outweighed by the positives by a long way.

Before closing what is written in these four papers, it is time to say thanks to Professor Jarita Holbrook of the University of Arizona in the U.S. and Dennis Montgomery (author of several books about Africa online & of the recently published Seashore Man and African Eve 2007).

Harry Bourne.

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