Author: studyblog

 There is an Akan proverb from Ghana that says,”Se wo were fi na wosankofa a yenkyi”It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten. The Sankofa principle, often symbolised by a bird reaching backward to retrieve an egg from its own back, has become one of the most widely recognised philosophical expressions of the value of heritage anywhere in African thought, and it offers a fitting note on which to close this ten-part series. Having journeyed from the pyramids of Egypt and Meroë to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, from the stone walls of Great Zimbabwe…

There is a Nubian saying, still repeated in various forms among communities along the Nile in northern Sudan, that translates roughly to:the river does not forget those who drank from it first.It is a fitting sentiment for a civilization that has, for centuries, existed largely in the shadow of its more famous northern neighbour, despite having built more pyramids than Egypt itself. Rising from the desert plains of what is today Sudan, the pyramids of Meroë, numbering well over two hundred across several ancient cemetery sites, stand as the most visible surviving legacy of the Kingdom of Kush, one of…

There is a saying, often repeated by guides and survivors of historical trauma across the African diaspora, that goes:those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.On no stretch of African coastline does that warning feel more physically immediate than on Gorée Island, a small outcrop of volcanic rock lying just off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, whose gentle pastel-coloured buildings and quiet, narrow streets conceal a history as brutal as any place on the African continent. For several centuries, Gorée served as one of the key points along the West African coast through which captured Africans…

There is an Edo proverb that says,”Ise ẹsẹ okhian rre iyeke ọkpa”A single log cannot build a house. It is a saying about the necessity of collective effort, of many contributions coming together to raise something no single person could build alone. Nowhere in African urban history is this idea better illustrated than in the ancient city of Benin, whose earthen walls, once the largest man-made earthworks on the planet before the era of mechanised construction, encircled a sophisticated royal capital renowned across the medieval and early modern world for its urban planning, its craftsmanship, and the power of its…

There is a Shona proverb that says,”Chinokanganwa idemo, chitsiga hachikanganwe”The axe forgets, but the tree stump never does. It is a saying about memory, about the marks that history leaves behind even when the tools that made them are long gone. Few places on the African continent embody this idea as powerfully as Great Zimbabwe, the vast stone city whose ruins still rise from the hills of southeastern Zimbabwe, more than five centuries after its last rulers walked its corridors. For decades, colonial authorities insisted that such a sophisticated structure could not possibly have been built by African hands, attributing…

There is a West African proverb, often traced to the Songhai and Tuareg communities of the Sahel, that says,”Salt comes from the north, gold from the south, and silver from the country of the white men, but the word of God and the treasures of wisdom are only to be found in Timbuktu.”The saying, recorded by nineteenth-century European travellers who reached the city after decades of it being spoken of in Europe as a place of near-mythical, almost unreachable wealth, captures something that modern popular usage of the city’s name has almost entirely lost: for several centuries, Timbuktu was not…

There is an old African saying that captures the spirit of heritage better than any dictionary definition ever could: a people without knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture is like a tree without roots. This proverb, often attributed to Marcus Garvey but echoed in one form or another across dozens of African languages and communities, is the philosophical foundation upon which the entire concept of heritage preservation rests. Africa, the cradle of humankind, is home to a staggering constellation of heritage sites — pyramids that have stood for more than four thousand years, churches carved directly into volcanic…

There is an ancient Arabic saying still repeated by guides along the Nile:”Man fears time, but time fears the pyramids.”Whatever the saying’s precise origin, its truth is difficult to dispute. More than four and a half thousand years after the first stones were laid at Saqqara and Giza, the pyramids of Egypt remain standing, still drawing the eyes of the world, still provoking wonder, still refusing to fully surrender their secrets. They are, without question, the most recognisable heritage structures on the African continent, and among the most recognisable structures ever built by human hands anywhere on Earth. Yet for…

There is an Ethiopian proverb that says,“Wisdom is like a baobab tree; no one individual can embrace it.”It is a saying about scale — about achievements too vast, too deeply rooted, and too collectively built to belong to any single mind. Few structures on Earth embody this idea as literally as the eleven monolithic churches of Lalibela, carved not from stacked stone but downward, out of the living volcanic rock of the Ethiopian highlands, entire buildings excavated from a single continuous mass of red basalt rather than assembled piece by piece. Nearly eight centuries after their construction, these churches remain…

An old Akan proverb, carried through generations via the Adinkra symbolic tradition, offers a fitting close to this series:”Obi nkyerɛ akwadaa Nyame” “No one shows a child the Supreme Being,”meaning that certain fundamental truths and inheritances are so vital, so foundational, that they must be actively passed on, nurtured, and protected — never assumed to simply persist on their own. Nowhere is this truer than in the fragile, urgent work of preserving Africa’s extraordinary artistic heritage — a body of knowledge, skill, and meaning built across millennia, currently facing a convergence of threats more serious, in some respects, than at any…