Contributions of Black Women to the Development of Civilization

Sis. Nubia Wardford - (Nubian Archaeological Project)
Sis. Nubia Wardford lives in Detroit , Michigan , when not touring for the Nubian Archaeological Project giving talks on archaeological findings.  Sis. Wardford has a B.A. in Anthropology and was invited by the University of Khartoum in the Sudan , Africa to continue her studies in their Archaeology Department.  Sis. Wardford is also interested in Native American archaeology, and the cultural connections shared between Native Americans and descendants of Africa in the U.S.

We should make sure that Black women know and understand that we are the mothers of creation.  All civilization emerged from our wombs.  Cosmic energy emerged from the earth as well as our wombs.  The Dawn of human civilization started in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania , in a totally tropical area, approximately 6 million years ago.  This area is known as the Cradle of Civilization.  This was fertile ground for human development.  Many human-like beings lived along Lake Turkana .  This is near where the oldest fossil remains of an African woman, Dagnesh or Dinkinesh , was found.   Dagnesh means “beautiful woman” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia .  All of the human family descended from her lineage.  Each human being on earth has the genetic code of at least five African women.

There is something particularly distinct about this region - Uganda , Kenya and Tanzania - that promoted accelerated evolution.  This Northeast area of Africa was very fertile.  All living things congregated along these three special Lakes and Rivers: Lake Turkana, Lake Nyasa, and the Hapi River .  Therefore the fish, plants, and animals became highly evolved and very well adapted to the environment.  Lake Nyasa, now known as Lake Victoria contributed to the uniqueness of the region.  Lake Nyasa is one source of the Hapi River now known as the Nile .  Hapi is the ancient name used for the Creator in this area.  This region held a special recipe for the creation of new species of plants, animals and human beings.  There is carbon dated footprint evidence that Hominids existed side by side with ape-like beings in and around Olduvai Gorge, near Lake Turkana .  Physical
evidence of stones, sticks, crude spears and knives make up the earliest evidence of weapons of war.  This also indicates that these hominids may have had wars against each other.

I theorize that burial grounds came into place at this time, because of the existence of concentrated burials.  This area may have evolved into a burial ground not long after the first hominids made Olduvai Gorge their home. When the well known Leakey family came to Ethiopia , they asked of their Ethiopian guide, “Take us to the burial place of the ancestors.”  The location of this place was a well known fact amongst the inhabitants of this area.   Dagnesh was found as they were going through this area and dating fossil remains.  Her remains were dated as the oldest.  Burial rituals indicate that this may have been an area where these hominids came to die.

The human-like beings lived in dwellings as family groups.  They hunted in groups using crude tools, flint scrapers, stone hammers, sticks and made fires.  At this time the earliest evidence of cooking and small gardening emerges.  In Ancient Africa, particularly Ancient Nubia, women were the head of the household. Women provided the stability of the society through the production of vital food supplies, along with their ability to give birth.  Their connection with the land as cultivators and nurturers is why matriarchy was a natural progression of the civilization.  Only through female lineage could one inherit land.  Births happened outside, in the center of the village.  Births were thought of as divine acts.  This caused the status of women to elevate among Africans, introducing the first worship of Women as God.  Not goddesses, but meaning their actual representation of God in this society was as a physical woman.

When the people migrated from Olduvai Gorge and Tanzania towards the area in Ancient Africa known as Punt, Kush and Ancient Nubia, these names became generic terms used for all Black people.  Respect was given to women because of their ability to reproduce; Goddess was an African principle.  The Ancients also recognized that there could be no female without a male.  They understood the principle of balance: reciprocity; good and evil, and energy balances; female and male.  That is why goddesses always have a male counterpart.  Cobra or snake-like images are representative of women.  The woman is represented as a snake not because of any evil,
but because she wraps her femininity around the male principle.  Only part of this knowledge remains within the biblical text, which is that the snake represented the female or the potential for evil in the female.  This is a concept which would have been totally foreign to the people of Ancient Nubia, Kush and Punt.

The snake also represented the woman because it is a woman's nature to grasp and hold onto things.  We grasp our families, our culture, and as the first teachers, we hold innate knowledge in general.  We also grasp our nurturing abilities and hold on to them.  Now when we see the negative representation of the snake, which is what is left of our ancient history, we know that it is an incorrect rendering of our story.  The snake is not our enemy and is not evil, it is a beautiful animal and one of the Creator's creatures.

Nut of Ancient Kemet is an ancient Goddess that represents the Cosmos.  Her womb is the planetary nebula in which stars, planets and galaxies are formed.  She brings about cosmic order.  She is called the Great Mother in many civilizations; both Africans and Asians described the Mother of creation as the Great Mother.  The cosmos and earth were formed, resulting in the birth of all that we know, from the planetary womb.  The Ancients left us descriptions of these events, they are similar to the human birth experience of leaving the warm, wet womb to emerge into the warm climate of Africa .  There was almost no distinction between the womb and the world, as described by the Ancient: “During the foremost phase of dark, a semi liquid mass is formed of potential energy.  The wet cannot be distinguished from the dry or cold.”  

The very term matter derives from mother.  The mother was known as Temu in Egypt , Kali Ma or Maya in India and Tablemat in Babylon , Census in pre-Hellenic Greece , Tahome , Syria and Canaan .  All these civilizations have connections to Ancient Punt, Kush , Nubia and Ethiopia .  There is similarity in the knowledge, creation stories, rituals, religious beliefs and representation.  Everything coming from the woman and everything coming out of the dark was an African principle that traveled around the world, carried by students that received teachings from African universities.  African principles were adapted by the cultures to which they were transported.  All the people that practiced these principles studied in the ancient universities of Kemet and Nubia .  Women taught and studied in the African universities, unlike in the practices of foreigners who restricted women from attending any level of academic training outside of their home.

The principle of the woman being the Divine Creator, as well as everything coming out of the darkness and everything emanating from the female, was of ancient African origin.  The Three Cradle Theory speaks in general to the ancient development of people in the three cradle areas of Ancient Nubia and Kemet, Timbuktu in Mali and the universities that existed in Pretoria , Southern Africa .  There was a generous mixture of agrarian and nomadic people throughout Africa .  Many people carried figures around with them in ancient times. Archaeological evidence allows us to understand what was important to them.  Nomadic people only carry what is necessary; they only carry minimal supplies and what is a necessity.  So if small woman figures are found within known nomadic settlements we know that they were important.  We find small dolls in many nomadic sites throughout Africa, Europe and even Asia .  In particular, a very famous figure known as the Venus of Walendorf represented fertility.  This figure has “very large and protruding buttocks”; this headless form is of a black woman, representing God and Goddess.

Women became leaders and held many positions of power in ancient times.  They were trained to command, lead and make important decisions that affected the entire society.  Women were not relegated to kitchens and nurseries then silenced, but made decisions for the growth of their families and societies.  Let's look at a specific example of a woman who ruled with strength, kindness, and wisdom: Queen Tiye.

Queen Tiye was a leader.  She was married between the ages of 12 and 14 years old.  By the time she was 14,  she had unified Nubia and Kemet, and had taken over more territory of Egypt than had ever been taken before.  She was a political, mathematical and negotiating genius, and represented the country of Nubia very well.  She is depicted wearing the feather and throne of Isis ( Ast ); the small throne representing femininity.  In statues and painted images, Queen Tiye and her husband are represented as being the same size.  This means that she was respected by her husband and considered his equal by their people.  Before this bold expression, Queens were depicted as a small figure somewhere at the Pharaohs side or near his feet.  Before Queen Tiye, Queens were not represented as the same size as their Pharaoh husbands.  Also, Queen Tiye is shown as
embracing her husband, their arms interlocked, symbolizing a bond.  This symbolism is very important and pivotal in historic records. This means he had great respect for his Queen.  

As "Western" civilization took over, we lost that respect for feminine power because masculinity, and a brutish culture, became foremost in most of our minds. Our ancient culture could not be sustained.  Ultimately, respect for women was lost.  In African culture, everything was set up along matrilineal lines.  The inheritance of wealth was very important to the maintenance of this system.  When the masculine, or patriarchal, society of the invaders took that power away from women it was a political move, because African society was founded on this belief.  Matriarchal leadership had been intertwined into the texture of the culture.   Remember, this culture, Africa, stretched all the way from South Africa through to what is now known as Arabia .  

The primary elements of civilization are something that women have brought to the world.  These elements include the interpretation of color, as well as richer perceptions, and actualities of life such as poetry and art.  Intuitive abilities and other God given perceptions are often stronger in women.  

Africans fully understood that a society cannot grow beyond the development of its women. The ancient Africans performed surgery, and so women were going to the medical schools and being introduced to the Nile Valley principles of Healing and disease relief.  “ Waset ” and “Know Thyself” was on the door of the major medical school in ancient Kemet.  The fact that Ancient Priestesses were performing surgeries and leading institutions speaks to how far advanced the ancients were in their knowledge of balance and of society.   The first element of balanced African nationhood is contained in the statement “If you teach a woman, you teach a nation.”  They knew that if a nation's women are mentally underdeveloped then the society is underdeveloped as well.

Terms of endearment such as Mother Heart, Mother Wit, Mother Wisdom and Mother Earth are used to create order in many different cultures.  All these terms are present throughout the world.  The Southern Cradle of civilization's invention of farming was by women.  It strengthened and amplified matriarchy, and symbolically enriched it, by the creation of fertile land and fertile food.  The Ancients related the earth and its fertility to the fertility of woman.  

Out of Africa , too, spring the most formidable of leaders.  When we peruse the antiquities record we discover that man's greatest empires rested on the foundations constructed and created on the genius of women.  This has especially been proven by African and African derived civilizations.  Civilization was born and nurtured through maturity in the matriarchal culture of Kemet and Kush .  The state of Arabia for over 2500 years was governed by Queens for as long as anyone could remember.  The Islamic Allah was originally Allat , part of a trinity of Goddesses that included Koreathe virgin, and Alusa the power of one.  Together they formed the triad known as Manat .

Pharaoh Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh who wore a beard.  She wanted to be recognized as powerful and competent, just as her husband had been.  She ran Egypt for over 50 years.  Queen Nzinga organized an all woman army that fought off Portugal and kept them out of Benin , Western Africa (known as Dahomey ) for many years.  She organized this army after the male soldiers numbers were diminished due to constant warring.  The Queen organized an army of women soldiers that successfully fought off the Portuguese invasion.  She was fighting against slavery and oppression.

In more recent history there are women of African descent that we should know and recognize.  For example, Harriet Tubman, known as Moses, facilitated and led over 30,000 people out of chattel slavery in the United States .  Fannie Lou Hammer organized women, but did not want to be included in the women's suffrage movement because she said that black women had been head of their family for as long as they'd been on the earth.  Ida B. Wells spoke out against lynching and documented more than 10,000 lynchings that had not been acknowledged by the United States .  Queen Mother Moore organized the Black Star Nurses in the organization of the United Negro Improvement Association.  Amy Jacques Garvey, the wife of Marcus Garvey, was a prolific writer and facilitated the production of her husband's books, including The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey .  

Mother Nandi groomed one of our most valiant warriors of Southern Africa , her son Shaka Zulu.  Read the history that the movie dramatized, mis-told and recreated.   Hollywood gave us a skewed history of a great leader.  Shaka Zulu defeated Queen Victoria 's British Army so consistently that they studied his techniques and developed a new way to fight.  Southern Africa was the last area in Africa to be colonized because of Shaka Zulu's efforts.

Mother Songolo, mother of the Great Sundiata Keita of Mali , trained her son to be a great leader and warrior.  In Jamaica , Grandy Nandy understood the ancient knowledge, and created diversions that helped to defeat the English armies that tried to take the Maroons of Jamaica back to slavery.  She remains a martyr of Jamaica because of her heroism.

My mother Mavis Wardford, the first black nurse at Henry Ford Hospital , led the way for all other black women to work in that facility.  Assata Shakur of the Black Liberation Army was so rough and tough that she was imprisoned in a male facility.  She even escaped from there, and now happily lives in Cuba .  Dr. Rosalind Jefferies is a noted historian.  Marimba Ani is the one of the world's best African–centered anthropologists. Mary McLeod Bethune established Cookman College .  We should remember Angela Davis and the panther sisters who stood up during the 60's; and all those unnamed Black Mothers, Aunties, and Cousins who protected their children, adopted children and families through lynching, slavery and racial upheaval.

We give thanks to those Queen Mothers of Africa, and those beyond who could not ascend to the throne except for through their blood lines.  We give thanks to the mourners of many traditions who used their feminine vibration to facilitate the transition of the spirit from the physical realm to the spiritual realm.  

We thank our ancestors, Mothers, Aunties, Sisters and Cousins who continue to raise their families, teach ethical and moral behavior as sisters have done throughout our history.  We continue to produce fertile ground in which our race will progress and finally ultimately achieve success as a people unified.  We have to give thanks and praise to all these daughters of creation.  The primordial elements of our civilization have been taught to us by our great and unknown mothers and sisters who provided the template for all civilizations.

"Contributions by Black Women to the Development of Civilization" was published in its original form at www.TehutiOnline.com .