[CrackpotGonzo]

"Be, be-fore we came to this country

We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys

There was empires in Africa called Kush

Timbuktu, where every race came to get books

To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans

Asian Arabs and gave them gold, when

Gold was converted to money it all changed

Money then became empowerment for Europeans

The Persian military invaded

They heard about the gold, the teachings, and everything sacred

Africa was almost robbed naked

Slavery was money, so they began making slave ships

Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went

He was so shocked at the mountains with black faces

Shot up they nose to impose what basically

Still goes on today, you see?"

- From I Can by Nas https://genius.com/Nas-i-can-lyrics

[karlp]

It sounds really deep, but there doesn't seem to be any truth to it? Wikipedia mentions internal problems and conquest by a neighboring kingdom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

I don't understand why make up stories when there are more than enough material with the colonial history.

[elefanten]

One of the most frustrating aspects of these liberationist counter-narratives is the pretense that whoever conquered or succeeded certain civilizations/cultures, did so by a unique application of force.

Roughly: 'our people were good and peaceful until evil warlike invaders with wholly-different human motivations wiped us out.'

We should aim to fix injustices in the world. But building false narratives of differential demonization will only recreate problems in the long run.

[haltingproblem]

How does an invasionary force conquer a foreign land where they are outnumbered other than by being warlike?

Lets define warlike as those who have achieved a high degree of skill at warfare.

The Mongols who conquered cities and states were famously warlike. So were the Macedonians/Greeks under Alexander.

[philwelch]

People spin history to try and enhance the prestige of groups they identify with. Even when their group identities don’t really make sense in contexts that existed thousands of years ago and thousands of miles away. For instance, “were the ancient Egyptians black?” is a deep rabbit hole.

[haltingproblem]

Nas was ahead of the times. I can't believe that these lyrics are from 2003. Always inspiring to hear them.

These lyrics bring home the point that so much of culture is historical narrative. I was reading Scale by Geoffrey West who is a particle physicist. Every 5-10 pages West brings up Plato/Aristotle. This was baffling to me till it dawned on that Greek history is the author's historical narrative, his cultural identity. Erase someone's history, erase their identity and you crush their progress. Give them a glorious past and they feel predestined to greatness. I believe good things will come from resurrecting the history of African Civilizations.

"Where is your history? How did the man wipe out your history?" - Malcolm X [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt6CA9VX4XY

[dr_dshiv]

Plato isn't the best philosopher of all time because he is white and male. The Enlightenment is open and inclusive. Plato used to be a slave and elevated a woman to the highest philosophical position in the Symposium.

[bitdizzy]

I don't think the quote in the OP is talking about Plato's works or conduct, but how Plato figures into a modern person's, Geoffrey West's, relationship to history. In that context, I don't understand the relevance of your comment.

[biztos]

"Egypt was the place that Alexander the Great went

He was so shocked at the mountains with black faces

Shot up they nose to impose..."

Is that a reference to the Great Sphinx of Giza?

If so... it doesn't appear that Alexander the Great had anything to do with it.

Am I missing something?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sphinx_of_Giza#Missing_n...

Edit: attempting to format the quote

[sevensor]

I'd be really interested to hear more about the literature of ancient Kush or Timbuktu -- what language it was written in, what kind of scholarly tradition it had. My education covered (at least superficially) Europe, Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, India, and East Asia, but Africa south of the Sahara is a big blank spot...

So I went and looked it up on Wikipedia, and it turns out that Kush had an alphabetic script. Many inscriptions remain but little of the language (Meroitic) has been decoded. Although they would have had access to paper as a result of contact with Egypt and the Hellenistic world, there's no indication that any books written in Meroitic have survived.

[TheGallopedHigh]

Here is a great podcast about ancient west Africa that you might enjoy: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GfUT6LhBBYs