Here is a roughly two hour discussion/interview/talk with Heru (whom we've talked about before) for a Jamaican TV show. Topics include: anti-black violence in Jamaican music, homosexuality in dancehall, the roots of Rastafari and Halie Selassie, the significance of Obama's election, and in general he gives a pretty good articulation of a (not "the") Pan-African outlook on politics, economics, and current events. He has a lot of positive things to say which are worth thinking about. At the same time, it was weird for me to hear his affected "Jamaican" accent. I imagine that he's either making a conscious choice to speak that way because of his involvement in dub and reggae or he's picking it up honestly because of how much time he is spending in the West Indies or with working with Caribbean people. He touches a little on his own religious beliefs but I would be really interested in hearing an indepth discussion of Ausar Auset (if that's the path he is on)
4 comments:
Interesting itw. I listened to half of it, streaming stopped, but just throwing my 2 cents: no disrespect to Heru, but I doubt Carbone 14 was used to date Lucy, because Carbone 14 datation can not be used for such old fossils, it doesn't go further away than 40-50,000 years as far as I know.
Cheikh Anta Diop was very instrumental in putting together the C14 datation process. He had a lab in Senegal specialized in it.
Also, Lucy does have an African name, I just grabbed a book from my shelves, with an interview of Yves Coppens who is a french paleonthologist who was part of the team who discovered Lucy's fossils, cause I remembered he was mentionning her Ethopian name, and her name is Birkinesh, which means 'someone of value'. There was Ethiopian researchers too as part of the internationnal team who discovered and studied the fossils, and that's how the Ethiopian called her. For the name Lucy, it came from a song of the Beatles that these guys were listening a lot at the time.
So Heru still makes his point that the world knows this very short women, by a european name, but she does have an African name.
And flashing back to the poetry he starts with about humans not coming from monkeys. Lucy/Birkinesh, doesn't quite look like any of us (black or white or asian), from what these scientists (and again that includes African ones) have said, she was standing up but was still climbing trees etc. She was just a little over 1 meter tall (super short for a 20 yrs old) and her squelton is very much like the in-between of monkeys and humans, though she may not even be an ancestor of homo-sapiens, more like a cousin of the ancestor of homo-sapiens.
So it is contradictory to, in the same poem, qualify her as a 'black woman' or even see her as an african ancestor of humanity if Heru rejects the idea of evolution from monkeys to hominide to sapiens. Because again she did not look like we are, and very much looked like an in-between.
It is contradictory to refute the theory that human comes from monkeys and then mention Birkinesh as someone that the european tricknolody would europenize as 'Lucy' to de-emphasize the African origin of humanity.
I personaly don't believe in darwinism as it is usualy exposed, but evolution and darwinism is not the exact same thing. But we touch a complex subject here, as to where our physical body comes from, and how it fits the various account of creation in religious texts.
Other than that cool interview.
As far as Ausar Auset, in regard to Islam, I think it is very important for muslims to recognize the importance of both Kemetic and so called 'hindu' religions as a source for Islam. Which is not an easy thing for muslims because of the outwards/in appearance polytheist aspect of these believes systems and the negative role of Pharoah in the Bible and Holy Kuran. But these guys could make a close minded muslim who doesn't know his stuff confused. On that regard I thought it was 'cool' when Kemi Seba (coming from these type of Maat / Ausar Auset type spiritualities) became muslim (i know you had mention it in a previous post).
Thanks for the indepth look at Heru's Lucy poem. I think you are right that Carbon 14 wasn't used (except I'm not sure that Heru claimed otherwise).
About the last paragraph I think that's an interesting subject. I'd be a little cautious about the term "source" but yeah... I generally would include a lot of different spiritual systems as candidates for being People of the Book. (Naim Akbar is also another afrocentric Muslim who gives qualified acceptance to Kemetic religion/philosophy.)
Oh maybe he didn't mention C14 datation, my bad then.
Yes you're right, 'source' is not an appropriate word, I meant that the message of Islam (before Muhammad, pbuh) has been flowing through these religions (in Kemet, Hindus). Practices and symbolisms of Judeo-Christian-Islamic religions can be found in these older religions. I think that Brahma and his sister/wife Sarasvati are Abraham (pbuh) and his sister/wife Sara. :) Brahma has just been divinized like christians did Isaa/Jesus (pbuh).
Right, according to some texts there have been a total of 124,000 prophets but the Quran only mentions about 25 by name. So yes ancient Egyptian, Indian, Sub-saharan African, Chinese, etc. religions can all be versions of Islam.
Another interesting book along these lines is Julian Baldrick's "Black God: The Afroasiatic Roots of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim religions"
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