In a 2013 video from YouTube channel UCLGlobalHealth, two white academics discuss the grandiose empires, culture and history of precolonial west Africa.
University College of London Institute of Archaeology professor Kevin C. MacDonald tells host Anthony Costello about some of the amazing historical facts about west Africa through his continued excavations and archaeological digs.
According to MacDonald, west Africa had towns and urban centers by 1200 BCE with as many as 20,000 people living and working together.
“In Nigeria, you have some of west Africa’s earliest art traditions,” he explains. ” In central Nigeria, you have a very sophisticated figurative art tradition, terracotta tradition by 800 BCE, going hand-in-hand with iron metallurgy in that area.”
The expert points out that the European land-grab for Africa came at a low point in the continent’s history. It would be a different outcome if Europeans tried invading 200-300 years earlier.
“… At that point any European attempt to control Africa would be repulsed,” MacDonald believes.
To him, the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the determining factor in the downfall of many of these great west African empires.
