JAYFORCE

Incredible BBC Four documentary presentation. Frames West African history as an arc of time and development with timeless elements that exist in culture today as they did centuries earlier. Among the topics woven into this video are matters and practices regarding faith and worship, royalty and society, engineering and architecture, travel and trade, politics and war, and especially the arts are covered. Right from the start, the importance of the arts (including storytelling and recorded history) and craftsmanship as ways of marking time and linking present to past Africa is established.

In Benin, it seems history isn’t written by the victors. It’s written by the artists.

So much good content. Watch and digest thoroughly. This not just African history… this is world history!

People were using pottery here 8,000 years before it appeared in Great Britain… When West Africans began developing the skills that would eventually create some of the most exquisite art in the world, Europe was just emerging from the last Ice Age.

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