What astonishes me the most is that the system wasted nothing. The aqueducts, dams, water systems, all of it was built for pure efficiency. Simultaneously, it was beautiful. Amazing video. Thanks for the knowledge.
That is true, it reminds me of what Latour proposed in Gaia 2.0: engineering that mimics the resourcefulness and recycling character of nature - humans have done it before but it's just not part of Western engineering culture (sorry for that reference lol, currently writing an essay on that XD)
Because back then human societies actually valued sustainability. They were invested in methods and practices that would not end up destroying their surrounding environment. Now human societies are ruled by profit motive as absolute top priority, which creates immense waste and suffering for many and only benefits those at the very top.
Very interesting, what I find most valuable about this, is that it gives you an idea of how different precolonial African groups lived which is something that you don't often hear about due to a focus on empires and kingdoms in the few times that African history is discussed.
Exactly its good to dive deeper and go into the streets and houses of these great empires and kingdoms and see what life was like and how they managed certain things like with the water management Jabari presented here. I can't wait to see more of this series, this was awesome.
The Benin Kingdom’s architecture and water treatment system is underrated. Would love to see more pictures of the homes and inpluviums , are they in the sources ?
With the coming fresh water shortages around the world sounds like an impluvium needs to be part of homes from here on out. Figuring out the reasons people used to have them and why they mostly stopped would be a good topic of study. Really, the study of all world-wide home building techniques and structures deserve a re-examination. Awesome series BTW.
This really piqued my interest. To my mind, this is probably one of the most compelling topics to raise when trying to show the advanced nature of many African civilizations. I say that because of how loftily (haha) the Roman aqueduct and other water management systems are held in the public imagination.
Thanks for this educational video! As the climate crisis intensifies, with it's rising temperatures and water scarcity, we'll need to tap into these ancient solutions to modern problems🙌🏽
Interesting topic and I am not surprised at all that Africans had ingenious ways of managing water in a continent that it is often a precious commodity. It is a real tragedy how so many peoples histories have been deliberately neglected
As a zimbabwean im so happy somone spoke about the water systems and channels thank you FROM NOTHING(engineering feats as well as the conssciousness change to shift thier enviroment for the better )Africans hav been doing this for thousands of years ,thier mining and aircondiontioning methods are also worth a shout especially the mining.
As Jabari hints at here, those had been abandoned and the society fallen before colonization, correct? And if so, my understanding is that it happened due to migration/invasion by nomadic Bantu from the north. Is that a correct (high level) description of the history of your region?
@@evilassaultweaponeer no it isnt or i just dont understand how you worded it ,if ur refering to zimbabwe since there were quiet a few kindoms but usally their decline came economically(reduction in gold/iron other metals ,salt and grazing lands )what would then happen is people would migrate to another place in zim ,the last emipire to pop up was the rozvi kingdom and that came about arpund 15/1600's as retaliation to the portugese trying to take over ,bantu migrations from the south(because of mafecane) not the north came in the form of five huge armies/groupes of people and the the last army to came was the matebele and at the point the kingdm/empire was on its knees at khami(south western zim ancient ruins) and not long after that the british came with knowledge of gold and other reasources and they conquered for a short while ,i couldnt tell u when each structure became vacant but the society hadnt fallen by the time the british got here the british actually had problems because most of the shone people they encpuntered lived comfprtable lives and that was a problem because they needed people to start working the mines doing the manual labour so they aided any distabilasation because it meant more people coming to them for menial labour the disstablaistion of shona socieities was done by the british it helped them gain power divdid and conqure all that ,I hope i was helpfull i didnt understand your reply
This is great!!! I really wanna try and create models of these architectures. Maybe even try and figure out how these might have been updated with modern technology.
@@mch7933 Likely due to this erasure of history. MANY colonized cultures not only are encouraged (if not required) to take on the culture of the coloniser, but also are taught to demonize their own culture. Like how in Haiti, the native tongue (Creole) is not even taught in most schools and seen as 'backwoods country'. They only teach french or english. Christianity is the more accepted religion, Voodoo is demonized. Etc. That's why this channel and those like it are so important, to show that these indigenous cultures actually have a rich and interesting past that we should be proud of and learn from.
@@buddermonger2000 I've been trying to find/learn 3d modeling tools lol. It's unfortunate that many tools are hard to learn. But I'm getting a lil better at them, hasn't been a high priority honestly, but in the coming months I'll start using games to do this, like in Valheim, you can make some surprisingly detailed and cool looking structures. Thanks for following up! Please feel free to follow up in the next few months.
😂 The impluvium part cracked me up, its a good thing I've seen 3D reconstruction of Roman impluviums so I could sort of understand what you were saying. 7:56 - 8:23 And air conditioning!? wow just wow another huge revelation, I always wondered why the alcoves were so high I just thought it was an architectural preference but, nope it was for air conditioning thats so awesome. And wow my ancestors had their own aqueduct systems too? Its strange I've seen images of the Ziwa ruins many times it never clicked to me this was an aqueduct system until now.
@@damisifaluyi5842 Songhai was a Africa’s Great Power. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade originally happened as product of the Portuguese tricking the BaKongo into believing they saw each other as equals. Muslim West Africa (with the exception of Mali) was outside of this and even the closer traditional believers would sell slaves to Songhai instead of the Europeans. The slave trade focused almost exclusively to West Africa when Songhai fell as the traditional belivers now only had the Europeans as clients, not to mention that West Africa was thrown into a dark age
These indoor plumbing were also used in the Savannah countries, in places like Mali and Songhai, , bathroom on the 2nd floor, gravity drainage flushed with hot water and pebbles deep underneath the 1st floor.
It's so damn good to finally have the Sub-Saharan ruins brought to light! I grew up in Apartheid South Africa, so all of this information was expunged from all major history, in order to mitigate the Apartheid agenda. So. Much. History. IGNORED. Thanks From Nothing! You're doing amazing work. 👏👏👏
What you said about rewriting history could very well be true. Sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely enormous and remains ridiculously unexplored. Think about how much potential it holds for new discoveries. Think about all the stuff we DO know DESPITE the shortage of archaeology and research conducted there. We already know that Africa is the birthplace of humanity, which has existed for up to 300,000 years. We already know that Africa is home to the world's oldest mine (the Ngwenye mine), that it arguably had the world's first mathematical object (the Lembombo bone), that some of the world's earliest developments in ironworking happened there (quite possibly THE earliest ironworking), and that it contains many mysterious stone structures such as the ruins of Naletale, Loropeni, Khami, Gedi, and Ourara as well as the stone circles of Senegal, Gambia, and Nabta Playa. As it stands right now, we're stuck in a cycle of academic ignorance. Not enough researchers are investigating African history because there's so little academic work to draw from. There's so little academic work to draw from because not enough researchers are investigating African history. There are so many potential opportunities for new discoveries and breakthroughs to be made if only more researchers would get out of their comfort zone and give Africa a chance.
I rhink so too. If not to honor ancestors, to honor our brothers on earth. And to help future generations who have to deal with the same climate. These systems are ingenious and can save lives.
A lot of comments like that, imply that they (the commentor) don't really expect much or not anything from Africa. Some consider it a shit hole, that nothing good comes from there, or that no one from Africa even made things at all. Just frustrating when some folks downplay, ignore, or just arrogantly assume that nothing was made or established there. The theme of the rhetoric most of the time is racism, that I'd encountered.
I love the idea of a central courtyard. Jollof vernacular architecture is beautiful, I wish modern homes could look as communal and human-scaled as it.
In the Katanga area of Congo Bantu peoples used to make canals and dams as high as over 2 meters tall. The Luba area of Congo is EXTREMELY underated, it possiblely may have given birth to all Bantu Civilizations including the Zimbabwean ones.
@@admirekashiri9879 I was doing research on bantu origin and it appears the strongest linguistic evidence of bantu origin point to Katanga in Congo. Not to mention alot of bantu cultures seem to have strong Luba or other Katanga groups influence. Also in the article I read they claimed Kantaga and Zambia have the oldest evidence of iron working by the bantu, but this article was written in 60s so... Additionally alot of Bantus claim Congolese origin like the Shona people and even Bantus in Cameroon. I haven't gone that deep in my research but all this is very interesting. The article: The problem of the bantu expansion
@@dalitsobanda1032 I'm Shona we don't claim a Congolese origin we claim an origin from Tanzania actually before moving sourhwards. We are all related but, not one group or area is the result of all the Bantu civilizations.
@@admirekashiri9879 I'm part Shona too. The Shona claim is of an origin west of lake Tanganyika which is modern DRC. Additionally there is evidence of Bantu settlement there and not many on the Tanzanian side. I'm not saying one group is responsible for Bantu Civilizations more that the first tell-tell signs of Bantu Civilization appear to be found in Katanga in Congo and those people appear to have spread out from there creating more states and kingdom throughout the Sub-region. So I'm not saying Katanga Bantus went out taught the other Bantus, what I'm claiming is all Bantus possibly might be those ancient Katanga Bantus. But like I said I haven't gone deep in research and sources are scarce... Additionally there is lack of archeology from the northern part of the great lakes area which could have evidence of older Bantu settlements.
Some scholars are trying to translate and preserve the information keep on mind there are over 700,000 manuscripts from Timbuktu not to mention other regions too have thousands of manuscripts. It will take a long time especially with the instability in Mali unfortunately.
The language isn’t “westernized” it’s just the European societies had these technologies thousands of years before African societies so the words are already in place for said technologies. Great stuff by the way! Love the channel
I love the content but my only gripe is this I live in California and we get 24 inches of rain annually if we're lucky the fact that these people are getting a hundred inches of rain every year they would have had to have come up with some kind of adequate aqueduct system I don't blame them for coming up with something so brilliant I was California got a hundred inches of rain every year
So weird. I like quadruple checked it and it looks totally fine. It's a direct copy/paste from previous videos as well. I copied it directly from patreon and now it works even though it's literally the same link. Very weird.
What astonishes me the most is that the system wasted nothing. The aqueducts, dams, water systems, all of it was built for pure efficiency. Simultaneously, it was beautiful. Amazing video. Thanks for the knowledge.
That is true, it reminds me of what Latour proposed in Gaia 2.0: engineering that mimics the resourcefulness and recycling character of nature - humans have done it before but it's just not part of Western engineering culture (sorry for that reference lol, currently writing an essay on that XD)
Because back then human societies actually valued sustainability. They were invested in methods and practices that would not end up destroying their surrounding environment.
Now human societies are ruled by profit motive as absolute top priority, which creates immense waste and suffering for many and only benefits those at the very top.
Very interesting, what I find most valuable about this, is that it gives you an idea of how different precolonial African groups lived which is something that you don't often hear about due to a focus on empires and kingdoms in the few times that African history is discussed.
Exactly its good to dive deeper and go into the streets and houses of these great empires and kingdoms and see what life was like and how they managed certain things like with the water management Jabari presented here. I can't wait to see more of this series, this was awesome.
The Benin Kingdom’s architecture and water treatment system is underrated.
Would love to see more pictures of the homes and inpluviums , are they in the sources ?
With the coming fresh water shortages around the world sounds like an impluvium needs to be part of homes from here on out. Figuring out the reasons people used to have them and why they mostly stopped would be a good topic of study. Really, the study of all world-wide home building techniques and structures deserve a re-examination. Awesome series BTW.
Good points, especially the last part.
Water comoanies wouldnt want you to have anything fof free
This really piqued my interest. To my mind, this is probably one of the most compelling topics to raise when trying to show the advanced nature of many African civilizations. I say that because of how loftily (haha) the Roman aqueduct and other water management systems are held in the public imagination.
Thanks for this educational video! As the climate crisis intensifies, with it's rising temperatures and water scarcity, we'll need to tap into these ancient solutions to modern problems🙌🏽
Interesting topic and I am not surprised at all that Africans had ingenious ways of managing water in a continent that it is often a precious commodity. It is a real tragedy how so many peoples histories have been deliberately neglected
As a zimbabwean im so happy somone spoke about the water systems and channels thank you FROM NOTHING(engineering feats as well as the conssciousness change to shift thier enviroment for the better )Africans hav been doing this for thousands of years ,thier mining and aircondiontioning methods are also worth a shout especially the mining.
As Jabari hints at here, those had been abandoned and the society fallen before colonization, correct? And if so, my understanding is that it happened due to migration/invasion by nomadic Bantu from the north. Is that a correct (high level) description of the history of your region?
@@evilassaultweaponeer no it isnt or i just dont understand how you worded it ,if ur refering to zimbabwe since there were quiet a few kindoms but usally their decline came economically(reduction in gold/iron other metals ,salt and grazing lands )what would then happen is people would migrate to another place in zim ,the last emipire to pop up was the rozvi kingdom and that came about arpund 15/1600's as retaliation to the portugese trying to take over ,bantu migrations from the south(because of mafecane) not the north came in the form of five huge armies/groupes of people and the the last army to came was the matebele and at the point the kingdm/empire was on its knees at khami(south western zim ancient ruins) and not long after that the british came with knowledge of gold and other reasources and they conquered for a short while ,i couldnt tell u when each structure became vacant but the society hadnt fallen by the time the british got here the british actually had problems because most of the shone people they encpuntered lived comfprtable lives and that was a problem because they needed people to start working the mines doing the manual labour so they aided any distabilasation because it meant more people coming to them for menial labour the disstablaistion of shona socieities was done by the british it helped them gain power divdid and conqure all that ,I hope i was helpfull i didnt understand your reply
@@_genova6230 By that do you mean various factors lead to a general decline/collapse, akin to the Mayan Empire?
Ancient Africans really had some amazing engineers. The benin kingdom was basically a real life wakanda.
I really think a lot of Wakanda was inspired by Benin... because at the beginning they even reference it!🖤
Please forget wakanda. There are other impressive real-life African cultures
This is great!!! I really wanna try and create models of these architectures. Maybe even try and figure out how these might have been updated with modern technology.
Good idea
i have always wondered why africans love to use western architecture without ever once trying to modernise the traditional architecture
@@mch7933 Likely due to this erasure of history. MANY colonized cultures not only are encouraged (if not required) to take on the culture of the coloniser, but also are taught to demonize their own culture.
Like how in Haiti, the native tongue (Creole) is not even taught in most schools and seen as 'backwoods country'. They only teach french or english. Christianity is the more accepted religion, Voodoo is demonized. Etc.
That's why this channel and those like it are so important, to show that these indigenous cultures actually have a rich and interesting past that we should be proud of and learn from.
please update us with what you've done
@@buddermonger2000 I've been trying to find/learn 3d modeling tools lol. It's unfortunate that many tools are hard to learn. But I'm getting a lil better at them, hasn't been a high priority honestly, but in the coming months I'll start using games to do this, like in Valheim, you can make some surprisingly detailed and cool looking structures.
Thanks for following up! Please feel free to follow up in the next few months.
😂 The impluvium part cracked me up, its a good thing I've seen 3D reconstruction of Roman impluviums so I could sort of understand what you were saying.
7:56 - 8:23 And air conditioning!? wow just wow another huge revelation, I always wondered why the alcoves were so high I just thought it was an architectural preference but, nope it was for air conditioning thats so awesome.
And wow my ancestors had their own aqueduct systems too? Its strange I've seen images of the Ziwa ruins many times it never clicked to me this was an aqueduct system until now.
nobody conquers water. it is unconquerable because we are water
Songhai is perhaps one of the most important African civilisations. Who knows what would have happened if Songhai survived for long.
what makes it more important than mali?
@@damisifaluyi5842 Songhai was a Africa’s Great Power. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade originally happened as product of the Portuguese tricking the BaKongo into believing they saw each other as equals. Muslim West Africa (with the exception of Mali) was outside of this and even the closer traditional believers would sell slaves to Songhai instead of the Europeans. The slave trade focused almost exclusively to West Africa when Songhai fell as the traditional belivers now only had the Europeans as clients, not to mention that West Africa was thrown into a dark age
Lets continue to celebrate the beauty of our people, one love africa✊🏽
These indoor plumbing were also used in the Savannah countries, in places like Mali and Songhai, , bathroom on the 2nd floor, gravity drainage flushed with hot water and pebbles deep underneath the 1st floor.
do you have a source for that? I've been trying to find it.
@@damisifaluyi5842
Can't post because TH-cam hates outside links, but Goole Robin Walker.
And the rich Swahili folks also had indoor plumbing.
@@mrnancy1114 nothing comes up when I google just Robin Walker
@@damisifaluyi5842
TH-cam keep deleting my reply to you.
Maybe try using Robin Walker when we ruled.
Your videos always make me proud of my ancestors. Can't wait for the next one!
Outstanding
It's so damn good to finally have the Sub-Saharan ruins brought to light! I grew up in Apartheid South Africa, so all of this information was expunged from all major history, in order to mitigate the Apartheid agenda.
So. Much. History. IGNORED.
Thanks From Nothing! You're doing amazing work. 👏👏👏
I'm curious about the furniture that there is in your depiction of the inside of an ashanti house. What is it ?
What you said about rewriting history could very well be true. Sub-Saharan Africa is absolutely enormous and remains ridiculously unexplored. Think about how much potential it holds for new discoveries. Think about all the stuff we DO know DESPITE the shortage of archaeology and research conducted there. We already know that Africa is the birthplace of humanity, which has existed for up to 300,000 years. We already know that Africa is home to the world's oldest mine (the Ngwenye mine), that it arguably had the world's first mathematical object (the Lembombo bone), that some of the world's earliest developments in ironworking happened there (quite possibly THE earliest ironworking), and that it contains many mysterious stone structures such as the ruins of Naletale, Loropeni, Khami, Gedi, and Ourara as well as the stone circles of Senegal, Gambia, and Nabta Playa.
As it stands right now, we're stuck in a cycle of academic ignorance. Not enough researchers are investigating African history because there's so little academic work to draw from. There's so little academic work to draw from because not enough researchers are investigating African history. There are so many potential opportunities for new discoveries and breakthroughs to be made if only more researchers would get out of their comfort zone and give Africa a chance.
I got ad for a game about water on this lol
Lmao
Yes, we also need to get more education about ancient, traditional architecture systems, watersystems.... Etc
I rhink so too. If not to honor ancestors, to honor our brothers on earth. And to help future generations who have to deal with the same climate. These systems are ingenious and can save lives.
7:15 i feel the need to build this in minecraft.
Another amazing video, thanks man.
Very well done!
Please keep making content
Very informative thank you
Another great video, Jabari. Keep it up.
Very interesting, informative and worthwhile video.
Very good work!
This is one of my favourite of your videos.
The 5 dislikes are from the Americans who believe in the "Africa built nothing" claim.
A lot of comments like that, imply that they (the commentor) don't really expect much or not anything from Africa. Some consider it a shit hole, that nothing good comes from there, or that no one from Africa even made things at all. Just frustrating when some folks downplay, ignore, or just arrogantly assume that nothing was made or established there. The theme of the rhetoric most of the time is racism, that I'd encountered.
@@jam5533 indeed
I love the idea of a central courtyard. Jollof vernacular architecture is beautiful, I wish modern homes could look as communal and human-scaled as it.
Great piece of work and very informative.
Great video!!!!
The thumbnail 😂
Fascinating
Thank you for yet another great video
In the Katanga area of Congo Bantu peoples used to make canals and dams as high as over 2 meters tall. The Luba area of Congo is EXTREMELY underated, it possiblely may have given birth to all Bantu Civilizations including the Zimbabwean ones.
What do you mean? How could they have given birth to all Bantu civilizations?
@@admirekashiri9879 I was doing research on bantu origin and it appears the strongest linguistic evidence of bantu origin point to Katanga in Congo. Not to mention alot of bantu cultures seem to have strong Luba or other Katanga groups influence. Also in the article I read they claimed Kantaga and Zambia have the oldest evidence of iron working by the bantu, but this article was written in 60s so... Additionally alot of Bantus claim Congolese origin like the Shona people and even Bantus in Cameroon. I haven't gone that deep in my research but all this is very interesting.
The article: The problem of the bantu expansion
@@dalitsobanda1032 I'm Shona we don't claim a Congolese origin we claim an origin from Tanzania actually before moving sourhwards. We are all related but, not one group or area is the result of all the Bantu civilizations.
@@admirekashiri9879 I'm part Shona too. The Shona claim is of an origin west of lake Tanganyika which is modern DRC. Additionally there is evidence of Bantu settlement there and not many on the Tanzanian side. I'm not saying one group is responsible for Bantu Civilizations more that the first tell-tell signs of Bantu Civilization appear to be found in Katanga in Congo and those people appear to have spread out from there creating more states and kingdom throughout the Sub-region. So I'm not saying Katanga Bantus went out taught the other Bantus, what I'm claiming is all Bantus possibly might be those ancient Katanga Bantus. But like I said I haven't gone deep in research and sources are scarce... Additionally there is lack of archeology from the northern part of the great lakes area which could have evidence of older Bantu settlements.
God bless you bruv, wallahi you and hometeam are the best
Great video man i wonder if those canals could be used to fight desertification today
Need to conquer milk, juice, alcohol, smoothies, sodas, energy drinks, sports drinks, coffees, mochas, frappacinos, expressos, teas, and other liquids
can you suggest to me some books on these matters? especially the ones on what early european explorers wrote on Africa. thank you in advance
All sources used are on my website in the description.
Another reason Yoruba-Edo are based
Africa The Great❗🌍
I still wonder why no body has not really translate the manuscript in Timbuktu
bcus most ppl don't care sadly
Some scholars are trying to translate and preserve the information keep on mind there are over 700,000 manuscripts from Timbuktu not to mention other regions too have thousands of manuscripts. It will take a long time especially with the instability in Mali unfortunately.
Great !
Good Video!!
Thanks for the info. Now I'll have something else to piss off the racist people I argue with in FB😜
We Africans were world leaders, scholars and philosophers And we were not slaves
The language isn’t “westernized” it’s just the European societies had these technologies thousands of years before African societies so the words are already in place for said technologies.
Great stuff by the way! Love the channel
I love the content but my only gripe is this I live in California and we get 24 inches of rain annually if we're lucky the fact that these people are getting a hundred inches of rain every year they would have had to have come up with some kind of adequate aqueduct system I don't blame them for coming up with something so brilliant I was California got a hundred inches of rain every year
Well yeah I never implied that impluvium will work anywhere
Oh one should look at the aquatic civilization of the Ajuraan kingdom.
I think you meant "hydraulic" but even that is a controversial term.
Yes hydraulic , aquatic was some pre historic culture in the area of the Great lakes..good catch.
Cool! :D
Just like African Space Programs, Ahead of its time
Hei, I think your patreon and website link might be broken?
So weird. I like quadruple checked it and it looks totally fine. It's a direct copy/paste from previous videos as well. I copied it directly from patreon and now it works even though it's literally the same link. Very weird.
it's lit!
✌🏾💙🙏🏾🌍
I Gib Like