GEORGE LAMMING Primary School kicked off African Awareness Month with a reminder that Africa is the cradle of civilisation.
The students and their teachers, dressed in African garb, received this lesson today when Lecturer in History and Philosophy at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Dr Rodney Worrell, visited the Flint Hall, St. Michael, institution and addressed the theme of the month.
Dr Worrell noted that all evidence suggested that life started in Africa, and specifically in the Kenyan Valley. He explained: “Inside of Africa, there was writing… Science, Mathematics. You had sophisticated systems of Government, that is, the Africans had large empires; they ruled over many nations in the Middle East, Asia and even in the Interior of Africa. So, we are saying that given the criteria, Africa was civilised and Africa gave the world civilisation.”
He noted that Africans were the first to create fire, and they gave us the skill of fishing, crop production and animal rearing. Of the latter, Dr Worrell said this was an important step in terms of development, because Africans moved from being hunters and gatherers to having settled societies, where they built families, clans, villages and cities.
The Pan Africanist and writer of several texts on African civilisation pointed out that the Nile Valley – Nubia, Ethiopia and Egypt – saw the advent of great civilisation, and the greatest was inside Egypt.
Students heard that Egypt gave the world mathematics, and if students were to view that country’s monuments, temples and palaces, they would see the mathematical genius of the Egyptian people. Acknowledging concerns about not many students excelling in this subject, Dr Worrell told students who loved Mathematics that they were “from a line of the greatest Mathematicians the world has seen thus far”, and urged them to take a look at Egyptian geometry and painting, which showed Mathematics to be at the centre.
Meanwhile, principal Philip Roach, in giving the rationale for the theme: Africa: The Cradle of Civilisation, said he wanted his young charges to remember that Africa was the place of origin of their ancestors, and so to become “more aware of the history and story of Africa as told by our people and not others”.
The first day of celebrations was also marked by music, drumming and a selection of songs from Cultural Ambassador, Anthony Mighty Gabby Carter. (BGIS)
