Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets
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0:00 - 0:04I moved back home 15 years ago
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0:04 - 0:07after a 20-year stay in the United States,
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0:07 - 0:09and Africa called me back.
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0:09 - 0:13And I founded my country's first
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0:13 - 0:15graphic design and new media college.
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0:15 - 0:20And I called it the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts.
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0:20 - 0:24The idea, the dream, was really for a sort of Bauhaus
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0:24 - 0:29sort of school where new ideas were interrogated
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0:29 - 0:32and investigated,
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0:32 - 0:35the creation of a new visual language
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0:35 - 0:40based on the African creative heritage.
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0:40 - 0:43We offer a two-year diploma
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0:43 - 0:47to talented students who have successfully completed
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0:47 - 0:49their high school education.
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0:49 - 0:52And typography's a very important part of the curriculum
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0:52 - 0:57and we encourage our students to look inward for influence.
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0:57 - 0:59Here's a poster designed by one of the students
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0:59 - 1:04under the theme "Education is a right."
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1:04 - 1:08Some logos designed by my students.
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1:08 - 1:12Africa has had a long tradition of writing,
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1:12 - 1:14but this is not such a well-known fact,
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1:14 - 1:18and I wrote the book "Afrikan Alphabets" to address that.
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1:18 - 1:22The different types of writing in Africa,
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1:22 - 1:24first was proto-writing,
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1:24 - 1:26as illustrated by Nsibidi,
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1:26 - 1:29which is the writing system of a secret society
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1:29 - 1:33of the Ejagham people in southern Nigeria.
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1:33 - 1:37So it's a special-interest writing system.
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1:37 - 1:40The Akan of people of Ghana and [Cote d'Ivoire]
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1:40 - 1:44developed Adinkra symbols some 400 years ago,
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1:44 - 1:48and these are proverbs, historical sayings,
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1:48 - 1:51objects, animals, plants,
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1:51 - 1:53and my favorite Adinkra system
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1:53 - 1:55is the first one at the top on the left.
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1:55 - 1:56It's called Sankofa.
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1:56 - 2:02It means, "Return and get it." Learn from the past.
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2:02 - 2:05This pictograph by the Jokwe people of Angola
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2:05 - 2:09tells the story of the creation of the world.
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2:09 - 2:14At the top is God, at the bottom is man, mankind,
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2:14 - 2:19and on the left is the sun, on the right is the moon.
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2:19 - 2:23All the paths lead to and from God.
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2:23 - 2:28These secret societies of the Yoruba, Kongo
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2:28 - 2:30and Palo religions
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2:30 - 2:34in Nigeria, Congo and Angola respectively,
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2:34 - 2:37developed this intricate writing system
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2:37 - 2:41which is alive and well today in the New World
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2:41 - 2:47in Cuba, Brazil and Trinidad and Haiti.
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2:47 - 2:51In the rainforests of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
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2:51 - 2:54in the Ituri society,
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2:54 - 2:57the men pound out a cloth out of a special tree,
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2:57 - 3:00and the women, who are also the praise singers,
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3:00 - 3:03paint interweaving patterns
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3:03 - 3:06that are the same in structure
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3:06 - 3:11as the polyphonic structures that they use in their singing --
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3:11 - 3:15a sort of a musical score, if you may.
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3:15 - 3:17In South Africa, Ndebele women
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3:17 - 3:21use these symbols and other geometric patterns
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3:21 - 3:24to paint their homes in bright colors,
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3:24 - 3:27and the Zulu women use the symbols
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3:27 - 3:29in the beads that they weave
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3:29 - 3:32into bracelets and necklaces.
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3:32 - 3:36Ethiopia has had the longest tradition of writing,
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3:36 - 3:38with the Ethiopic script that was developed
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3:38 - 3:40in the fourth century A.D.
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3:40 - 3:43and is used to write Amharic,
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3:43 - 3:46which is spoken by over 24 million people.
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3:46 - 3:51King Ibrahim Njoya of the Bamum Kingdom of Cameroon
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3:51 - 3:54developed Shü-mom at the age of 25.
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3:54 - 3:56Shü-mom is a writing system.
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3:56 - 3:59It's a syllabary. It's not exactly an alphabet.
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3:59 - 4:03And here we see three stages of development
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4:03 - 4:07that it went through in 30 years.
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4:07 - 4:13The Vai people of Liberia had a long tradition of literacy
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4:13 - 4:17before their first contact with Europeans in the 1800s.
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4:17 - 4:21It's a syllabary and reads from left to right.
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4:21 - 4:25Next door, in Sierra Leone, the Mende
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4:25 - 4:27also developed a syllabary,
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4:27 - 4:31but theirs reads from right to left.
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4:31 - 4:34Africa has had a long tradition of design,
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4:34 - 4:38a well-defined design sensibility,
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4:38 - 4:40but the problem in Africa has been that,
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4:40 - 4:43especially today, designers in Africa
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4:43 - 4:45struggle with all forms of design
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4:45 - 4:50because they are more apt to look outward
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4:50 - 4:52for influence and inspiration.
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4:52 - 4:56The creative spirit in Africa, the creative tradition,
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4:56 - 4:59is as potent as it has always been,
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4:59 - 5:03if only designers could look within.
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5:03 - 5:06This Ethiopic cross illustrates
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5:06 - 5:09what Dr. Ron Eglash has established:
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5:09 - 5:13that Africa has a lot to contribute to computing
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5:13 - 5:18and mathematics through their intuitive grasp of fractals.
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5:18 - 5:22Africans of antiquity created civilization,
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5:22 - 5:26and their monuments, which still stand today,
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5:26 - 5:29are a true testimony of their greatness.
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5:29 - 5:33Most probably, one of humanity's greatest achievements
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5:33 - 5:36is the invention of the alphabet,
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5:36 - 5:39and that has been attributed to Mesopotamia
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5:39 - 5:45with their invention of cuneiform in 1600 BC,
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5:45 - 5:49followed by hieroglyphics in Egypt,
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5:49 - 5:54and that story has been cast in stone as historical fact.
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5:54 - 5:57That is, until 1998,
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5:57 - 6:02when one Yale professor John Coleman Darnell
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6:02 - 6:05discovered these inscriptions in the Thebes desert
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6:05 - 6:09on the limestone cliffs in western Egypt,
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6:09 - 6:15and these have been dated at between 1800 and 1900 B.C.,
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6:15 - 6:18centuries before Mesopotamia.
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6:18 - 6:21Called Wadi el-Hol
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6:21 - 6:24because of the place that they were discovered,
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6:24 - 6:27these inscriptions -- research is still going on,
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6:27 - 6:30a few of them have been deciphered,
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6:30 - 6:33but there is consensus among scholars
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6:33 - 6:38that this is really humanity's first alphabet.
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6:38 - 6:41Over here, you see a paleographic chart
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6:41 - 6:44that shows what has been deciphered so far,
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6:44 - 6:47starting with the letter A, "ālep," at the top,
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6:47 - 6:51and "bêt," in the middle, and so forth.
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6:51 - 6:55It is time that students of design in Africa
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6:55 - 6:59read the works of titans like Cheikh Anta Diop,
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6:59 - 7:01Senegal's Cheikh Anta Diop,
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7:01 - 7:04whose seminal work on Egypt is vindicated
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7:04 - 7:07by this discovery.
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7:07 - 7:10The last word goes to the great Jamaican leader
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7:10 - 7:12Marcus Mosiah Garvey
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7:12 - 7:16and the Akan people of Ghana
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7:16 - 7:18with their Adinkra symbol Sankofa,
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7:18 - 7:20which encourages us to go to the past
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7:20 - 7:22so as to inform our present
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7:22 - 7:27and build on a future for us and our children.
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7:27 - 7:31It is also time that designers in Africa
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7:31 - 7:34stop looking outside.
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7:34 - 7:36They've been looking outward for a long time,
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7:36 - 7:39yet what they were looking for
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7:39 - 7:43has been right there within grasp, right within them.
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7:43 - 7:45Thank you very much.
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7:45 - 7:50(Applause)
- Title:
- Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets
- Speaker:
- Saki Mafundikwa
- Description:
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From simple alphabets to secret symbolic languages, graphic designer Saki Mafundikwa celebrates the many forms of written communication across the continent of Africa. He highlights the history and legacy that are embodied in written words and symbols, and urges African designers to draw on these graphic forms for fresh inspiration. It's summed up in his favorite Ghanaian glyph, Sankofa, which means "return and get it" -- or "learn from the past."
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 08:10
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Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets | |
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Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets | |
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Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets | |
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Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets | |
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Joseph Geni edited English subtitles for Ingenuity and elegance in ancient African alphabets |