In my first class of an archeology course at Lund University in Sweden, I excelled more than usual. It wasn’t just that it was filled with blonde and blue-eyed students, more than any other class I’d ever attended, but archeology is not a field that many migrants study.
My teacher and classmates were lovely, but I still had this “What am I doing here, Somali refugee?” Feeling. Furthermore, he had never seen an archaeologist before or held an archaeological object. But I had read a phrase in a book (Africa: History of a Continent, by Basil Davidson) that said that to write African history we need to do archaeological research.
As this first class was on European stone age archeology, stone implements were handed out. They handed me an ax. To my amazement, the label said “Somaliland.” Wow: an ax from my own country. The moment was like a message. It was as if someone said to me, “Yes, you belong in this classroom.”
I bombarded our teacher with questions about the ax. He had no idea where it was from, he didn’t seem to care. Why should he? The stone age artifacts are almost the same. No, I didn’t think there was more documentation: only that they were Paleolithic objects.
Later I discovered that these objects were extraordinary. It turns out that the axes were indeed instruments that made history, hauled out of my country in the exciting days when the idea of human evolution was taking shape.
Fast forward 20 years from that day in Lund and I’m creating a new global initiative, a digital museum gather all Somali objects and materials on one platform. I want the people of Africa to feel the same connection to the issue as I do.
In archeology, context is everything: if your bones are found with those of extinct bears and mammoths, then you have probably been dead for tens of thousands of years and most likely not even Homo sapiens. In 1856 the first Neanderthal was discovered in the Neander Valley in Germany. Understandably, the Neanderthal would not have liked to be seen as the only link between modern humans and the great apes – they were too sophisticated. So it must have been a relief when, in the 1890s, Homo erectus came on the scene.
Javanese man, as this find came to be known, was labeled the “missing link.” Soon this “upright ape-man” was joined by more hominins discovered in Asia. These discoveries reinforced the theories of Charles Darwin, first expounded in 1859 in On the Origin of Species, and his idea of natural selection gained more ground. This was further proof of the idea that humans had evolved from a common ancestor.
Archaeologists didn’t bother to look at Africa until 1896, when Heywood Walter Seton-Karr, a Scottish hunter, returned to London with hundreds of stone implements from British Somaliland. He proclaimed to world attention that he had found the Garden of Eden: “This was, in my opinion, where the human race originated.” Major museums, one of which must have been the Lund Natural History Museum, lined up to acquire artifacts from Somaliland, including stone tools. More discoveries on the continent followed, such as the one in Kenya. “Turkana boy“Or” Lucy “from Ethiopia.
I spent last year inspecting the same area where Seton-Karr tripped over the stone axes. I asked the village elders about him, hoping that some generational memory would remain. And even though the name didn’t ring a bell, why should it? They told me that English (the British) used to come looking mineral (gems) here. Often times, foreign archaeological missions did not tell the locals what they were really doing; in fact, sometimes this still happens. The village head promised me to protect his area, which also includes 5,000-year-old cave paintings.
Uncovering the hidden history of long-forgotten African collections in western museums, the founders of our new archive have unearthed a wealth of art, technology and human history. With the application of technology, things of the past can be brought to life, through photogrammetry and 3D virtual tours, and felt more relevant to modern societies. We are collaborating with leading Western museums with African collections, including several UK institutions (the British Museum and the Powell-Cotton Museum among them). But with all of our digital work done by local African teams, we’re harnessing a new tech-savvy generation. The idea is to inspire Africans to own their heritage and their narratives.
It’s not just about the past. Our increasing demand for goods has put enormous pressure on the climate and resources and has also made us forget our traditional ways of managing resources and interacting with nature.
One of the most extraordinary people we worked with was a blind potter. She had been trained by her mother, who in turn was trained by her mother. Now she was with her own daughter who was training her daughters. This line of potters will disappear after surviving so many adversities just because so many people now turn to machine-produced ceramics and imported plastic products.
Our museum aims to revitalize artisan technologies such as pottery and iron making. With objects that are often neglected locally or forgotten in the storage departments of major museums, this heritage is in jeopardy for the first time in history. If we don’t bring together the people and stories that reflect what is most beautiful in human life, the ability to adapt to change and challenges, we may well lose sight of humanity itself.
www.theguardian.com
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism