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Under C

"The great world drought (900-1000AD) resulted in further desiccation and expansion of the Sahara desert. Societies that were in former grasslands collapsed. Affected people poured into the forests seawards. So came Eri and his people to the Anambra valley, Oduduwa and his people to Igbomokun and Ogiso and his people to Iduu. They came, like all myth-making empire-builders, with complicated stories, which the autochthonous Igbo concluded were fairy tales. Till today, therefore, the alternative lgbo terms for fairy tales are: "

i. Akuko Nd'Eri = Eri peoples tales
ii. Akuko Iduu N'oba =Edo and Oba tales
iii. Akuko Ife =Ife tales
iv. "Akuko Mbe N'Agu = Tortoise and Leopard tales."

 "World Struggles for a Just World."

By Maazi Chidi G. Osuagwu, PhD.

 "Sacred to Hermes (Thot) were the tortoise and the number 4, symbolic of the four winds."

Collier's Encyclopedia with Bibliography and Index (Vol. 12), 1991

"Archaeological findings in Iboland go back as far as four thousand years. But archaeology in the area is still in its infancy, and its flourishing growth was sadly disrupted by the events of the recent years, one of the lesser casualties of war. Only a few sites have been excavated , but these have yielded material of enormous significance, which has, in some respects, transformed our knowledge of the Ibo past. It seems likely that the systematic archaeological work in Iboland in the future will add greatly to our understanding of its history, though there are, of course, major limitations to the kind of information which the remains of material cultures can supply."

The IBO People and the Europeans

The Genesis of a Relationship – 1906

By ELIZABETH ISICHEI

"Biological evidence indicates that the Niger has been a barrier and that the Ibo have been genetically isolated from their neighbors for a long time (Hiernaux 1974, 170). ( Comment by Ekwe Nche: What about Igbo west of the Niger, were they also isolated, or was there something else in play that kept their neighbors away from Igbo for thousands of years, even without a standing army?)

By the end of the first millennium or the beginning of the second, we have remarkable archaeological evidence for a social institution which indicates a considerable measure of centralization of social authority and an attendant concentration of wealth; it seems likely that this authority was more religious and moral than political and administrative….

Up until the advent of the colonial power, the Igbo-speaking peoples of the area in which Igbo-Ukwu is situated constituted a "stateless" society, organized in what anthropologists called a segmentary linage system which has no place for chiefs or kings.

The result is that the lineage is the all-important unit of obligation and organization, not a territorial unit or a unit of obligation and organization, not a territorial unit or a village as such; internal differentiation and the growth of authority is discouraged. The emphasis instead is upon equality and leadership, not of a permanent kind but such as to meet the needs of different occasions as they arise  - ( comment by Ekwe Nche: this is Ohacracy, the purest form and the first democracy in the world). In such societies one does not expect to meet "kings" or royal courts of the kind that are superficially suggested by the archaeological findings at Igbo-Ukwu. Nevertheless such societies still have to make provision, as every society does, for the settlement of disputes, whether between individuals or between lineages, without recourse to violence. In addition, an agricultural community has to ensure the fertility of its land; in a pre-scientific state of knowledge this is achieved through religion, which attempts to predict and control worldly events through a system of beliefs about how the world is constituted and operates. Stateless societies ( comment by Ekwe Nche: Or should we say democratic societies that are so advanced that they had done away with elements of control like the army or police, and yet these societies continued to exist for thousands of years uninterrupted on both sides of the Niger.), therefore, even if they have no kings or judges, can tolerate authority figures thought to be backed by the spiritual forces of their groups.

The Bronzes

Stylistically the "strange rococo, almost Faberge-like virtuosity" of the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes is unique, and they have been described as  "justly famous for a fragile, jewel-like aesthetic of a delicacy to be compared in Africa only with Roman pieces imported at the Nabataean capital at Faras; nowhere again shall we encounter the diaphanous lightness of these calabash shapes, crescentic drinking bowls, mammoth shells, reptiles and animals ...(Williams 1974, 118).

The castings from Igbo-Ukwu are of bronze, with an admixture of lead, while the objects not cast by the lost wax method but made by smithing and chasing are of almost pure copper. This shows that the ancient craftsmen had sufficient knowledge of metallurgy to know that leaded bronze is more ductile than copper and is better for casting, while copper can be more easily hammered and twisted and engraved than bronze...

Benin

The reports of early European visitors to Benin do not say anything about its origins or its founding, but speak of Benin’s allegiance to the "Ogane",  from whom the oba (King) obtained his insignia; the Ogane was said to be a powerful ruler whose kingdom lay many days'  journey to the eastward (Pereira trans. Kimble 1937; Astley 1745, 1, 18; Ryder 1965)...

In general, the majority of Benin pieces have proven to be brass, but the only ones archaeologically dated are forty-nine thirteenth-century manilas and bracelets excavated from the old palace site which are of tin-bronze with little zinc and lead content, while the excavated objects of the Ogba Road hoard, dated to the nineteenth century, are of leaded brass"

NIGERIA: its archaeology and early history

By Thurstan Shaw

Ife

"The Igbo faction of the aboriginal group, looking on those in the city who had succumbed to the ideas perpetrated by the Oduduwa groups as traitors, continued their raids over the settlement"
We underline the reason the Igbo were fighting a thousand years ago at Igbomokun (Ile-Ife): IDEAS. Unacceptable ideas! They were engaged in an ideological struggle against a perceived unjust and un-natural system. Struggle for a just world!
Writing in the same book, Isola Olomola had recorded that  "in Ife tradition, also, reference is made to Kutukutu, Oba lgbo, that is, "Early morning, the king of Igbo" What this means is that the dawn assembly of the people ruled the lgbo (talk of lgbo enwe eze debate a thousand years ago!) The people, assembled, is king of the people, which the lgbo held, would be contradicted by the "ILE" system introducedby the Oduduwa group. What "ILE" means is House (ulo in modem lgbo). Same thing as OBl 1 (Great Hall) or IGWE (Great Roof). This is precisely what the Egyptian term "Per aa"' corrupted to Pharaoh, means: GREAT HOUSE. The lgbo, a thousand years ago, struggled against a system of government where oneman's housewas the house of all. ( Comment by Ekwe Nche - Igbo were the aborigins, hence it should not be surprising that ‘there was no continuing artistic tradition in bronze-casting and the making of terracottas after the Igbo had been conquered and absorbed by the Yoruba!).

"World Struggles for a Just World."

By Maazi Chidi G. Osuagwu, PhD.

"In the Olokun Grove outside the town he caused to be dug up for him a bronze head wearing a crown; this head had been found in the middle of the nineteenth century,  there was no continuing artistic tradition in bronze-casting and the making of terracottas, but as such objects were accidentally found they were venerated and placed in shrines (Willet 1970, 305-6).

The striking thing about the Ife heads is their naturalism, as compared to the highly stylized or conventionalized treatment in most African sculpture. On his return to Germany Frobenius announced that he had discovered the lost civilization of Atlantis, the legend of which is related in Plato. In the terracottas he saw a symmetry, a vitality, a delicacy of form directly reminiscent of ancient Greece and proof that once upon a time, a race, far superior in strain to the Negro, had been settled there' (Frobenius 1913, 88-9). ( Comment by Ekwe Nche: One wonders if it ever crossed his mind that it was the other way around  - that the Igbo taught the Greeks among many others, the art of sculpturing!)"

NIGERIA: its archaeology and early history

By Thurstan Shaw