Post by anansi on Feb 12, 2020 6:32:17 GMT -5
From the book A Fist Full OF Shells
This is a complete surprise to me, a form of communication used by first world nations in the Americas was also utilized in West African coastal communities?? Wow, if anyone out there can enlighten us more in this form of communication in Africa it would be helpful.
.The significance of Aja spiritual beliefs in a deity, or vodún, would be crucial in the development of African religious practice in the New World, among the vodunun shrines of Haiti and alongside the Candomblé terreiros of north-eastern Brazil. Cultural memories were not inscribed through writing: the French official Sieur Delbée wrote in 1671 that, in order to ‘communicate certain things that they wish to make known, [the Aja of Allada] use little knotted ropes, in which each knot has a meaning, such as the time of a meeting or the place where one is to meet, or the price of a piece of merchandise’. As Delbée noted, this was like the much better-known quipus, or ‘talking knots’, of the Incas, since ‘this usage is not only common along the coast of Africa, but is also practised by all the Indians [sic] of the mainland of the Americas.’47
This is a complete surprise to me, a form of communication used by first world nations in the Americas was also utilized in West African coastal communities?? Wow, if anyone out there can enlighten us more in this form of communication in Africa it would be helpful.
