The Sunday News
Cultural Heritage with Pathisa Nyathi
FOR the past 40 weeks, we have been delving into African Cultural Astronomy, a field of study and knowledge that existed and still exists in all ancient and contemporary communities and societies. However, we gave particular attention to African cultural astronomy. The reason was so that we could better understand our Africanness and our past.
As we do so, we need to be cognizant of the reason why we pursued various aspects of African cultural astronomy. Certainly, there were no utility considerations in that pursuit. Our experience is that what has been lost is not easy to recover and apply in a concrete form in our everyday lives.
There is pride in knowing our past, including that which we have not received as cultural heritage. Even when we do not connect and link with the past, there is some element of continuity regarding the knowledge and information that our ancestors created as they interacted with their natural environment.
It may not be entirely accurate to say we lost all aspects of our past, our traditions and our heritage. Some forms of ancient knowledge and information were more lost than others. This was the case with African cultural astronomy. It is a field that suffered immensely.
The introduction of the Gregorian calendar diminished dependence on celestial bodies. This is not to say celestial bodies no longer inspire the reckoning of time and the seasons, in particular the agricultural season.
The difference is that the new calendar means that the people no longer gaze the night sky to observe the movements and resulting positions of the cosmic and celestial bodies in the firmament. All that they consult are the calendars that are produced the previous year and there, they observe the changing times and seasons, the weekends, ends of months, new lunar months, quarter, full and black moons, public holidays and other aspects relating to political, cultural and social events.
On Thursday May 25 was Africa Day. It is marked on the calendar that is more exotic that indigenous. The African public and sacred days are outnumbered by foreign days that are regarded as holidays and holy days. What remains the same though is the fact that even the holidays as they may not be African, they too were determined in some instances by the movements and positions of celestial bodies in the firmament.
Africans used celestial knowledge to chart seasons and to regulate agricultural cycles and ritual calendars. Celestial bodies were used to coordinate both work and social activities; they played and continue to play roles in divination, spatial design and decision-making.
African cultural astronomy is a waning field in terms of acquired and passed down knowledge and information and the application of that knowledge. During the time when circular stone uprights were used as astronomical calendars there were direct benefits in terms of timing of social, political and cultural rituals and ceremonies.
The agricultural seasons were determined through observation of the movements and positions of celestial and cosmic bodies in the firmament. At the time when technological advances were not that developed, there was greater reliance on natural phenomena such as the celestial bodies.
Our present situation is better understood and appreciated when we are au fait with our past. The traditions of the ancients help us to understand them and their cultural constructions better. In turn, we understand our culture better. We are better off when we understand mythologies of the ancients as sometimes these do not die out completely, but take on different forms with the passage of time and acquisition of new ideas, consciousness and ideologies.
African communities, indeed like other non-African societies and communities, developed mythologies that were novel ways of making sense out of seemingly senseless phenomena surrounding them. For example, some African communities created, designed, built and used monuments. If we are to understand and interpret the prehistorical and historic monuments for example, we need to get into the minds of the creators, designers, builders and users of these monuments.
All along, we have been interrogating African cultural astronomy. In particular, we sought to unpack African lunar mythologies, ideas, knowledge and perceptions relating to the moon. That was to better understand the related cultural practices. That stemmed from the idea that people act, as they believe.
Now we seek to interrogate the same with regard to the sun. When we unpacked lunar ideas, knowledge and perceptions, we inevitably found ourselves having to deal with the moon. We expect that we are not done with the moon. Research pertaining to the moon is endless.
There were African communities that believed that after sunset the sun returned to the east over the sky and that the stars are small holes to let the light through. There are others who perceive the setting sun as being consumed by some crocodile and that the sun emerges out of the belly of the crocodile each morning.
The important lesson here is that communities seek explanations and interpretations of natural phenomena, be they terrestrially or extra-territorially located. It is not about the veracity or scientific rootedness or correctness that matters here. What makes sense to a given community is what counts and not what other people believe or do not believe. After all, what people believe is real, as its consequences are real.
What we today regard as mythologies were, once upon a time, taken as reality and communities behaved accordingly, regarding the cultural phenomena as explained and interpreted within the context of their knowledge, cosmology, worldview, thought, perceptions and values. We have no choice other than to revisit the relevant minds that stand a good chance of shedding light on the ancient monuments. These were contextual to the then contemporary times.
Ideas change with time. This is more so when technologies improve and we are able to diagnose nature more fully. What we understand and know about nature today will not remain so for all time. Archaeologists always, in their work on cultural sites, avoid destroying evidence for future researchers.
There was a time when archaeologists relied almost exclusively on excavations. Today they have acquired new technologies such as aerial scanning, geophysical surveys and many more that are proving more reliable than the ancient methodologies. What is impossible in research is to reach finality. There is always scope for new discoveries as research technologies improve and reveal what was not known before.
All along, we have been looking at ideas regarding the moon in various African communities. It was clear virtually all of them had some ideas, beliefs, knowledge and perceptions regarding the moon. Their cultural practices were accordingly informed by the beliefs, mythologies and perceptions that they held in relation to the moon. Sometimes as we did that, we found ourselves having to deal with the sun at the same time.
It is clear we can never exhaust African ideas about the moon and the related cultural practices. Suffice it to say other researchers will delve more into African ideas concerning the moon. The mine is deep and wide with scope for researchers with diverse interests and motives.
We shall now delve more into some African ideas concerning the sun. How was the sun perceived and what were the resulting manifestations of those ideas, beliefs, mythologies and perceptions? With African communities having inherited similar ideas in terms of astronomy, we expect some of the communities to share the same ideas, in particular among the communities with a more recent common history. Such would be the case among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe some of whom hived off from Zulu society.
The Zulu, the Swati and the Xhosa and other communities, who like the Ndebele, migrated from present-day KwaZulu-Natal when Europeans arrived on the scene and precipitated inter-community misunderstandings and internecine wars that resulted in some of the communities migrating from the area of turmoil and war.
We shall interrogate perceptions of the sun on some of the African communities and see how ideas that they held were applied with regard to the social order, in particular as pertains social stratification, political power and the elite, in particular perceptions regarding the king.
Sometimes that resulting order and structure is conditioned by ideas that particular communities hold regarding ideas about celestial bodies. Indeed, we have that African adage that says, “As above, so below.” The celestial and cosmic orders are reflected and mirrored on the cultural planes on earth. For example, African art, performances, architecture and sculpture and other visual art forms are underpinned and informed by the cosmos.
Thus, to gaze the heavens is to gaze mirrored heavens on earth. It is important therefore to have some appreciation of heavenly order in order to understand the mirrored and reflected earthly order.
What do mythologies, ideas, perceptions and knowledge pertaining to the sun hold for us that will explain and interpret our community orders and structures on the social, political, economic and cultural planes on earth?
