Get a 15% Discount on all Happy Hippo Herbals products by applying Coupon Code: FN10 at fromnothing.info/market Patreon: / fromnothing Follow me or support my content here: linktr.ee/fromnothing Source #70
Get a 10% Discount on all Happy Hippo Herbals products by applying Coupon Code: FN10 at fromnothing.info/market Patreon: www.patreon.com/FromNothing Follow me or support my content here: linktr.ee/fromnothing
That's a excellent point Jabari, many cultures from every region of the globe learn from each other regionally, and much of that knowledge were inherited by Europeans. I'll add, without the ancients around the world innovating, the modern world wouldn't exist.
Yeah I think the best thing we can do is appreciate everything that we collectively contributed as a species rather than make a competition out of it and simp over Europe and Japan.
@@FromNothing touche Jabari, both variations means valiant, brave so... Take it up with your mother as to why she forgot the "e" to try and spite me Jk lol. Fr though, Props on you educating the people, thank you. 💜
I think this might be one of my new favorite videos on the channel! When I look up history videos (not just African history), it's always cool to learn about the history of things like crops and trade. African agriculture techniques aren't as widely discussed compared to other parts of the world so this was a nice breath of fresh air! Wonderful video Jabari!
Great vid! It's about time somebody discussed agriculture and how it's the foundation of civilization, especially in the context of Africa. You forgot a few important crops that were domesticated in West Africa like: Palm Oil/Oil Palm (~7000 years ago) Bambara Groundnuts Cowpeas/Black Eyed Peas or Beans (around Northern Ghana and Southern Burkina Faso around 5000 years ago) Okra Plus, many species of plants in West Africa are in a semi-domesticated stated like the Shea Tree (used for Shea Butter), Baobab Tree, Ogbono or African Mango Tree. Hell, West Africans are in the process of domesticating the Greater Cane Rat that they call Grasscutter. Are you going to do a vid on the independent origin of agriculture of East Africa/Nile Valleys (Yes, I pluraled the Valleys, as it occured in the White Nile, Blue Nile and the Nile Valleys)? Watermelon, Sorghum, Teff and even the Donkey were domesticated in East Africa/The Nile Valleys.
Nope. It's incredibly annoying actually. This channel really suffers from it and just comes off as arrogant and childish. Kinda ruins the serious tone of an educational channel. Also a racist white voice is more common in the world than a "black kangz" nonsense that is usually just obscure nonsense most people don't know of.
Orzya glaberrima is quite popular here in Nigeria. It’s cheaper and since the government banned importation of foreign rice, it’s now planted and consumed a lot more here. They’ve even locally made hybrids of it for bigger yields.
There is a chance I did exactly that a couple of years ago and I forgot, but I just wanted to say how appreciative I am of what you have been doing on this channel since the beginning, for it has had an unassuming yet powerful impact on my world-view. It's a bit as if someone taught you a superior way of tying your shoes: your old way is still going to work and you have no reason to change, but it now appears so strikingly wrong in comparison that you simply can't get yourself to use it any more. I can't stand the way African history and heritage is presented where I live any more.Truly, thank you for your work. I hope it reaches the right people and improve the standard.
its very interesting that what you cultivate uniquely shapes your society's culinary choices like how in the fertile crescent they domesticated wheat and as a result have a lot of bread, meanwhile along the niger river they domesticated yam and have a lot of pounded yam dishes as a result
Awesome, this is technically an episode of the misconceptions series. It's a shame the native African rice is not being harvested as much as it used to. There definitely need to be steps put in place to preserve the species and use it more, rather than relying on the Asian species primarily.. Otherwise, who knows, it could become extinct, which would be a huge loss. 🤣🤣 Dr. Kangz and Mr. Bigot giving their two cents is exactly what I expect Afrocentrics and Eurocentrics to type under this video without watching
@Admire Kashiri I appreciate you always providing your opinion and perspective on my videos. You've been here since the very beginning and have been a loyal and consistent follower and patron.
@@FromNothing You're welcome bro I appreciate it. You've come a long way, and you're one of the few voices of reason on here. Debunking both ignorant Eurocentric and Afrocentric beliefs. Keep up the good work.
My only problem with this video is that it perpetuates the myths that 1. That Forager peoples that no idea of how plants reproduced or any of the other basics of agriculture. It is quite ridiculous that humans that existed for 100,000s of years with complex archeologically preserved, seasonally timed traps for animals and ancient techniques that make use of plant poisons and drugs, would upon this level of attentive knowledge, have no idea how plants reproduced. 2. That the moment that Foragers discovered how plants reproduced, they would immediately transition joyously into agriculture. Why would they spend the extra man hours farming the land when they can just hunt and gather, remember the earliest farmed crops are the same as their wild relatives so there won't be some huge returns like modern crops have in comparison to wild ones. Not to mention there's no reason to go full agriculture, they could always just engage in Siviculture/Forestry like basically every documented Forager group does. 3. That Foragers were consistently at risk of starvation. Unlike farmers they can just migrate away from areas of drought and have relations with further away groups reducing chances of conflict and increasing chances of aid. They also depend on multiple food webs rather than one, so a shortage affecting one class of resources but not another, would not affect them as much and there are other reasons as well, why foragers are less susceptible than agriculturalists. However, these criticisms are strongest for grain where the part eaten is also what grows, as for yam where the part not eaten can also grow it would imply early siviculture/forestry practices. New Guinea could be an example of this, with the earliest possible evidences for agriculture there being as early as 50,000 BC. But of course these are more tenuous evidences but I suspect what was actually going on there was preserved evidences of Siviculture. Also, Sedentary living can be done by foragers but only in particularly naturally abundant areas like swamps or fishing hot spots and the like.
All valid points that can be reasonably argued and debated but everything stated I think is fair in a general sense. Farming societies are generally more successful as they can feed more people and build upon civilizations from generation to generation rather than leaving things behind.
Great video... I recently started eating Bambara groundnut, a leguminous crop similar in look to chickpeas... Usually prepared by boiling for up to 2 hours. It was also domesticated in West Africa... Absolutely delicious, with an astonishing protein content of up to 24% or higher (with a very interesting amino acid profile), depending on the specific variety, plus it contains zinc, iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium etc... It's really nutrient dense! Definitely an underutilized crop...
One of the several American rice is actually derived from the African rice variation brought from us as well, not just Suriname. The United States profited from west african rice species.
I still remember learning about the domestication of the yam, millet and sorghum in subsaharan Africa as a child in school in Kenya. Additionally, animal husbandry was introduced to subsaharan Africa thousands of years prior to crop cultivation. Cattle, sheep and goats were introduced from the Fertile Crescent and the only agriculture done by subsaharan Africans was animal herding.
There used to be one in the 19th and early 20th centuries but as of today it is no longer in use. I will likely make a dedicated video about this in the future.
Im sure, when African archaeology develops the rise of agriculture will be pushed at least 5k yrs longer back and correlate somewhat with the general raise of agriculture 12000yrs ago. It is my hope that african archaeologists will link up more and more with Scandinavian archaeologists, since there have been a lot focus in Scandinavian archaeology to develop methods to identify and spot pre-historic traces that are hard to spot, which would hugely benefit African archaeology
I wonder what the taste difference is between Asian and African rice are. Hopefully African rice production can come back in favor since it would be terrible to lose a major food crop like that.
I will actually be making a video specifically about African rice. The main difference from what I learned in research is that African rice generally has a different flavor (though there are different kinds as with Asian rice) and it is more drought resistant than the Asian variety. Asian rice's main advantage is it's crop yield which is why it threatens to displace African rice.
3:41 I just need to point out that the inedible yam head doesn't even need soil to start sprouting. You could discard almost anywhere and it would grow shoots that can grow VERY long even without soil. Either discarded or buried they grow. I'm just trying to emphasize how easy this thing grows and how it could have triggered agriculture way earlier than any part of the world. Even without hard evidence I believe for as long as human population was in west Africa there was agriculture, thus making west Africa the most likely earliest agricultural society in the world
Cool video. I honestly didn't know all that stuff about rice in west Africa and I love rice lol (its kinda intense actually 😅). Thats crazy how much more value is placed on the Asian variant than what's grown in their own land. Nevertheless, jollof rice is delicious with either rice I'm sure. Btw, I hope this isn't too much to ask, but as you move from topic to topic and you mention different words and/or names of certain things, could you display the word/name on the screen? It would help visually and as a reference for research done individually after watching your video.
Other crops domesticated long ago are bananas and coconuts and several more. Focusing on wheat is Eurasian centric. Plantains were domesticated too. Ultimately the oldest domestication was the dog, but I'm biased that way.
Interesting video, but I’m curious why were some of these crops only grown in West Africa, couldn’t they have spread throughout other African regions like Central Africa or South Africa or was there an obstacle that prevented that from happening?
I was very shocked that people believed that we knew nothing about farming when i grew up seeing us as farmers... Yam is very important to the Igbo culture, we had barns... Man ..
The 3rd guy: "Bullshiiiiiiiiiiiit. We aliens came from outer space and educated all you hairless apes on how to grow crops, make clothes and wipe your own behinds."
I also read african rice had more nutrients than asian rice. Asian rice became more popular because of its high yield compared to african rice. That very high productivity level despite its lower nutritional qualities is probably what lead china becoming a demographic giant.
Nice video about African and world farming, we don't hear much about African farming and domestication in western history documentaries. Sub Saharan African cultures in different regions farmed as long as anyone in the world. If Black African farmers of West Africa farmed Millet over 8,000 years ago, they are among the oldest farming cultures in the world. I still get a kick out of the bigot and kang, lol.
I believe Carolina gold rice is directly from Africa from Sierra Leone to Senegal and Gambia. The enslaved Africans that brought here were rice Farmers now I guess they could have been farming Asian rice but I think most people believe it's African rice including me but I could be wrong
2:24 the way you explain yam domestication makes it sound like the same crop domesticated multiple times (like wheat might've been in Mesopotamia, India, and China or three rice example you give later) but those other yams are very much not the same crop. We only call them all yams because enslaved Africans called similar crops they encountered abroad "yam"
That is very true. I should have clarified their differences in the same way that I clarified the difference between the various types of millets and rices.
The city I live in has a massive African presence. Many resturaunts and markets in arm's reach. In fact a Nigerian food truck came to my job on Thursday.
@@FromNothing now a food truck is something I haven't seen with African restaurants I think there are only a handful of African restaurants here, Nigerian Senegalese and Ethiopian. oh and a Mediterranean place owned by a Tunisian guy which just seems standard Mediterranean
Omg thank you for this video. I loved the back and forth between the black and white commentators This has been a problem for a while now. I see it in the classroom every day
Nomadic hunter gatherers also sow, well, usually sow. It's how much that counts. Oh, and of course you left millet to the end, of course, have to keep the viewers watching. UEHehuHeuhHEhU It's undoubtedly the most interesting of the crops.
The first African domesticate is not yams. It's palm oil from the African palm tree. All palm oil trees are a varient of the species indigenous to West Central Africa. What is even more sticking is the evidence of burning palm seeds is found in the early LSA cave shelters across west central Africa between the Congo River and across the Niger river delta in sites like Iwo Elero (spelling might be wrong). Since the yam does not preserve well then that maybe the cause of archeological evidence. But the African palm tree was in forested areas along with the yam. People need to redefine their understanding of agriculture. Most hunter gatherers don't just wonder around they tend to the natural vegetation to ensure once the circle back around the next season there is a guaranteed food source in the area. Farming evolved due to necessity in extreme dry periods forced groups to either herd animals or settle in one area to tend to select few crops that survive dry periods. Farming in the Niger river valley kicked off at the end of the green Sahara era. When populations became more dependent on the river.
Interesting, I didn't think about that. I guess I was thinking more about food cultivation. Palm oil isn't really a food per say aside from it's use for frying.
@@FromNothing It is food, a very important food group that still runs the world even today! The fact that hunter gather societies saw the great use in oil, particularly palm oil is very significant. If you look at it's varied uses in west and central west Africa along with the ground nut is important to understand food production. Most other hunter gatherers relied heavily on animal fat prior to this.
@@FromNothing Palm oil is also used in west Africa and central Africa for other things like as an ingredient for stews and sauces (and as a puree from the kernels for similar uses), which has certain nutritional benefits (like vitamin A). The juice is used to make palm wine.
It seems like many countries have all the qualifications and natural resources, to not only feed themselves but to export food. Do African countries make enough food to feed itself? If not why? That is a puzzling question. Africans are master farmers. It seems they should all be food exporters.
I should mention that there is evidence that rice was domesticated a third time in the amazon but that domesticate was abandoned when the population of the amazon was destroyed by Europeans colonialism.
Agriculture started with jungle wildlife gardens in Botswana. 300.000 years ago. That way apes became humans. That made us. You'll still find such gardens in Southern Asia. They still have the know-how. Our ancestors were settlers. From the beginning. Apes are. So the ancestors were. Nomads are the poor guys, who didn't find a place to settle. If all the green land, usable for wildlife gardens, was taken. Hungry nomads were the most dangerous animal under the sun. They didn't built any civilization. The settlers did.
to play devils advocate id consider Egyptian nile farming more a mix of proto-arabic (in a modern sense) and nubian/egyptian its essentially subsaharan east africans and east africans figuring it out so its a bit grey of an area honestly afro-centrists white nationalists and chinese nationalists all sound that dumb and are exactly like that the idea of different groups of people "not being capable" for some apparent reason is just something all three do. In all three cases generally these are people that subscribe to differing forms of "racial socialism" where they back a totalitarian style state that benefits "their people" to be fair the irony of the European churches while mudhut arguement is that the germans and scandies were themselves living in such circumstances while ethopians carved churches in mountains. The argument that some cultures in a group are backwards or at the very least not as developed legit applies to literally everyone in some way shape or form. Im pretty sure there were primitive hunter gatherers in the jungles of Siam for a very long time, some groups in Europe had semi nomadic lives long after the western Roman empire split apart into bickering kingdoms.
The Natufians were the inventors of Agriculture. The Natufians were Black. Harvard Medical School studied the Natufians remains and found they had a Y-chromosomes of African origin and did not experience Neanderthal admixture, making them distinct from later populations in the Levant In Fact their haplogroup, E1b1 originated in Africa.
@@mysticonthehill Do your research on the Natufians and the Basal Eurasians instead of rubbishing something backed up scientifically. This has some merit.
Who would've domesticated native species if African farmers hadn't figured it out themselves? It's silly to think anyone other than the people who lived there would do it.
Well there are a few examples of this throughout history. Macadamia nuts for example are Australian but were never domesticated until colonization. As mentioned in the video, Native-Americans had many wild rice species that they harvested but never domesticated despite it being domesticated in Africa and Asia. Also I think the assumption isn't usually that someone else domesticated their crops for them but rather: 1) Foreign crops or livestock were introduced instead. For example some people wonder why Africans used cattle and horses rather than native African species like Zebra. (There are many reasons but that's a topic that deserves it's own video) 2) The idea of agriculture was introduced to them from outside sources rather than independently invented.
Have you considered making another channel specifically for the Americas or Polynesia and Australian Civilisations, or are you just sticking to Africa for now?
@@Tu51ndBl4d3 but how many polynesian channels are there? there are also channels that cover africa as in depth as this channel, and have room for content about other continents
@@FromNothing idk about that. Not your viewership, but the lack of interest in history. My alma mater's history department is split 11-15 between female and male professors and my classes were split pretty 50/50. We're just either consuming history elsewhere or hiding under a male persona to avoid attacks from misogynists.
@@eliscanfield3913 Do you really think misogyny would be your main protagonist in the comment section of a black history video though? Also there's no way to know specifically what your gender is without you telling me. All RU-vid shows me is the stats for it. But yeah I don't know, I've heard from other history RU-vidrs that they are overwhelmingly male as well. In fact, this video in particular has a viewership that is 97% male and 3% female. I'd find it difficult to believe that many women would be "hiding."
@@FromNothing Not specifically, no, but I'm not going to change my "rather not say" label for when I _am_ wandering to places where it's more likely. Esp when my kid is watching gaming videos that aren't specifically geared towards 10yos
@@eliscanfield3913 I understand that you have your personal reasons. I just find it highly unlikely that the majority of women would be hiding their gender.
@@FromNothing I mean, the people from west Africa were often in more contact with Eurasian people than the BANTUS how lived in south an central Africa, they also acquire Horses early. Is just my thoughts
@@caioalmeida4139 it’s a language classification west Africans are unique from bantus and bantus are unique from west Africans it’s a genetically diverse place bantus look nothing like west Africans compare a Zulu and a Yoruba man
You talk as though every black person is African but that's not true the people of the levant aka the middle east as they call it were black and brown people as well who invented agriculture known as the natufians
