Blacks and Science Volume Two: West and East African Contributions to Science and Technology AND Intellectual Life and Legacy of Timbuktu by Robin Walker
Blacks and Science Volume 2 This important work of Robin Walker's is monumental. It covers information about the surviving manuscripts in The Bamoun Kingdom, now in today’s Cameroon. There are 7,000 manuscripts in their own script. Did you know Timbuktu astronomers used the cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant functions of trigonometry?
The Dogon of Mali had an early and wholly indigenous notion of ‘big bang’ derived from a singularity. Also, a number of iron and copper tools were excavated in Senegal that dated from 2800 BC. The total amount of gold mined in the desert regions of West Africa dates back to the year 1500 and was $35 billion at 1998 gold prices. A surviving sixteenth century Timbuktu manuscript has a formula for making toothpaste and adds that regular brushing of your teeth removes bad breath .A 1342 text published in Cairo mentions two royal Malian voyages sailing across the Atlantic involving hundreds of vessels . The Royal Palace of the Ashanti Empire contained a suite of apartments on its upper floor that reminded a visitor to the palace of Wardour Street in Central London. Glass was manufactured at the Yoruba capital of Ile-Ife in the sixth century. This text is chock full of African Contributions to Science and Technology combined with Intellectual Life and Legacy of Timbuktu. This book is a general introduction to the role played by the West and East Africans in the evolution of Mathematics, Astronomy & Physics, Metallurgy, Medicine & Surgery, Boat Building & Navigation, Architecture, and Crafts & Industry. It also discusses the content, importance and implications of the recently rediscovered manuscripts of Timbuktu.
