Black Men and Numbers in the Making – Everyday Use of Numbers in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The paper attempts to give an outline of the uses of numbers in black Africa for everyday practical purposes from pre-colonial times onwards. Through the development of trade and marketing with other peoples of Africa and Europe, from bartering to the introduction of ’odd and curious’ moneys, major traditional currencies are described. Special attention is given to pre-coinage money metal sculpture, such as rod and wire moneys, manillas, early anklet and bracelet moneys, gongs, necklaces, rings, iron kives, hammers and spear moneys, Katanga crosses, Kissi Penny, blades and spirals, as well as the attribution of particular pieces by tribe, location and time period, their special (ritual or ceremonial) and general uses locally in trade or otherwise. Their main subsidiary currency, the cowry shell, and its influence on the development of African counting systems is also discussed with a short stop to clear up the widespread misunderstanding that concerns the bride price. Further on, a preliminary history of measures and weights is provided from the Ashanti bronze goldweights and other traditional measuring devices to the conversion to the metric system. Finally, the different supports used to easy counting, such as lines drawn in the sand, on walls and doors, knotted (tally) strings and the custom of using sticks of wood, bone or stone to denote numbers – memory aids of the pre-writing era are studied, all with lots of examples from Sub-Saharan Africa (and elsewhere in the world just for the sake of comparison). The paper, as second in a series of studies of African mathematics, once again attempts to show that Africa is home to the world’s earliest known use of measuring and calculation, confirming the continent as the birthplace of both basic and advanced mathematics.