Joseph Townsend, blacksmith, St John's, Antigua This paper, by Candice L. Goucher, examines the history of African metallurgy in the era of Atlantic trade. It reports on excavations at the John Reeder foundry site in St Thomas, Jamaica. The transfer of African technologies to the Caribbean reveals the plantation economy's dependence on African technical expertise, not merely slave labour. The comprehensive focus on the Atlantic world also informs archaeological investigations of African-European interaction in West Central Africa. The complexity of Atlantic technological history is characterized by a diverse range of dynamic interactions, rather than the inevitable decline of African-derived systems. Only by identifying processes as well as products of African technological interaction will it be possible fully to reconstruct the forging of the African past. In Brazil, the development of steelmaking was attributed to "the technical skills of a few African slaves"(Furtado 1965). http://www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/Paper-LSU-1492-1992.html This paper also discuss the technological transfer of African ironmaking science, but is a little more biased.

Paul E. Lovejoy discuss this topic in "African Contributions to Science, Technology and Development". "The failure to recognize African contributions to science and technology and the transfer of expertise to the Americas minimizes the role of enslaved Africans in the development of the Americas, despite the often inefficient use of the skills and talents of individuals...... Even where technology was known in Europe, such as blacksmithing, many smiths in the Americas were from Africa, where they brought similar technological expertise and skill in metallurgy. European technology excelled in weaponry and naval wares. Otherwise, whether in textile and leather production, agriculture, and mining, there was little technological contribution from Europe that superseded that brought from Africa, at least before the nineteenth century. Was it necessary, therefore, to secure the development of the Americas through the confiscation of land, the appropriation of labor and technology through slavery, and the use of military and naval superiority to subjugate people? The violent concentration of wealth through the gains from the exploitation of tropical production was based on enslaved labor, mostly from Africa. The gains were instrumental in the emergence of banking, insurance, joint stock companies, and other capitalist institutions in the financial centres of Europe and America. This concentration of wealth was based on the appropriation of the technological advances, whatever their origins, in the interests of entrepreneurs who found ways to reap undue profits through activities that relied on theft and slavery."

An African medicine man applying the technique of cupping to a patient Slaves were commonly used as medical doctors and surgeons in eighteenth-century Louisiana. They were skilled in herbal medicine and were often better therapists than the French doctors, who were always described as surgeons. Du Pratz wrote that a slave doctor belonging to the plantation of the king in New Orleans had taught him to "cure all illnesses to which women are subject, because these black women are no more exempt than white women." This slave doctor had an effective cure for scurvy before 1734, the year Du Pratz left Louisiana. First he treated the pain. Then he made a paste from iron rust soaked in lemon juice and herbs, which he placed on the patient's gums at all times except when the patient ate. Every day the patient drank two pints of tea made with lemon juice and herbs. He recommended against dieting. The patient was to eat good food often, but in small quantities. Evidently, this cure was ignored in Louisiana, where it would have been easy to administer: There were so many oranges growing there that the settlers allowed them to rot on the trees. As late as 1779, scurvy among the newly settled Canary Islanders was attributed to eating salt meat.(Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, 1992, p. 126)

Indigo dye pit, Kano, Nigeria Africans helped to develop indigo, which was the first Southern industrial culture of the United States of America. The cultivation of indigo was introduced first in Louisiana in 1721, two years after the arrival of the first cohort of Africans from West Africa. Joseph Dubreuil, a native of Dijon, France, introduced the cultivation and production of indigo in Louisiana. He became the wealthiest man in the colony, and in 1743, the export of indigo to other countries had begun. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (1992) suggested “it is quite possible that he learned the techniques for processing indigo from his African slaves” (p. 139). According to Gwendolyn Midlo Hall (1992), one of the skills regularly listed on slave inventories in Louisiana was that of indigo maker (indigotier).

Gullah rice dishe One of the most important contributions the Africans made to the New World colonies in America was rice cultivation. Rice was a necessity for the survival of European colonists in a tropical or subtropical climate. In documentation of the Office of the Louisiana Historical Society, Henry P. Dart (1931) reported that in 1719: . . . two French captains . . . left Le Havre for West Africa with precise instructions. . . . to bring back to Pensacola (Florida-Louisiana), those Africans expert in the cultivation of rice, cotton, tobacco and indigo; and to bring barrels of seedlings of rice, ready for planting; because colonial Louisiana was hungry. Judith Carney, in her book "Black Rice" has insisted that rice cultivation was made possible not because of capital investment but because of African expertise. Before the arrival of Africans in colonial Virginia, rice cultivation was only experimental and depended upon rainfall to produce a variety called sativa. With the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia in 1619, the British colonizers were informed that rice cultivation was possible in the deep valleys. These colonists had no experience with wetland rice cultivation. Later, rice cultivation rapidly became “cash crop revenue” for the colonizers in the Americas. Before the end of the 17th century, a new method of rice cultivation was introduced in South Carolina, because its ecological environment was more favorable to the implementation and development of this special crop. Historical evidence documents this appropriation of African knowledge as the first case of technology transfer as a result of the Africans who were brought to the New World. According to Carney(2001) : In reaffirming the claim for autonomy over their labor for part of the day, slaves were engaged in a struggle to humanize their degraded shift to chattel. Thus in frontier South Carolina, as Africans and Europeans faced each other in new territory under dramatically altered and unequal power relations, the outcome was agricultural diffusion, technological transfer, and novel forms of labor organisation. . . . Across the middle passage slaves showed the way to plant and process new crops introduced from Africa, to herd cattle in the open range, and to provide techniques of weaving and dyeing. The trend throughout the subsequent centuries of slavery was to erase the momentous African contribution, which scholarship is only recently beginning to uncover. This consideration of the complexities of rice culture draws attention to just one of the numerous knowledge systems that slaves introduced to the Americas in the face of staggering difficulties and loss of personal liberty. (pp. 105–106) There is pertinent evidence that Africans brought a system of knowledge with them into the new World. Indeed, many years went by before anyone recognized the existence of Oryza glaberrima as a quality of rice that was different from any other because it originated in West Africa. Carney noted: In the early twentieth century French commentaries on glaberrima from the Inland Delta of the Niger River drew attention to the red color of African rice. Among the indigenous glaberrima varieties identified in their botanic collections is one they designated mutica, which has grown under lightly flooded conditions. The British colonizers observed that this African variety adapted much better to poor soils and excessive flooding. Glaberrima also grows very fast and all these characteristics made this special crop more competitive than the Asian variety, "sativa". Multiple scientific studies have also suggested the similarity of rice cultivation strategies and techniques practiced by the Africans in South Carolina and in Georgia. According to John Drayton, as cited in Black Rice: Besides the white and gold rice, already mentioned, there are some others in the states of little note and consequences; primarily cultivated by negroes. They are called Guinea rice, bearded rice, a short grained rice, somewhat like barley, and a species of highland rice. (Carney, 2001, p.150 ) Karen Hess (1992) noted with regard to African influences on New World cuisine: Many rice dishes associated with African settlement in the Americas bear distinctive African signatures in preparation. These dishes combine the cooking of rice with beans, such as the Cuban Moros y Cristianos (“Moors and Christians”), prepared with black beans; Hoppin’ John in South Carolina and Louisiana (black-eyed peas or cowpeas); and a similar dish in the Caribbean based on pigeon peas and rice. Other African food traditions in the Americas are the Louisiana jambalaya, based on rice, sausages, and seasonings, and gumbo, with the addition of okra. An additional African food way is the preparation of stews from well- cooked greens, fatback pork, and hot pepper seasonings. Olga F. Linares discuss the history and potential of Oryza Glabberima in "African rice (Oryza glaberrima): History and future potential".

NewScientist article: Stars of the Sahara * 15 August 2007 * NewScientist.com news service * Curtis Abraham IT DOESN'T look like much today, just a faded outpost on the edge of the Sahara, but back in the 15th century Timbuktu was the height of luxury and sophistication. Traders made their way across the baking desert to sell gold, ivory, slaves and salt, and scholars gathered to trade books and exchange ideas. Explorers left the city with tales of unlimited gold and a king so wealthy that on one visit to Egypt he caused the price of gold to crash with his extravagant gifts. Timbuktu's heyday wasn't to last. In 1591, the city, in what is now Mali, was invaded by people from Morocco claiming a slice of its riches. They raided schools and universities, and banished teachers and their manuscripts. Only a fraction of the writings survived, remaining hidden for generations in trunks or buried within the thick mud walls of mosques. Now a team of researchers from South Africa and Mali are analysing the Timbuktu manuscripts to find out what the scholars knew about science. In just a handful of the documents translated so far they have overturned the received wisdom about early African science and astronomy. The scholars of Timbuktu, they have discovered, were way ahead of their time. The earliest western astronomical ideas developed in ancient Mesopotamia - now Iraq - but studies of the stars were a part of many other ancient civilisations, including those of India, China, Greece and Mesoamerica. Islamic scholars in the Middle East were heavily influenced by Greek texts and this, along with original research by Islamic scientists between the 8th and 16th centuries, went on to inform European scientists during the Renaissance. Before the study of the Timbuktu manuscripts began, though, sub-Saharan Africa was thought to have been out of the loop . "Until we thought of this project, the common belief among western scientists was that Africans only began studying science after the arrival of Europeans in our continent," says Thebe Medupe, an astrophysicist at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and the project's lead researcher. " We can now say with confidence that sub-Saharan Africans were studying mathematics and astronomy over 300 years ago." The Timbuktu manuscripts are also a testament to the continent's little-known written academic heritage. "Africa has for too long been stereotyped as the continent of song and dance, where knowledge is only transmitted orally," says John Hunwick of the Institute for the Study of Islamic Thought in Africa at Northwestern University, Illinois. Although many of the manuscripts have been lost or stolen over the centuries, the researchers have plenty to work with. Many of them - 18,000 or more - are housed in the Ahmed Baba Centre, in the only public library in Timbuktu. Twenty-seven more are held in the city's Mamma Haidara Library, a further 32 are in the libraries of the Al Furqan Foundation in Tamale, Ghana. Yet more are held in private collections. They date from the 13th century to the Moroccan invasion and beyond, and 37 are known to deal with astronomy and astrology. Until last year, though, the scientific secrets of the manuscripts remained untold. In February 2006 Medupe and colleagues at the University of Cape Town and the University of Bamako in Mali began an ambitious project to translate the manuscripts and analyse them for scientific content. Previous studies have focused on the literary and cultural relevance of the manuscripts; this was the first time anyone had looked at their scientific relevance. The researchers wanted to know whether the Timbuktu scholars understood key concepts, such as that the Earth is round and that it revolves around the sun. They were also keen to find out what mathematical knowledge and instruments the scholars had access to, whether they recorded events such as meteor showers, comets and eclipses, and what they made of them. Finally, they wondered whether scholars in Timbuktu took advantage of the strong trade links to share ideas with people living in centres of medieval Islamic science such as Baghdad, Spain and north Africa. It was a daunting prospect. While most of the manuscripts are in Arabic, some are in less widely spoken indigenous languages such as Songhai and Hausa. Most lack punctuation and many are missing crucial pages or front covers. So far Medupe and his colleagues have translated just 14 of the thousands of manuscripts held in the archives of the Ahmed Baba Centre, but even these few have thrown up many surprises. Far from relying on discoveries being brought to them with the first western scientists, the scholars of Timbuktu were building their own body of knowledge. One manuscript, written in 1723, is a commentary by Timbuktu scholar Abul Abbas on much earlier work by other scholars in the city. Three hundred years after the Copernican revolution in Europe, which placed the sun at the centre of our solar system, the text describes a Greek-influenced geocentric, or Earth-centred, model of the universe. This was strong evidence that astronomers in Timbuktu were not in contact with their European counterparts at this time. The Timbuktu astronomers did, however, share ideas with scholars in other Muslim areas, particularly in western north Africa, according to Benno van Dalen of the Institute for the History of Science in Frankfurt, Germany, who is a collaborator on the project. "The manuscripts show certain methods, for instance when it comes to calendar conversion and the use of the Julian calendar, which are found in other western Islamic sources, but not in eastern ones," he says. While they may have got it wrong about the motion of the planets, the manuscript reveals that the scholars had precise methods for defining the Islamic calendar, including algorithms on how to determine leap years. The algorithms were as accurate as anything mathematicians have today, as Medupe found when he tested them against the modern, computer-based approach. "These people were very knowledgeable about the subject they wrote about," he says. Other manuscripts dating back 600 years include beautifully drawn diagrams of the orbits of planets, which demonstrate the use of complex mathematical calculations. There are also recordings of astronomical events, including a meteor shower in August 1583. Another manuscript discusses the use of an astronomical instrument to determine the direction of Mecca. Taken together, these findings push back the study of science in Africa by over 300 years. Along with a general thirst for knowledge, the Muslim scholars of Timbuktu would also have had particular reasons to be interested in astronomy. First is the requirement for Muslims to pray, and to orient their mosques in the direction of Mecca. To achieve this, they needed to develop algorithms and instruments to determine the exact position of both Mecca and Timbuktu. There was also the need to determine exact times for prayers at sunrise, noon, afternoon, sunset and evening. The scholars found ancient Greek methods of doing this very cumbersome, the researchers say, but Muslim astronomers devised easier solutions by inventing the cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant and cosecant functions of trigonometry. Another reason for the early scholars to get to grips with the stars was their desire to use them to make astrological predictions. "Knowledge of the motions of the planets, the importance of predicting where they will be, and where they were, was motivated by astrology," says Brian Warner, also of the University of Cape Town. The need for reliable astrological predictions also justified the construction of observatories and the compilation of astronomical handbooks. There may be many surprises in store, hidden in the thousands of manuscripts that have not yet been analysed and in the large collection of Islamic writings found through much of west Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. "The most amazing part of this is that the study of Islamic science in the past in Africa may be more widespread than we think," says Medupe. "These ancient manuscripts are found not only in Timbuktu, but in many older cities in Mali, the neighbouring countries of west Africa, and all the way to the east in Sudan and as far south as Tanzania, I believe." The researchers hope that they may also find important texts that have been lost from other parts of the Islamic world. With barely a dent made in the Timbuktu manuscripts, the team are in a race against time. Over the centuries, the documents have been subjected to the ravages of temperature fluctuations, humidity, dust and grit, and many of the texts, written on delicate paper, are beginning to disintegrate. While conservationists race to save the manuscripts, Medupe's team plans to expand the project next year to cover botany, medicine, biology, chemistry, mathematics and climatology. For Medupe, just finding evidence of early science in Africa has been a huge achievement. He hopes it will not only give the scholars of Timbuktu their rightful place in science history, but also inspire the next generation of African scientists. "I believe that one of the reasons sub-Saharan Africans are under-represented in science is because they do not see themselves in the science books they read," says Medupe. Now perhaps they will. Curtis Abraham is a freelance journalist based in Kampala, Uganda From issue 2617 of New Scientist magazine, 15 August 2007, page 39-4