Ancient Benin City Had Street Lights Before London

In class, many Nigerians had been taught that African civilisations lagged behind the remainder of the world. We had been primitive, darkish, uncivilised. However that’s a lie. Historical past tells a really completely different story.

Earlier than the road lights of Seventeenth-century London, there was Benin Metropolis, an historic Nigerian capital that lit its streets at night time and shocked European guests with its sophistication.

Lengthy earlier than London put in its first avenue lamps in 1684, Benin Metropolis was already illuminated, not by electrical energy, however by an ingenious system of huge lamps and torches positioned alongside its superbly structured roads.

READ MORE: 10 Interesting Facts About African Cities You Didn’t Know

The Kingdom of Benin: A metropolis forward of its time

Situated in present-day Edo State, Benin Metropolis was the capital of the Kingdom of Benin, one in all Africa’s most superior precolonial civilisations. 

When Portuguese explorers arrived within the 1470s, they had been shocked. The streets had been large and clear, with drainage programs. Homes had been neatly organized. The town had commerce, artwork, and ceremony. The walls of Benin stretched over 16,000 kilometres and are thought of by some students to be one of many largest man-made buildings on this planet, even rivalling the Nice Wall of China.

Fred Pearce, a Science author and Public speaker, wrote:

The partitions prolong for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of greater than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cowl 2,510 sq. miles (6,500 sq. kilometres) and had been all dug by the Edo individuals. In all, they’re 4 occasions longer than the Nice Wall of China, and consumed 100 occasions extra materials than the Nice Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to assemble, and are maybe the biggest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.

And at night time? The streets got here alive.

Benin avenue lighting 

The earliest European guests, together with Dutch and Portuguese merchants, wrote accounts of how the Oba (king) had the streets of Benin lit at night time.

These weren’t electrical lights, after all, however they served the identical goal: visibility, security, and atmosphere. It was a type of early city lighting, many a long time earlier than London adopted oil lamps within the late 1600s.

SEE MORE: Did the Benin kingdom come out of the Yoruba kingdom, or vice versa?

When did London get avenue lights?

London put in its first public avenue lights in 1684, utilizing oil lamps mounted on wood posts. It wasn’t till the early 1800s that the town launched fuel lighting, and finally electrical energy.

By then, Benin Metropolis had already been practising night-time illumination for over a century, and had been globally admired for its cleanliness, order, and aesthetics.

So why isn’t this in our historical past books?

That’s the million-dollar query. A lot of Africa’s glory, together with the brilliance of Benin, was deliberately erased or downplayed throughout colonisation.

In 1897, the British launched a brutal invasion of Benin Metropolis, looting its treasures and setting it ablaze. Thousands of priceless bronze sculptures, ivory carvings, and palace information had been stolen. The town was left in ruins.

The colonial narrative painted African kingdoms as barbaric and backwards, ignoring the truth that Benin Metropolis had achievements that surpassed elements of Europe on the time.

That is proof that Africa was by no means at the hours of darkness. We had been by no means barbaric and backwards. The white males by no means introduced civilisation. We had been doing simply fantastic on our personal, and we’d’ve been higher off with out their affect.

RECENT: This Nigerian tribe buries their dead in sitting position