Cosmogenesis
Cosmogenesis:
This is The Africologist.
And I am your host Val Lopes.
It’s all about science, technology
and the African continent here.
Storytelling
is as old as communication itself.
We use it to relay information,
we share past experiences
to enhance the coming ones.
In our tales, animals
talk, mountains live,
the wind breeds and stars gaze at us.
Thanks to human imagination
and our ability to distort reality
simple incidents are enhanced
and embellished to trigger
deep and long lasting emotions
when relayed from one person to the next.
Some call it fantasy.
Others see in it an exceptional trait
that separates us from other species.
But where does storytelling come from?
Just like humanity itself,
the roots of storytelling are
deeply anchored on the African continent.
The African narrative is the genesis
the epic of humanity,
as all this storytelling can be.
She is the africologist.
She travels around to understand Africa’s
past, present and future.
Name and lineage:
Johari, granddaughter of Ibu Diallo
Ibu Diallo, begets two sons,
Her father, Musa
and Enitan
who created an African artificial
intelligence and voice assistant
in the form of a djembe.
Hello Africologist.
How can I help you today?
She has not yet
decided what she wants to study.
Although she dreams of becoming
an astronaut.
Night is nothing more than the shadow side of
Earth
As our planet dances around the sun and spins around itself,
longitudes get their fair share of darkness.
This is what her uncle
would have described as Earth
dancing around the fire.
I love to look at Africa from space.
The world is so big
and we are so small.
When the night falls
every continent shines so brightly.
We can see very clearly what humans have achieved.
In the age of electrical abundance,
human made light sources draw
the beautiful outlines of the continents.
She can easily distinguish natural
from political borders, but also the
apparent contrast between well developed
and less developed countries.
At night, one continent is very
hard to see from space. Africa does not have enough
electricity infrastructure to shine.
That makes me sad,
and I will help change that.
Every time she learns something,
she closes her eyes
remembers her conversations
with the elder.
And compares her learnings to the vast knowledge
they had accumulated over the centuries.
She has a unique ability to visualize science
and to use her cultural wisdom
to make sense of the world.
In these dreamy moments,
she travels the space time
continuum, reversing time.
She leaves our solar system,
our galaxy, on an imaginary journey
to the edge of the universe.
Requesting flight attendants to be seated
we are landing in about one minute.
Thank you.
While traveling Africa, I identified
three fundamental methods used to explain
the origins of the universe.
For some of us, those guided by faith,
everything started with God.
Others, like the Dogan people for example
have ancient stories that they have been telling for generations.
In these stories humans descended from the stars,
but the only way to explain everything rationally,
the story that we can all agree on, regardless of faith, cultural wisdom
or descendants, is science.
That’s Soweto right there,
Djambe
Tell me how the universe was born.
In the beginning,
according to the Bambara people in Mali,
there was only the emptiness of the void.
The universe and everything in it
begun from a single sound.
Everything came from this sound.
And science says 13.8 billion years ago,
the universe was born in the mightiest of all explosions.
The Big Bang,
It has been expanding ever since
the first atoms developed shortly after,
they formed gigantic clouds,
speeding and moving away from each other.
Those clouds became galaxies.
The first stars emerged
inside these galaxies.
Not much different from our sun.
Starlight, fueled by hydrogen, flooded
the universe.
Nuclear fusion created
heavier atoms
like carbon, iron, oxygen and silicon.
The building blocks of planets, asteroids
and other space rocks.
In these furnace of cosmic proportions
under unimaginably long periods,
the universe would eventually enable life.
Somewhere in the corner of the Milky Way
on a tiny planet from a tiny sun
this life gained consciousness
and tried to understand itself.
When I am on the road like this
Inspiration strikes
I keep thinking about this proverb
He how does not travel
Does not know the value of men
How do I tell the history of everything in a way that
our people not only understand
but feel too
I want them to live it
Things can get quite scary on the road
But in hindsight
It’s not that my life was in danger or something
On less cloudy days,
one can see how the Namibian starry nights
inspired our ancestors.
Stories were way to explain
the movements of the heavenly bodies.
All across the continent,
people expressed the imagination
in the most beautiful creationist stories.
The Africologist was initiated in the Sona Art
of the Tchokwe people,
where a story is told by drawing a long continuous line
around the symmetrical pattern of dots.
This is how it works.
You start by drawing a pattern of dots,
some Sonas are pretty simple
like this one, but
others can be extremely complex.
These dots
are then encircled by a long line
you cannot draw twice over the same line.
The beauty lies in the story
you tell while drawing.
Each Sona has its own story.
The story starts
when you place your first dot
and finishes
when the two ends of the line
touch each other.
God up high
created the sun to the left,
the moon to the right,
and humanity at the bottom.
Sona is the path connecting everything
to God,
the sun was the first to follow it
and go visit God.
God offered a chicken to the sun
and ordered her to return in the morning.
The following day,
the chicken’s crowing woke
the sun and she went to God.
God said: “You did not eat the chicken.
You may keep it and return here every day.”
So every day
the chicken’s crows and wakes
the sun giving us the sunrise
on its way to God.
The Moon was next to visit
God and also welcomed with a chicken
the following morning,
the chicken crowed and woke the moon
so he made his way to God.
God said,
Since you did not eat the chicken,
you may keep it, but you will
return here every 28 days.
So every 28 days,
we are blessed
with the new moon in the sky.
The last to be welcomed by God
with a chicken, was the human,
but on his way back to the Earth,
the human could not stand the hunger
and ate the animal.
The next day, with no chicken to crow
and wake the human
he only made it to God
when the sun was high in the sky.
God asked: “Where is the chicken
I gave you?”
The human said “I was hungry, so I ate it.”
“Fair enough.” God replied,
“but the Sun and the Moon
never ate the chickens I gave them.
That is why I bless them
with eternal life.”
“You ate your chicken, and as your chicken,
you must die.
You may only return to me once you die.”