According to British newspaper, the UK Guardian,

Story of cities #5: Benin City, the mighty medieval capital now lost without trace

''The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops [in Egypt]”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours... to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace

Benin Wall and Moat

As it looked 500 years ago:

If we had to implement such a project today, we would not believe in our capacity to do it.

We would be looking for China or Julius Berger to do it, and we would be ready to pay them billions of dollars.

Such is the damage that colonial rule did to our sense of confidence in our capacity as a people.

This wall was built long before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.

300 years before.

They did not use any machines at all (at least none that we know of. Maybe they invented something they used, who knows? Do we research our history?)

But today, if we want to build a COMMON RAILWAY LINE OF 5 KILOMETRES, we call the Chinese.

5km compared to 16,000km.

To show you how far back we've gone, from our can-do attitude which civilized this world, to this tragic dependency on people who were BABIES on this Earth when we were adults.

Today, we want to build an expressway, we call Julius Berger.

We want to build an airport or shopping mall, we call China.

I mean, we need to snap out of it, and become MEN again.

Just like our illustrious ancestors.

Men who knew their worth.

Why is the wall not in existence today?

tollyboy5:
Why is the wall not in existence today?

It is.

You can actually go on Google Earth and type in 'Benin wall', and you will see the full outline of the wall. It's unbelievably huge and expansive, and you will wonder how long it must have taken them to build it. I mean, something 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China.

I read somewhere that it took around 300 years to build!

Can you imagine the level of state organisation and efficiency that would have allowed a project to continue till the end for 300 years?

There were many people who helped in building this wall who knew full well that they would not live to see its completion.

Today, even a 3 year long project can give us serious problems, never mind 300 years.

Rossikk:


It is.

You can actually go on Google Earth and type in 'Benin wall', and you will see the full outline of the wall. It's unbelievably huge and expansive, and you will wonder how long it must have take them to build it. I mean, something 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China.

I read somewhere that it took around 300 years to build!

Can you imagine the level of state organisation and efficiency that would have allowed a project to continue till the end for 300 years?

There were many people who helped in building this wall who knew full well that they would not live to see its completion.

Today, even a 3 year long project can give us serious problems, never mind 300 years.

I check the internet and i cant find any precise picture like that of wall of china.

Rossikk:


It is.

You can actually go on Google Earth and type in 'Benin wall', and you will see the full outline of the wall. It's unbelievably huge and expansive, and you will wonder how long it must have take them to build it. I mean, something 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China.

I read somewhere that it took around 300 years to build!

Can you imagine the level of state organisation and efficiency that would have allowed a project to continue till the end for 300 years?

There were many people who helped in building this wall who knew full well that they would not live to see its completion.

Today, even a 3 year long project can give us serious problems, never mind 300 years.

Ok its covered with bushes now

Curious tourists visiting Edo state in Nigeria are often shown places that might once have been part of the ancient city – but its walls and moats are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps a section of the great city wall, one of the world’s largest man-made monuments, now lies bruised and battered, neglected and forgotten in the Nigerian bush.

A discontented Nigerian puts it this way: “Imagine if this monument was in England, USA, Germany, Canada or India? It would be the most visited place on earth, and a tourist mecca for millions of the world’s people. A money-spinner worth countless billions in annual tourist revenue.”

tollyboy5:

I check the internet and i cant find any precise picture like that of wall of china.

I just posted pictures of the wall above here. What are you talking about?

The wall is partly overground and partly moat, which is covered by greenery.

Successive governments have neglected and ignored it.

In a serious country where people took pride in their history and heritage, that wall would have been our BIGGEST INCOME EARNER even more than oil, as a result of tourism.

This is literally the biggest man-made structure ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!

Only visible in its entirety from outer space!

On Google Earth!

Yet most NIGERIANS don't even know it exists, talk less of the world's people.

Ordinary Stonehenge in England brings in more than 20 billion dollars annually to the UK in tourism receipts.

Stonehenge is just a few rocks piled on top of each other to form a small circle.

Stonehenge


The whole world knows about Stonehenge, but nobody knows about the Great Benin Wall that is 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China.

In fact we have problems as a people.

Rossikk:
If we had to implement such a project today, we would not believe in our capacity to do it.

We would be looking for China or Julius Berger to do it, and we would be ready to pay them billions of dollars.

Such is the damage that colonial rule did to our sense of confidence in our capacity as a people.

This wall was built long before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century.

They did not use any machines at all (at least none that we know of. Maybe they invented something they used, who knows? Do we research our history?)

But today, if we want to build a COMMON RAILWAY LINE, we call the Chinese.

We want to build an expressway, we call Julius Berger.

We want to build an airport or shopping mall, we call China.

I mean, we need to snap out of it, and become MEN again.

Just like our illustrious ancestors.

We were developing at our own pace until the cursed day we met the whites. Since then we have become their victim of servitude and our land theirs to plunder

tommy589:


We were developing at our own pace until the cursed day we met the whites. Since then we have become their victim of servitude and our land theirs to plunder

You are right my brother.

The biggest damage they did to us wasn't even the looting of our resources, which in itself was massive.

It was the damage they did to our MINDS.

They destroyed our self-belief.

Our ancestors never entertained the idea of being unable to build something that they required building.

If they needed it, they gathered round and decided how to go about it and they just did it.

It never even OCCURRED to them to get people from overseas to do it for them.

Today, it is the complete opposite.

The minute we decide on building something even mildly tasking or complex, we look for 'white people' to do it for us, because in our minds we are incapable of doing it, including railway lines or airports.

Why do you need foreigners to build an airport or a railway station, or a road?

It's just pathetic.

The Chinese and others must be wondering to themselves, ''What on Earth is the matter with these people?''

You have other 300 universities in the country filled with multiple professors and lecturers in every field of endeavour.

So why do you need foreigners to build you a railway line or an airport or a mall?

Bola A Thubv say if them release e certificate heaven go fall o

Our fathers those day are more wiser than people of today who dey claim..

izonborn098:
Our fathers those day are more wiser than people of today who dey claim..

Yeah...they had a different mindset.

Wonderful

Rossikk:


Yeah...they had a different mindset.

unfortunately for you. The first sin of colonialism of Africa was 'uniting tribes of Africa who should never have been united. A sin which you vigorously defend.
Ever wonder why the most developed and peaceful African countries are largely homogeneous? Eswatini, the north Africans, Gabon, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius etc
If not for tribal allegiance, many events that happen in Nigeria would never happen.

Rossikk:


I just posted pictures of the wall above here. What are you talking about?

The wall is partly overground and partly moat, which is covered by greenery.

Successive governments have neglected and ignored it.

In a serious country where people took pride in their history and heritage, that wall would have been our BIGGEST INCOME EARNER even more than oil, as a result of tourism.

This is literally the biggest man-made structure ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH!

Yet most NIGERIANS don't even know it exists, talk less of the world's people.

Ordinary Stonehenge in England brings in more than 20 billion dollars annually to the UK in tourism receipts.

Stonehenge is just a few rocks piled on top of each other to form a small circle.

Stonehenge


The whole world knows about Stonehenge, but nobody knows about the Great Benin Wall that is 4 times longer than the Great Wall of China.

In fact we have problems as a people.

bwahahahaha....

na even we built that sef....
blacks were in europe before whites came out of their caves....

but study those stones....it looks like chairs to sit on....

tsdarkside:


bwahahahaha....

na even we built that sef....
blacks were in europe before whites came out of their caves....

You are 1000% correct.

It was black Africans who built Stonehenge.

The first settlers of every country on Earth were black Africans, as has now been confirmed by scientists in numerous DNA and archeological studies.

These white and yellow people that Africans feel so inferior to are actually descended from ancient black African settlers who got there thousands of years ago, and eventually lost their skin colour through DNA climatic adaptation, which caused albinism to spread among populations there.

Why a person would feel inferior to his own children, I've no idea.

but study those stones....it looks like chairs to sit on....

Lol. It could well be that it was a resting place for giants or gods.

I personally believe without a shadow of doubt that such beings lived among us in remotest antiquity.

The actual story is fantastic.

There’s a portion of the wall you can visit at Epe.

The story told by the locals says it was built by Queen Sheba (yes the one that visited Solomon) and she had giants working for her on the construction.

Crazy story, but you know, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Rossikk:
Our Ancestors Built This Wall 600 Years Ago. Today We Would Pay CHINA To Do It

According to British newspaper, the UK Guardian,

''The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were at one point “four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops [in Egypt]”.

Situated on a plain, Benin City was enclosed by massive walls in the south and deep ditches in the north. Beyond the city walls, numerous further walls were erected that separated the surroundings of the capital into around 500 distinct villages.

Pearce writes that these walls “extended for some 16,000 km in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They covered 6,500 sq km and were all dug by the Edo people … They took an estimated 150 million hours... to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet”.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/mar/18/story-of-cities-5-benin-city-edo-nigeria-mighty-medieval-capital-lost-without-trace

Benin Wall and Moat


[img][/img]

As it looked 500 years ago:

Rossikk:


You are 1000% correct.

It was black Africans who built Stonehenge.

The first settlers of every country on Earth were black Africans, as has now been confirmed by scientists in numerous DNA and archeological studies.

These white and yellow people that Africans feel so inferior to are actually descended from ancient black African settlers who got there thousands of years ago, and eventually lost their skin colour through DNA climatic adaptation, which caused albinism to spread among populations there.

Why a person would feel inferior to his own children, I've no idea.



Lol. It could well be that it was a resting place for giants or gods.

I personally believe without a shadow of doubt that such beings lived among us in remotest antiquity.

hmm....

GodHimself:
The actual story is fantastic.

There’s a portion of the wall you can visit at Epe.

The story told by the locals says it was built by Queen Sheba (yes the one that visited Solomon) and she had giants working for her on the construction.

Crazy story, but you know, the truth is stranger than fiction.

in the bible,king solomon could command demons....

GodHimself:
The actual story is fantastic.

There’s a portion of the wall you can visit at Epe.

The story told by the locals says it was built by Queen Sheba (yes the one that visited Solomon) and she had giants working for her on the construction.

Crazy story, but you know, the truth is stranger than fiction.

I think you may be confusing the Benin wall with the OTHER massive Nigerian wall, the Eredo Earthworks also known as Sungbo's Eredo, located near Ijebu Ode.

The queen who ordered its construction was Bilikisu Sungbo, and some have posited that she was the legendary Queen of Sheba. ('Ijebu' and 'Sheba' could well be referring to the same place.

'Sheba' sounds like what an oyinbo person would call Ijebu.

Razgas:
unfortunately for you. The first sin of colonialism of Africa was 'uniting tribes of Africa who should never have been united. A sin which you vigorously defend.
Ever wonder why the most developed and peaceful African countries are largely homogeneous? Eswatini, the north Africans, Gabon, Botswana, Namibia, Mauritius etc
If not for tribal allegiance, many events that happen in Nigeria would never happen.

The trouble with your position is that there are also many small, largely homogenous African nations that are terribly unstable. Somalia is a great example. Single ethnicity more or less, with over 85% Somali ethnicity. Yet, trouble from morning till night there.

Conversely, Togo has 40 ethnic groups, and is extremely peaceful.

The thing is Africa is by far the most ethnically diverse continent, with HALF the languages on Earth spoken in Africa, which has over 3,000 languages.

So you have NO CHOICE but to abandon tribalism and learn to live in multi-ethnic societies. You cannot have 3,000 countries in Africa, because that would make us extremely vulnerable to western exploitation and manipulation, far worse than exists today.

Horus:
Great Benin was one of the first cities to have a semblance of street lighting. Huge metal lamps, many feet high, were built and placed around the city, especially near the king’s palace. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace. (Pictures below show Lamps taken from Benin City during the invasion by British forces in 1897). British Museum.

Incredible.

If you ask 100 Nigerians ''which city had streetlights first, London or Benin city'', 99 would say ''London of course'', and look at you as if you were mad for even asking the question.

Meanwhile Benin city not only had streetlights before London, but had them 300 years BEFORE London.

Wow!!!

I missed educative threads like this on Nlnd.

This is the palace of the Oba of Benin before its destruction by British forces in 1897.

The palace was built in the 13th century.

It shows the traditional Benin Ikun courtyard architecture.

There were a total of 209 Ikuns at the palace. The picture shows about 24, which shows you how huge the palace was.

I actually checked Google Earth to investigate this, and you can see on Google Earth that the new, modern palace is there which everyone can see from the road.

But on Google Earth, looking from above, you can see the interior of the palace compound, and you will STILL SEE remnants of this building, several Ikuns - around 10 or so behind the current palace.

Benin city of course was described by visiting Europeans as one of the most beautiful and best planned cities on Earth, with street lighting (from palm oil fuelled steel lamps) and underground drainage, houses with paved courtyards, and even some paved streets (paved with raised, broken potsherds).

Royal Palace of the Oba of Benin, dated 13th century)

Rossikk:


The trouble with your position is that there are also many small, largely homogenous African nations that are terribly unstable. Somalia is a great example. Single ethnicity more or less, with over 85% Somali ethnicity. Yet, trouble from morning till night there.

Conversely, Togo has 40 ethnic groups, and is extremely peaceful.

The thing is Africa is by far the most ethnically diverse continent, with HALF the languages on Earth spoken in Africa, which has over 3,000 languages.

So you have NO CHOICE but to abandon tribalism and learn to live in multi-ethnic societies. You cannot have 3,000 countries in Africa, because that would make us extremely vulnerable to western exploitation and manipulation, far worse than exists today.

have you abandoned tribalism?

Razgas:
have you abandoned tribalism?

I have NEVER been a tribalist.

I am Igbo, and I hate IPOB, and all traitors of Nigeria of whatever ethnic colouration, including Boko Haram.

IPOB and Boko Haram are two sides of the same coin of ignorance and stupidity.

One thing you guys need to realise is that this tribalism you practice is unAFRICAN.

It was the colonialists who got you thinking in terms of 'I am Igbo'. 'You are Yoruba'.

Before colonialism, we identified ourselves by our town of origin and family/community lineage - NOT by our language.


Speaking Yoruba did not make you a ''Yoruba man''. You were an Egba man or an Ekiti man etc. Same for Igbos. Igbos never regarded themselves as one group before colonialism came. Go and read Achebe. Each town was a nation unto itself.

The colonialists introduced language bloc identification JUST to create this sort of division, so you wouldn’t unite for progress, or to challenge their dominance. That’s the tribalism you practice today. You are their pawns, acting out their agenda to perfection.

Do you know why we did not identify ourselves by language before the whites invaded?

It was because there was a LOT of travelling and migration of people and families from one region to the other. So, an Igbo speaker from Onitsha would migrate westwards to a Yoruba speaking region. Because back then there was no ‘lingua franca’ spoken by everyone like we have English today.

So he HAD to learn to speak Yoruba as a matter of urgency to be part of the community and earn a living, marry etc.

After a while he’s turned a Yoruba speaker. His children would be Yoruba speakers, and effectively ‘Yoruba people’ as we would term them today.

So language could never be, and is not the true identifier of who you are.

It’s your lineage that identifies you, ie Okonkwo, son of Uchenna, son of Akunna of Mbaise town.

Not the language you speak.

You would be calling yourself an “Igbo man” with pride today, when your ancestors were probably migrants from Ekiti 500 years ago.

The colonialists really messed you people up mentally, and you don’t even realise it.

Rossikk:


I have NEVER been a tribalist.

I am Igbo, and I hate IPOB, and all traitors of Nigeria of whatever ethnic colouration, including Boko Haram.

IPOB and Boko Haram are two sides of the same coin of ignorance and stupidity.

One thing you guys need to realise is that this tribalism you practice is unAFRICAN.

It was the colonialists who got you thinking in terms of 'I am Igbo'. 'You are Yoruba'.

Before colonialism, we identified ourselves by our town of origin and family/community lineage - NOT by our language.

when you tag people who support a presidential candidate as 'terrorists ' then you are worst than scum
Most hard-core ipob members hate Peter Obi. Every igbo person knows this. Strange thing you don't

Razgas:
when you tag people who support a presidential candidate as 'terrorists ' then you are worst than scum

Spare me that BS. Obidients are not normal. They are hardcore tribalists for the most part. They don't believe in democratic choice, and made it their job to vilify, demonise and abuse political opponents and other candidates.

Virtually all of you call Tinubu a ''drug lord'' which is OUTRAGEOUS, since he has never been convicted of any offence.

That's called character assassination.

Is it a crime to run for president? How do you think his children and grandchildren feel when you call their dad a drug lord on social media? His own people in the west..how do you think they feel when you call their champion a drug lord?

Go and LEARN how to live among others, because right now, I consider you ignorant, filthy, repulsive scum of the Earth mirroring the similarly toxic, intolerant, authoritarian IPOB.

Rossikk:


Spare me that BS. Obidients are not normal. They are tribalists for the most part. They don't believe in democratic choice, and made it their job to vilify and abuse political opponents and other candidates. Virtually all of you call Tinubu a ''drug lord'' which is OUTRAGEOUS, since he has never been convicted of any offence. That's called character assassination. Is it a crime to run for president? How do you think his chidren feel when you call their dad a drug lord?

Go and LEARN how to live among others, because right now, I consider you FITHY SCUM of the Earth.

A quick search of posts of any Tinubu supporter is filled with insults of Obi and his supporters. But you are the one right and peaceful while Obi and his supporters are evil. You don't assassinate Obi's character when you call him ipob. But Tinubu who actually forfeited money to U.S on drug charges is having his character assassinated.

Of course we know you are not Igbo. No real Igbo person would think that Middle belt and SS people who voted Obi are IPOB.
We also know you don't want a detribalised Nigeria otherwise why call an Igbo politician who killed many Biafran activists, owns businesses in Lagos and Abuja and built a national movement within 6 months 'IPOB'
I will tell you this, the evil you wish for Igbos is what you and your family members will meet in this life...since after all, you claim to be Igbo.