Hyam or Ham People
Who are the Ham people in Nigeria? The Ham people are an ethnic group in the southern part of Kaduna State in the northwestern region of Nigeria, predominantly in Jaba, Kachia and Kagarko Local Government Areas Kaduna State Nigeria. They speak the Hyam language and refer to themselves as Ham.
Map of North-western Nigeria |
Hyam is a regionally notable linguistic cluster of Plateau languages in Nigeria. Hyam of Nok is the prestige dialect. Hyam Language Groups of Nigeria consist of Shang or Shanga, Zhire, Kwoi, Mwaghavul and Jaba people. Language family: Niger-Congo languages
Dialects: Hyam of Nok; Sait; Dzar; Yaat; Ankum
Native speakers: 300,000 (2014)
Native to: Nigeria
Region: Kaduna State
The remarkable civilisation of the Nok was first discovered in 1928 when a wealth of unique terracotta artefacts was unearthed by tin miners in the southern part of Kaduna state in central Nigeria. Since then, extensive archaeological excavations and research into the Nok have revealed that they may have been the first complex civilisation in West Africa, existing from at least 900 BC until their mysterious disappearance in around 200 AD.
Nok Sculptures 500 BCE |
The Nokians were an extremely advanced society, with one of the most complex judicial systems of the time, and the earliest producers of life-sized terracotta in the Sub-Sahara. Archaeologists have also found stone tools, rock paintings, and iron implements, including fearsome spear points, bracelets, and small knives. But by far the most enigmatic and intriguing aspect of the Nok Culture were their Terracotta statues, described by the mémoire d'afrique, which houses a gallery of the statues, as “extraordinary, astonishing, ageless, timeless and almost extraterrestrial”.
Judicial System, court, Priest, Chief: It is a known fact that the Nok’s judicial system pre-dates the Western judicial system. The Nok people created classes of courts used for adjudicating cases from minor civil cases, such as family disputes and false allegations, to criminal cases such as stealing, murder, and adultery.
The people believed that every crime attracts a curse which was capable of destroying the whole family and therefore must be uncovered to avoid the consequences.
The suspect was brought before an open court for traditional oath-taking, which involved standing between two monoliths facing the sun, the supreme god called Nom. The suspect then swore to tell the truth. Cases that cannot be resolved in the open court are taken to the high court which sits within an enclosed shrine.
Shang, Shanga or Shangawa Tribe
The affinities in words and their meaning between the Shang people of Kaduna State, Nigeria, and Chinese Mandarin, is uncanny. The Shanga, or Shangawa, live on the banks and islands of the Niger River near the city of Shanga in northwestern Nigeria. Shanga district is in the Yauri division of Sokoto state, an area they shared with the Hausa people. As a result, the Shanga tribe bend to the will of the more powerful Hausa.
A Woman from the Ham Tribe |
The Shanga are an offshoot of the Kengawa people, with whom they comprised a part of the Songhai Empire from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. Moroccan invasions in the sixteenth century, however, forced the Shanga to relocate to Yauri as a place of refuge. Invaders and slave raids caused the Shanga to retreat to their present-day location on the islands of the Niger River.
The Shanga still speak the Kengawa language from the Niger-Benue division of the Niger-Congo language family. Therefore, they are linguistically related to the other groups in the area, such as the Dukawa, Reshe, and Kanberi.
Shang Words Vs Chinese Mandarin Fig 1 |
Shang Words Vs Chinese Mandarin Words
We will provide a few examples from annotated wordlist of the Shang language, spoken in Kushampa village in Kaduna State, Nigeria. On the 11th of May 2009, Roger Blench, with the assistance of Barau Kato and Rev. Danjuma Ndaka, collected the word list from a group of villagers in Kushampa.
There is no previous record of the existence of this language. Mr John Y. Jatau was the main informant. The wordlist collected was a ‘one-shot’ exercise, and the transcription must be preliminary. The analysis prepared by Roger Blench added the comparative observations.
Shang Words Vs Chinese Mandarin Fig 2 |
Egusi (Yoruba: ẹ̀gúsí, Igbo: ègwusi), also known as agusi, ohue, Ikpan, Ikon, agushi or mbíka), is the name for the protein-rich seeds of certain cucurbitaceous plants (squash, melon, gourd), which, after being dried and ground, are used as a specific ingredient in West African cuisine.
Are Chinese descendants of an African Eve?
Professor Jin Li of the Research Center of Contemporary Anthropology at Shanghai Fudan University (RCCASFU) says he has proven modern Chinese people originated in Africa. His research, based on DNA testing techniques which have transformed the study of human evolution, supports the global scientific consensus that all modern humans are descendants of people who migrated from Africa tens of thousands of years ago.
Shang Words Vs Chinese Mandarin Fig 3 |
However, archaeologists spent decades studying the fossil remains of ancient populations of hominids that lived in China long before the African migrants arrived.
What happened to these early humans, were they killed off by the newcomers?
Maybe the two populations interbred, and would that help explain some puzzling physical differences between modern East Asians and people in Africa and elsewhere? Some Chinese archaeologists defended a multi-regional theory of human evolution, despite the DNA evidence. In which different populations in the world evolved from local hominids independently.
Ham People during a Festival |
Professor Jin published his first research in 2001. He was not the first to reach similar conclusions. In 1987 the New Zealanders Allan Charles Wilson and Rebecca Cann published a study of mitochondrial DNA that supported the African Eve theory – that all human beings living today are descendants of a single woman who lived in Africa around 200,000 years ago. According to Wilson and Cann, descendants of this African Eve migrated around the world and later evolved into the different varieties of modern humans.
Black People in a Chinese Painting Fig 4 |
Since then, more and more genetic evidence has accumulated, supporting the view that modern humans, including Chinese people, originated from a single population from Africa. In 1998, Chinese scientist Chu Jiayou and his team analyzed the DNA microsatellites (also known as simple sequence repeats) of northern and southern Chinese, both those of Han and ethnic minorities. Chu concluded that the ancestors of the modern Chinese had migrated to China from Africa via South Asia.
As the mutation rate of DNA microsatellites is high, it is not the best method for researching ancient human migration and the evolution process. Su Bing and other researchers from the Kunming Institute of Zoology proposed an alternative approach using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in the Y-chromosome (Y-SNP). It was the approach by Prof. Jin Li and associate professor Li Hui.
Linguistic Evidence of the Chronological Stratification of the Populations South of Lake Chad
Megatchad Instituto Orientale, Napoli
Black People in a Chinese Painting Fig 5 |
Roger Blench
Kay Williamson Educational Foundation
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Cambridge CB1 2AL
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E-mail rogerblench@yahoo.co.uk
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Education and Indoctrination
Let us continue by exploring the thesis of perception deception. The definition of perception deception is the distortion and disorientation of our minds through education and indoctrination. The tools utilised are nature, nurture, media, education, profession and religion. We are what we consume physically and mentally. If we consume too much junk food, it will have a terrible effect on our physical health. However, in the case of mental health, it is even worse.
Most of the available descriptions of ancient historical figures produced in medieval Europe are Caucasians, regardless of the geographical origin of the subject. However, there are depictions of different natures of these historical figures. Books:
Black People in a Chinese Painting Fig 6 |
The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume 2: From the Early Christian Era to the Age of Discovery, Part 1: From the Demonic Threat to the Incarnation of Sainthood; edited by David Bindman, Henry L Gates, and Karen C Dalton; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 2010, page 36. Modern Commentators on history confirmed the existence of this Babylonian Black King but conveniently forgot to state why he was black.
Some of these commentators even referred to this Black King as an infidel. According to the French navigator Francois Pyrard de Laval, based on the adventurer's travels around 1600 AD, he stated: The people of Ormus are as black as the Moors of Ethiopia and nowise resemble the Persians, who are fairer.
However, such a description of a Black Babylonian King is only about two hundred and fifty years old. Marco Polo was concurrent with the manuscript, and the 17th chapter of his adventure also described the people of Hormuz as black or dark, depending on the translator. Ronald Latham's translation, 1958, pages 66-67, used the word black.
As far back as 1621 AD, the Italian traveller Pietro della Valle copied two or three lines from the cuneiform writing and reproduced it thirty-one years later. Book: The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions by Archibald Henry Sayce, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1907 AD, page 8.