Some interesting facts about an ancient African civilisation:Benin City (Benin Empire)
Benin City, originally known as Edo, was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria
The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa, dating back to the 11th century.
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”.
Pearce write a that the construction took Edo people an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct the walls which he described as perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet
Benin City was also one of the first cities to have street lighting. Huge metal lamps were built and placed around the city. Fuelled by palm oil, their burning wicks were lit at night to provide illumination for traffic to and from the palace.
Benin City’s planning and design was done according to careful rules of symmetry, proportionality and repetition now known as fractal design.
The early foreign explorers’ described Benin as 'run by a centralised and highly sophisticated bureaucracy'
These works from Benin are equal to the very finest examples of European casting technique,” wrote Professor Felix von Luschan
The kingdom of Benin offers a snapshot of a relatively well-organized and sophisticated African polity in operation before the major European colonial interlude
After a trade dispute with Britain in 1897, the city was attacked & destroyed along with its art. Brass (Benin Bronzes) are now displayed in museums around the world
Most of the excerpts in this were taken directly from this well researched piece in the UK guardian. Read for further info: