A SPEECH PRESENTED BY PROFESSOR CATHERINE ACHOLONU ON THE OCCASION OF THE USA LAUNCHING/PRSENTATION OF THE BOOK THEY LIVED BEFORE ADAM:

A SPEECH PRESENTED BY PROFESSOR CATHERINE ACHOLONU ON THE OCCASION OF THE USA LAUNCHING/PRSENTATION OF THE BOOK THEY LIVED BEFORE ADAM: PRE-HISTORIC ORIGINS OF THE IGBO, THE NEVER BEEN RULED AT THE IGBO STUDIES ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE, HOWARD UNIVERSITY, WASHINGTON DC, 3RD-4TH APRIL. 2009

Fellow scholars of Igbo and African Studies, last year at this very conference, my co-researcher Dr. Ajay Prabhakar and I, presented a paper titled “The Sons of God and the Unshakable Generation: Tracing Igbo Divine Rights through Pre-History, Forgotten Scriptures and Oral Tradition”. It received excited reactions form some members of the audience, keen interest from others and laughter from a few. But we remember keenly that at the same conference, one Dr. Abdul Salau, a Hausa/Fulani presenter from Delaware University gave a paper detailing Igbo linguistic influence on ancient Egypt. Our paper dwelt on Igbo language influences on ancient Akkadian, Sumerian ancient Canaanite/Hebrew, modern Chinese, English and other far-flung languages. But it did something more, it followed the Igbo story through the Oral Traditions of other Nigerian and Kwa peoples through North Africa onto ancient Greece and so forth using information gleaned from ancient and esoteric literatures and lost Scriptures.

Since the time we last stood before this venerable audience, we have in fact concluded the first phase of the research and we have published our findings under the title They Lived Before Adam: Pre-historic Origins of the Igbo, The Never Been Ruled (a CARC Publication, Abuja, 2009).

They Lived Before Adam traces the unknown and lost History of the people of Igbo extraction all the way to 500,000 – 1,000,000 B.C. It is the result of more than 20 years of painstaking search and research through mainstream scientific discoveries in the area of Archaeology, Paleontology (the study of Human fossils), Genetic and DNA Engineering, Linguistics but also through ancient and esoteric records, lost Scriptures and Mythologies of Africa, Europe and Asia, as well as through the Histories and Oral Traditions of various nations and continents of the globe, for traces of Igbo presence.

This search revealed that the Igbo are the oldest single group of people on planet earth; that Igbo presence on planet earth goes all the way back to Early Man, otherwise called Homo Erectus, the direct ancestor of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Modern Man/Thinking Man); that it was the Igbo who seeded other races and gave culture and civilization to the rest of the human race; and that Igbo language was a direct off-shoot of that One World/Mother Language of Humanity supposedly lost at Babel.

The now late Professor Adiele Afigbo, may his great soul rest in perfect peace, foremost Igbo and Nigerian Historian, who was to review the book for the Abuja launch that took lace on 25th of March, 2009 before he fell ill a few weeks before and never recovered, said of our work in this regard, “They Lived Before Adam is out of this world. It is not only a work of History. It’s a work of Revelation.” And he admitted to Prof. T.U. Nwala, that “the area of Pre-History is an area we have not given serious attention to. And I find Catherine’s work a bold challenge to not only Historians in this part of the world but to scholars in all areas of Cultural Studies…”

Senator Uche Chukwumerije who is spear-heading an all-Igbo re-launch of the book describes They Lived Before Adam as “a life defining-landmark, a central literature for Ndi Igbo”.

Ambassador Raph Uwaechue, Elder Statesman and President, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo said of They Lived Before Adam, “The information contained in that book makes our work of Igbo emancipation, spiritual empowerment and moral and ethical re-engineering a lot easier. It is a veritable tool for Igbo Renaissance.”

At the just-concluded world presentation of the book at Abuja, requests were made that an all-Igbo launch of the book should be held at Enugu state in the not-so-distant future. HRH Light Eze Ezedioramma Aniagu, Shikagumma of Enugunato-Ihe, whom we were meeting for the first time, kindly offered to promote the book by buying one hour weekly airtime on NTA Network Service towards the dissemination of the contents of the book.

They Lived Before Adam is a roughly 500-page compendium of hitherto unknown facts about Ndi Igbo in Pre-historic times. It details the forgotten and lost Igbo past from their earliest beginnings and supplies the missing links that have created the foundation upon which Igbo Philosophy, social systems, belief systems, politics, culture and tradition have been crafted through the millennia. It details the results of decades of research on the lost and forgotten roots of Ndi Igbo and brings to the fore Professor F. Anozie’s archaeological conclusions that as early as 500,000 to one million B.C. Igbo heartland land was inhabited by an Early Stone Age race of people whom paleontologists have classified as Homo Erectus or Early Man. These people, whose culture was characterized by the stone axe, were the direct ancestors of Homo Sapiens. They were the products of a very long evolution in the Nigerian environment and French Paleontologists working in the Chad Basin have dated their earliest known ancestors to 7 million B.C.

The archaeological findings at Ugwuele documented over twenty years ago by veteran archaeologist of the Nsukka School, late Professor F.N. Anozie, have lain dormant, excised from the realm of Igbo Studies because the esteemed Professor Adiele Afigbo had written that the Ugwuele Archeulians were not Igbo. But our work shows that they were indeed Igbo, and that they were both the products and the carriers of an unbroken bloodline of sons and daughters of the Uncreated God and, being themselves uncreated products of evolution, were the ancestors of Adam – the man who was hand-made.

We have evidence from recently translated cuneiform records of ancient Sumer that Adam was a product of genetic mutation of Homo Erectus specimens taken from West Africa by so called Nephilim Gods or Annunaki. These earliest humans were in fact the source of the claim by the mainland Igbo that they are ‘sons of the soil’. Along with other pockets of Homo Erectus inhabitants of Africa, the Igbo Early Man was the direct ancestor of Modern Man (Homo Sapiens Sapiens otherwise called Adam). Specimens of Adam’s words and the words spoken by succeeding generations of his children show that Adam spoke a language very close to the Igbo language still spoken today in Nigeria; and that through him and his seed, Igbo culture was dispersed in its earliest form, throughout the first world and took root in ancient Palestine, Asia, Europe, the Americas to name a few.

Linguistic evidence found on all five continents of the globe, indicate that all pockets of Homo Erectus people on the African continent spoke one single language and that that language was inherited by Homo Sapiens. This singular Mother Language of mankind, which was said to have been lost at Babel, was in fact not far removed from the language spoken today in Igbo land and to a lesser extent among their Kwa brethren – Yoruba, Benin, Igala, Ashanti, etc. Its traces still abound in almost every language spoken by man to this day. Igbo linguistic, cultural, philosophical and ideological gifts to the world, which have survived to this day, are legion. They include Democracy and Monotheism.

Leaning on Archaeology, Linguistics, Historical, Anthropological and Paleontological sources, but also using Igbo, Yoruba and Benin Oral Traditions (for all these peoples are related), Biblical and extra-Biblical sources such as the Hebrew and Chinese Cabbalas, our researchers trace the presence of Igbo-speaking, ichi-bearing god-men world civilizers all the way from the ancient Nok region of Nigeria, to the Sahara Desert of North Africa and to Pre- and Post-Deluge civilizations around the world, all the way to Egypt, China, India, Greece, Babylon, Assyria, Palestine, etc.; their Pre-Deluge connections to the lost continent of Atlantis where the Igbo language was also spoken; their contributions to the shaping of Hebrew culture, Judaism, the Cabbala and ultimately, Christianity; and their role in ancient Egypt in shaping world Democracy and Philosophy as inventors, architects, philosophers and masterminds of Theocracy and of the egalitarian society known in Greece and the world over as Democracy. Indeed Ndi Igbo have never ceased to be world travelers. As they populate the remotest parts of the planet today, so have they done since at least 500,000 B. C.

In fact the ‘Out of Africa’ phenomenon whereby Early Man left the African continent to populate other continents of the globe, was a Mega-Igbo Phenomenon, occasioned by the incurable Igbo urge to expand, discover and settle. We found evidence of Anambra-speaking ichi-bearing Igbos in Anatolia (Turkey) and the Aegean as far back as 2,500 B.C. The Awka/Nri/Nkanu/Nsukka/Enugu cultural phenomenon was an offshoot of ancient Nok, the lost Holy City of Light, Old Ife/Ihe, the seat of Idu - a world-renowned sovereign who ruled the world from the center of the Earth, which is in today’s Nigeria - a place marked in ancient maps of the world as Median Biafra (a ‘Median’ in any map is the center of that map). They gave Egypt its first god-men or Pharaohs (Opara-Ihe) before 9,000 B. C.

Speakers of Ngwa, Onitsha and Umuahia dialects were writing Igbo on sticks and on stone in the British Isles by 5,000 B.C. and were the inventors of the ancient Irish Ogam (also called Ogu ama) alphabet whose stone inscriptions have now been transcribed, revealing an ancient Igbo Bible on Stone. The only surviving vernacular word from Atlantis recorded by Plato from Egyptian priests is a word still in use in Anambra State.

300 carved ancient stone monoliths with strange inscriptions known as Akwa-Nshi were discovered fifty years ago by colonial anthropologists in the forests of Ikom in Cross River State. The natives claim the ancient inscriptions were made by “Stone Age Early Man” dwarfs known in Ikom as Monkom and in Igbo land as Nwa Nshi. The linguistic connection between Akwa-Nshi, Nwa-Nshi and Nshi-biri – the local name of the inscriptions (which translates into Igbo as ‘written by Nshi’) reveals that the inscriptions were made by a people who spoke Igbo Language. Ikom description of these people in their oral traditions shows that they were the same Stone Age Homo Erectus Igbo of Anozie’s archaeological discovery.

Professor F.N. Anozie’s archeological work in Ugwu-Ele, Uturu, Okigwe and his revelation that Early Man (Homo Erectus) was living in Igbo land in Okigwe and environs by 500,000 to 1 Million B.C. places ancient Ndi Igbo in Igbo land at least 250,000 years before the creation of Adam following the calculations of Geneticists from Mitochondrial DNA analysis conducted in four leading US universities. Orlu/Amaigbo/Isu migrated from Ugwuele, Uturu, Okigwe under the umbrella of a man called Ele (alias Okwara-Ugwu-Ele) and are thus the direct descendants of the Ugwuele Homo Erectus or sons of the Soil. They and the people of Mbaise and Mbano and others within the heartland still retain in their native customs, cultural traits that are aboriginal, perhaps belonging to the Homo Erectus period, 500, 000 B. C., a period defined in the works of Adieele Afigbo as “the Age of Innocence when our earliest Igbo ancestors walked with God and were fed divine substance as food: an Eternal Day with no night, sleep or toil”.

Yoruba Ifa Oral History maintains that the greatest god known to the Yoruba was Obatala (Oba ntu ala), who is the ancestor of the Igbo nation. Ifa claims that Obatala was the god who saved the earth after the Deluge. Ifa priests refer to him as “Osere Igbo: the Ancient of Days, the First Son of God … the Prince of Peace … the one who conquered death by rising from the dead after 16 days in the grave”. These are, to say the least vital discoveries about Igbo origins and identity unknown to the Igbo themselves.

The 2,000 year old Nag Hammadi Scriptures of Jesus Christ and his chosen disciples, uncovered sixty years ago deep in the desert-sands of Egypt, adds the final missing links to the mystery of Igbo identity. It tells about a people whose cosmology is rooted in the numbers four and eight, who emanated from the realm of the Eternal Day where there was no Darkness, nor toil, nor sleep; a “kingless generation with no kingdom over them because they are all kings” (Igbo Enwe Eze); a people whose most central symbol is the quadrangle (the basic geometry of Igbo ichi); a people who worship the Primal Goddess (as in Ala/Ani); a people among whom “the three entities Father, Mother and Child exist as perceptible speech having within it three names abiding in three nnn” as in Nne, Nna and Nwa or Nwoke, Nwanyi and Nwata – the Nag Hammadi Trinity. The Nag Hammadi also called The African Gospel of Jesus Christ calls this people the First Sons of the true God, and says of them,
“the fourth generation, which is the most exalted, is kingless and perfect. These people – kingless, perfect generation – will enter the Holy place of their Father and thy will reside in rest and eternal ineffable glory, and ceaseless joy. They already are kings. They are the immortal within the mortal and they will condemn the gods of chaos and their powers.”

The Nag Hammadi Scriptures is not alone in ascribing divinity and royalty to the Igbo, in fact Yoruba oral tradition says in Ifa that the greatest of all the divinities in the Yoruba pantheon is the ancestor of the Igbo nation. They call him Obatala and Ifa says he is the ‘First Son of God’ who was sent to save the earth after the deluge and to repopulate it with life; that he was the creator of man. Benin oral tradition says that the Deluge took place over quarrels between the gods arising from the birth of an Igbo child under illegitimate circumstances.

We studied the esoteric meanings of Igbo symbols and etymons from a global perspective, and found that they are not only universal, they are leading symbols used in all major religions to describe the nature of God or the Goddess as the case may be. Thus the double concentric circle of Igbo Ukwu fame and the Kwa in Okwa-ra both represent the First Son of God, while the ichi is a representation of the children of the Earth-Goddess. Chi is the name of the god-man and the etymon –ka- [as in Nkanu, nka, dioka, ka (greeting)] means Sacred Fire or Holy Spirit. It is also synonymous with Kwa.

Our ongoing research shows that the Igbo were the first sons within the Kwa language family, thus we were able to prove Adiele Afigbo’s Mega Igbo/Proto-Kwa hypothesis, and we told him so at the Ahiajoku lecture, and he was very happy. We found very deep-rooted Kwa and Igbo links with the Nok civilization and with the lost continent of Atlantis. We found that Nri was an offshoot of the Nok civilization of the Niger-Benue confluence, which was the so called Old Ife of Idu fame, the locale of the famous filial rivalry between the Yoruba ancestor and his Igbo senior brother Obatala which led to their parting ways and to the loss of the Oduduwa title by the Igbo ancestor.

They Lived Before Adam is a must read for every Igbo man, woman and child and a vital source book for Igbo scholars. This book restores our self worth as a people and makes an undeniably powerful case for the preservation and study of Igbo origins, native language and dialects, culture, oral traditions and philosophies. It was through our good understanding of Igbo dialects that we were able to draw most of the vital conclusions that were critical to our theses. For that, we join professor Chinua Achebe in calling for the preservation of Igbo dialects as is being done in all other languages at this time.

Ndi Igbo at home and abroad can give our children something to believe in at last – themselves and their ancestral values. They Lived Before Adam does this for us. In fact the magic and mystery that surrounds Igbo identity as a divine race is known to all and sundry, except Ndi Igbo themselves. To paraphrase the words of the iroko himself, Chinua Achebe, the failure of a people begins when the belief in themselves is taken from them; then the detractor needs do no more (Achebe, Morning Yet on Creation Day).

Ndi Igbo happen to be among the few groups of people in the world whose core traditional philosophies of life consist of virtues rather than vices – Justice and fair play (Ikpe kwu oto), Impeccability (ikwuba aka oto/ijide ogu), Peace and the brotherhood of Man (onye biri ibe ya biri), right action and right judgment (ofo na ogu/ome ihe jide ofo), right is might (ofo ka nsi), Eucharistic communion with God and man as demonstration of purity of mind and soul in one and all (onye wetara oji wetara ndu, egbe bere ugo bere). The Igbo are perhaps the only group of people in the world whose basic custom, Grundnorm and Philosophy of life is rooted in the observance of personal and collective Holiness, sinless-ness and living in a state of grace. This is totally at variance with what obtains in the customs of the Hebrews for instance, where the Law of God gave approval to a people to exterminate their hosts and take over the latter’s land. In all these, ancient Igbo culture shows itself as the likely fore-runner of Christianity, and The Nag Hammadi revelations confirms it to be so.

It is worthy of note that in ancient Akkadian, Egyptian and Greece the words Paraa/Peraa/pr/phar/pal all mean First Son, Divine Prince and Royalty - another Igbo gift to the world, which implies that the Igbo were the first kings the world knew and that the word ‘Prince’ (Opara Nshi?) was most likely derived from Igbo language and ancient global tradition of kingship of the world. This appears to be so because the Greeks and other Aegean nations got their kings from a clan of god-men of unknown origins who called themselves Pelop (translated as ‘Crown Prince’), a cognate of Igbo Opala Okpu. It was obviously these Igbo-speaking Crown Princes who gave the tradition of royalty to Greece and the rest of Europe.
Our analysis of the language of the earliest settlers in the Americas also reveal that Igbo was the language of the land chiefs who brought culture and writing to the Andes and environs. As in Greece, these migrants bore the ichi scarifications on their faces and their boats and named their installations and cities in Igbo language. All these details are clearly delineated in They Lived Before Adam, a must read for every Igbo and Black African; a must read too for everyone who is keen on truth.

The compilation and release of They Lived Before Adam were planned to coincide with the Ohaneze Ndi Igbo, CODES and Aka Ikenga sponsored First Festival of Igbo Civilization, as our contribution to the celebration of the Golden Jubilee of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and to honor Achebe’s achievements for the Igbo on the global scene. Accordingly it was formerly presented to the President of Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, Ambassador Raph Uwaechue and to Chinua Achebe who received his copy along with his wife after his Ahiajoku Lecture at Owerri. They Lived Before Adam is a vital step in the process of piecing together those Things (that) Fell Apart in the Igbo world. It is a labor of love from a woman who has spent the best twenty years of her life searching out the truth about Ndi Igbo. The book also addresses Igbo-phobia in African Studies and the Olaudah Equiano/Vincent Caretta controversy. It was launched in Abuja on 25th March 2009 and the President Gneral, Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo is hosting an All-Igbo Launch/Rally in support of They Lived at Okpara Square, Enugu on 27th June, 2009.

Ohanaeze Ndi Igbo, the apex Igbo organization, has requested that a simplified edition of They Lived Before Adam be produced for the less educated readers and that schools editions be made available for children in Nursery, Primary and Secondary schools. We are therefore calling on interested individuals and organizations to sign up, join and/or support the second phase of the project and take the Igbo Story to all Ndi Igbo and to the world.

On behalf of my co-authors, I thank you all as I salute and bow before the Divinity in all Igbo and in you.

Catherine Acholonu,
Washington D. C., April 4th, 2009.