This video is sponsored by CuriosityStream. Get access to Nebula, a video streaming service made by your favourite educational creators, when you sign up for CuriosityStream using the link in the description. This is Yorubaland, the homeland of the Yoruba people. With a population of 46 million the Yoruba are one of the largest ethnic groups in Africa and are one of the three major ethnic groups in modern day Nigeria along with the Hausa and Igbo. The Yoruba built one of the largest empires in West Africa, crafted some of humanity's finest art and looked damn good doing it. Their artists are famous worldwide and no other African culture has affected the Americas and Caribbean as much as the Yoruba who left their mark through people, dance, food and the religions of Santeria, and Candomblé. So who are the Yoruba, what is their history, and what does it have to do with a Galactic Universe Creating Chicken? Well, let’s find out. Banger of an intro song Geography Yorubaland is a cultural region that stretches across south-western western Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Most Yoruba live in Nigeria where they make up 21% of the population. The largest cities in Yorubaland are Ilorin with 1 million, Ibadan at 3.8 million, and Lagos or Eko in the Yoruba language with 15 million, that’s 3 times more people than my entire country!! Yorubaland is a diverse landscape with dense tropical forest and mangroves in the south. Northwards you’ll find a rugged highland region where you can see these cool inselbergs like Olosunta and the North also has a Guinea savanna region. Yorubaland is home to the mona monkey, African forest elephant, leopards, the adorable Senegal bushbaby, and parrots which have played a sacred role in Yoruba history. Language There are many different Yoruba groups with their own unique cultures but they are united by the Èdè Yorùbá, the Yoruba language, spoken by 47 million people. Yoruba is a tonal language, like Chinese, where the tone you use influences the meaning of the word. The tonal aspect of Yoruba means it can be mimicked easily. For example there is actually a form of Whistled Yoruba used to communicate over long distances, this whistling Means people who arrived for me, greetings at work. The Yoruba “Talking Drum” also “speaks” by mimicking the tonal and rhythmic features of Yoruba words. For millennia the Yoruba passed on their history orally and so the Talking Drum acted as one way to pass history from one generation to the next. Islam arrived in Yorubaland in the 14th century from Mali, Africa’s great centre of Islamic learing, and brought with it Ajami, a form of Arabic script, which was the first script the Yoruba language was written in. In the 19th century Christian missionaries introduced the Latin alphabet which Yoruba is now written in. Yoruba is just one name for Yoruba speakers, they also call themselves ‘Omo ile kaaro ojire’ Literally meaning ‘The children of the land where we greet Good morning did you wake up well?’ There is a stereotype in Nigeria that it takes Yoruba 10 minutes to say hello. Yoruba are big on greetings, kind questions, and showing respect. If one Yoruba walks by another Yoruba and they don’t greet each other you can safely assume there is some drama happening. There are many greeting styles depending on the person, time, weather, and event. The most basic hello is simply Pele or E Pele, if it’s rainy you can greet with kú òjò, if someone has just given birth you greet with kú ewu ọmọ, and if you’re greeting an elder sitting down you say Ẹ kúùjókòó, Yoruba always greet elders with Ẹ. Elders get the most respectful greetings. Traditionally when greeting elders a woman may kneel down, while a man might lie chin and chest on the ground. History Around 4,500 years ago ancient Yoruba speakers had already settled in the thick forests of West Africa and began farming yam and oil palms. It's difficult to know the exact size of the early Yoruba civilization but through oral traditions and archaeology we know Yoruba culture was here, here, here and here. So it is safe to say it was pretty big. The Yoruba preserved their history orally and have multiple creation stories. One version says, in the beginning there was nothing but water and the sky above it. The Supreme God Olodumare sent down Obatala to create the Earth. Obatala descended to Earth on a chain armed with nothing but a snail shell full of dirt, a palm nut, and a chicken. He dropped the first piece of dirt where the city of Ife is now located. Ife means "the source of the spreading", and with a lot of pecking the cosmic chicken spread the earth to create all the continents. Soon the palm nut sprouted and that was the beginning of life on Earth. In another version during the creation Obatalá did well at first, he even started forming little clay figures that became the first humans. But Obatalá got really drunk on palm wine and couldn’t finish the job of creation and so the god Oduduwa finished it for him. It took about four days for the world to be created and so the Yoruba calendar is made of a four-day week. Oduduwa is recognized as the father of the Yoruba people, and Ife is their symbolic centre. Around the 700s BCE the Yoruba were already producing Iron. This was a huge development: 1. Because they somehow discovered iron-working before bronze which has driven historians mad for years now and 2. Because Iron slaps With iron hoes, machetes, axes, and other tools the Yoruba pushed the dark, dense forests away from their settlements. This opened up new farmland, settlements expanded, and trade grew. Iron was crucial, one of the Yoruba’s most important Gods or Orishas was Ogun the god of iron and blacksmiths also called the Creator of Civilsations. As the thick forests turned into thriving farmland the once separate towns joined together, forming ELU, something we could compare to city-states. At their centre was the Afin which was the palace of the Oba (king), right next to the palace was the main market the 'Oja-Oba'. The rest of the city radiated out from them. The Yoruba became one of the most urbanised groups in ancient Africa and what do urban societies have? Craftspeople. Blacksmiths, weavers, sculptors, and all sorts of specialised professions. These masters of metal, stone, clay and wood would travel between Elus looking for work. The market was central to Yoruba life and was well organised with, guilds and unions where both men and women could participate, but where women had a special place in trade having at least one elected Iyaloja, or Mother of the Market, who represented the traders in the Oba’s palace. The Yoruba traded widely on the Trans-Saharan and West African Trade routes. The most traded resources were yams, salt, iron, herbs, leather, palm oil, palm wine, raffia products, textiles, and the kola nut. That’s the nut that was used to make the original Coca-cola along with…eh cocaine. Most Yoruba cities had multiple shrines and beautifully maintained gardens and were surrounded with massive mud walls. One settlement called Sungbo’s Eredo, built for Queen Bilikisu Sungbo around 1000 CE had a 160-kilometre wall-and-ditch system. This required moving about 3.5 million cubic metres of Earth, 1 million more than the Pyramids, and formed a ring covering an area of about 2000km2 which is about 50% larger than modern London. This was one of the largest building projects in history. It was hidden by hundreds of years of rainforest growth, but is now joining other great African engineering marvels such as the Pyramids, Timbuktu’s mosques, and Great Zimbabwe. All these settlements were having a pretty chill and relaxed time, then in the 10th century, Oduduwa came. He was probably a leader from one of the smaller settlements around the city of Ife. He decided to move his people a little closer to Ife, but he didn't want to bother with the alliances and politics in place so….war. This caused lots of death, destruction, stabbing, maiming, some slapping probably and Oduduwa was winning. The chiefs of Ife panicked and sent Obatala, the King of Ife, to negotiate peace with Oduduwa. Apparently Obatala was really bad at it since he was constantly drunk, which ya know…isn’t great. The negotiations went nowhere. Seeing this, people flipped to Oduduwa’s side. He won the war and became the King of Ife. As king Oduduwa gave Ife the political hierarchy, structure and bureaucracy a city its size needed. You might remember those names Obatala and Oduduwa from the creation of the universe that’s because it is them. In the Yoruba religion important living people were deified and became Orishas. In the centuries after Obatala and Oduduwa many other remarkable people would enter the heavenly realm as Orishas. The rich and now organised city of Ife attracted immigrants and by 1300 Ife had around 100,000 inhabitants and its industry produced iron, glass, and other valuable goods. The artists at Ife around 1200CE-1400CE crafted some of humanity's greatest pieces of art such as the incredibly naturalistic Yoruba stone and metal sculptures. Oduduwa was a really smart guy and decided that instead of waiting to see his heirs to fight each other to the death Game of Thrones style, he gave each of them a beautiful beaded crown and sent them away to found kingdoms of their own. One such prince was Oduduwa’s grandson Oranmyan. Between the late 12th and early 13th century Oranmyan travelled to the far northwest borderlands of the Yoruba area. According to oral tradition, a chief from the Bariba people gave Oranmyan a snake and told him to follow it. The Snake had a great eye for real-estate, because it led Oranmyan to a perfect location where he founded the city of Oyo. Unlike lfe which was located in a heavily forested area, Oyo was in a Guinea savannah, a great open space, ideal for farming and right between the trans-Niger and the trans-Saharan caravan routes. By the end of the 16th century the city of Oyo transformed into a powerful empire using imported horses. Yep horses, which is weird since horses and tropical Africa don’t really go together. The disease carrying tsetse fly likes to infect any large animal with a horrible case of…death. This made horses ridiculously expensive! But by taxing trade routes and producing valuable goods the Oyo were rich enough to import horses from North Africa, over the scorching Sahara desert. Using their cavalry forces and reportedly “the best bowmen in Africa'' the Oyo Empire conquered vast stretches of territory. The Emperor of Oyo was called the Alaafin of Oyo. The Alaafin was not always the son of the last Alaafin and was not always male. A council of 7 chiefs called the Oyo Mesi elected the Alaafin from a pool of princes. The Oyo Mesi was led by the Bashorun or Prime Minister, they represented the interests of the empire and were supposed to prevent the Alaafin from being a tyrant. The Oyo Mesi’s power was then checked by the Ogboni, a council of chiefs and by the Eso, a group of high ranking generals. And get this for checks on power! If the Alaafin was doing a bad job the Oyo Mesi would vote and then send the Bashorun to present an empty calabash to the Alaafin saying “the people reject you, the gods reject you and the earth rejects you also”. The Alaafin was expected to commit ritual suicide when this happened! This system of checks and balances kept the empire stable for centuries. By the middle of the 18th century; the Oyo were the largest empire in West Africa, with a wealthy urbanised society connected to international markets and had tribute flowing in from conquered kingdoms. But with big empires comes big trouble. As the empire was at its peak in 1754 an ambitious Bashorun called Gaha conspired with the Oyo Mesi to seize power for himself. He managed to get four successive Alaafins to commit ritual suicide. Gaha's plot went on for TWENTY YEARS! His scheme came to an end in 1774 when Alaafin Abiodun executed Gaha. Alongside this, in the 15 & 16th centuries Europeans arrived at the coast looking for humans to traffic. Which created an insatiable demand for slaves. Compared to other states the export of enslaved people from Yorubaland was small from 1500-1750. Legally only convicted hardened criminals could be enslaved and the Yoruba did not enslave or even go to war with other Yoruba frequently. The peace the Oyo maintained kept Yoruba people off of European slave ships. But things changed, by the late eighteenth century, the Oyo peace was over and they were expanding. The peak of the slave trade and the Oyo military expansion overlapped and Oyo transformed into a large slave-trading power by conquering their neighbours mainly the Nupe, Bariba and Aja and selling the war captives to middle-men traders at the coast who then sold them to European & American slave-traders. This business caused several revolts. Alongside these internal problems the Oyo came under pressure from a Fulani invasion from the north. The Empire cracked and the resulting implosion of Oyo left its people vulnerable to raids by neighbouring societies like Dahomey and Nupe. So while Kings and generals got rich off of slavery and the greed of nobles brought the empire to its knees it would be the average Yoruba that paid the price. Yoruba captives poured into the Atlantic slave trade in the first quarter of the 19th Century. The collapse of Oyo led to eight decades of warfare that devastated Yorubaland. Which left them wide open for you guessed it…imperialism! loud explosion gasps in Irish IT’S THE BRITISH AGAIN! In 1851 Britain bombarded and sacked the Yoruba city of Lagos. Before the turn of the century, most of West Africa was under either British or French rule. The 19th century saw Christian missionaries arrive and convert millions of Yoruba to Christianty sending the Yoruba religion into decline. All of the different peoples living in this area were merged together into the new Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria which was run by British companies who forced the people to grow massive amounts of palm oil needed to fuel Britain’s industrial revolution. It wasn’t until 1960 that the Union Jack was lowered and the flag of newly independent Nigeria took its place. Diaspora The trans-Atlantic slave trade dragged millions of Yoruba men, women and children away from their homeland and forced them to build and maintain the economies of the New World. Around 12% of all enslaved people brought to Cuba were of Yoruba origin, and in Brazil they made up about 40% of the people sold in the state of Bahia. Those who survived the horrific journey across the sea arrived in the Americas with nothing. While you can take people away from their culture, you can never take the culture away from the people. Most enslaved people had to convert to Christanity, but the Yoruba reinterpreted Catholic saints as representations of Yoruba orishas. For example, the Virgin Mary was seen as the orisha Yemanjá, mother of all orishas and goddess of rivers and oceans. When religions mix and form a new religion it’s called religious syncretism. The enslaved Yoruba created something distinct from both Catholicism and the Yoruba religion in Africa. In Brazil and Uruguay it became Candomblé and Umbanda, and in the Caribbean became Santería or Lucumí. Yoruba words are still used during rituals in these religions even though the practitioners no longer speak Yoruba. On the 2nd of February in Brazil and Uruguay you can still observe the Yemanjá festival, where people send her gifts on boats sent into the sea. Yoruba drums like the Batá drum and talking drums can be heard in Afro-Latin and Caribbean music, in Capoeira practice in Brazil, and in reggae and Hip-Hop. Yoruba music has deeply influenced African and International music, Fela Kuti was one of Nigeria’s most famous musicians and activists and was one of pioneers of Afrobeat music. Food traditions travelled with Yoruba to the Americas. In Brazil, a little cake called acarajé acarajé acarajé acarajé became the first intangible heritage recognized in the country. Acarajé was sold on the streets by African women called baianas. They were easily recognized by their distinctive clothing, and you can still see references to these women in Brasilian Carnival, where they spin for hours in their heavy costumes. Acarajé is a version of Yoruba Akara, made of mashed black-eyed peas rolled into a ball and deep-fried in palm oil. Speaking of food. Food Yoruba cuisine involves starchy meals such as cassava, yams or plantain pounded in massive mortars until they get a little elastic and form a sort of cake or ball, varieties of this are called Eba or Iyan, and are eaten alongside soups and stews. The Yoruba are known for their love of spice and chilli peppers. Seriously, other Nigerians are in awe of Yoruba spice tolerance. One Yoruba saying is "A soul that does not eat pepper is a powerless soul." Some Yoruba favourites are Okra soups, Ofada rice, amala, Efo riro, and egusi soup and while this will destroy the comment section some say that the Yoruba might make the best Jollof Rice! Religion The traditional Yoruba religion is called Ìṣẹ̀ṣe. There is one Supreme God, Olodumare, who lives in the highest heaven, he’s pretty distant and is busy with godly stuff, so on Earth he acts through the (at least) 401 gods or Orishas. Some Orishas are Ogun, the orisha of iron, Eshu, the trickster orisha of chance and also the divine messenger, Oshun the female orisha of fertility, Ṣọpọna the Orisha of smallpox and healing who is very popular in the Americas where they are called Babalú-Ayé and Shango the orisha of lightning and thunder. Shango is another example of a real historical King becoming an Orisha. Each believer and family will have a particular orisha that they feel most connected to. Yoruba religion is deeply moral, one key concept is Omoluwabi which means good character. One must be honest, humble, and respectful, especially towards elders. A Yoruba proverb says “One’s character is what accompanies one to the grave; wealth does not go that far”. The Yoruba are known for their love of parties and festivals who never miss a chance to host a fun event. Yoruba will throw a party to celebrate the success of the previous party. Yoruba weddings are a carnival of high fashion, dancing, huge guest lists, drumming, unique greetings, and of course spraying money on the bride and groom. Today roughly 90% of Yoruba are either Christian or Muslim. The Yoruba are a fairly unique ethnic group in Africa as they are almost split 50-50 between being Christians and Muslim, families can have members of both religions and Yoruba tend to be less extreme on religious issues in Nigeria. A large number of Yoruba people continue to practise their traditional religions through festivals like the Gelede, focused on “the great ancestral mothers,”. During the festival the dance themselves are performed by men, masquerading as elaborately costumed male and female figures during this festival you’ll hear agogo bells, sekere and talking drums. During the Egungun festival, Yoruba worship dead ancestors as masked individuals impersonate the dead and during the Osun-Osogbo festival the city is cleansed. Fashion The Yoruba are a fashionable people that take immense pride in their well-made, colourful clothing. One of the oldest traditions is the use of indigo dye to make a patterned cloth called ADIRE, dating back to at least the 11th century. Another very traditional Yoruba textile is the ASO OKE. The technique was created around the 15th century, and today it’s still used for special occasions and ceremonies like weddings Some traditional clothing includes the women’s iró, a kind of wrap skirt, and the bubá, the blouse and the men’s wear agbada, a robe, and Sokoto, trousers. And let's not forget the very important matching headpieces worn for both men and women. The men's cap is usually the fila, but it is the women's headpiece, the Gele, that steals the show. It is made from a long piece of cloth draped in a particular way and wrapped around the head. Of course the looks wouldn't be complete without beads, usually necklaces and bracelets. The Yoruba are bead people. They love beads. Beads in the crowns, beads in their body, beads on the walls, beads everywhere. Legend says that the walls of the king Oduduwa's palace were encrusted with beads. Though the palace didn't survive to our time, the tradition of giving relief to walls was very strong and is still done today. *** Today, all around the world millions of Yoruba people, most of them still living in West Africa but also millions of descendants of those brought to the Americas and modern Yoruba that have moved abroad, fight to keep all their traditions alive. Today you’ll find Yoruba greeting ;) the world with their vibrant food, culture, music, and fashion. I wish there was somewhere I could greet amazing educational videos. Oh wait! Cogito and a bunch of our creator friends got together and made our own platform, called Nebula and we're excited to be partnering with CuriosityStream. Nebula is a place where you can watch some of the best educational content ad free, uncensored, and earlier than on Youtube. This video was on Nebula days ago and many creators upload videos to Nebula weeks in advance. 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