SEEN IN THE SKY, MARKED ONTHE GROUND: INTERPRETINGTHE MATERIALITY OF ANCIENTYORUBA COSMOGONY

The ancient Yoruba civilization reached its apogee in the first half of the second millennium AD without developing “writing”
as a means of communication. Instead, they made abstractions through material and immaterial cultural practices. This talk explores how the Yoruba indigenous hermeneutics shed light on material records. It interprets the Yoruba conceptual idea of the world embedded in their observation of the sky and how they influenced the practice of daily life, power politics, and the organization of space.