Ancient African Script Challenges Historical Myths

Editorial: reda El ghazal

A wooden hunter’s toolbox inscribed with geometric symbols has sparked global interest through Zambia’s Women’s History Museum. This artifact showcases the Sona writing system—a sophisticated method once used across Angola, Congo, and Zambia to encode mathematical concepts, environmental knowledge, and communal wisdom. Significantly, the original custodians of this knowledge were women, challenging colonial narratives that denied Africa’s literary traditions.

At the same time, the Frame project is using social media to spotlight 50 rediscovered artifacts, including a century-old antelope leather cloak adorned with intricate geometric patterns. These objects, mostly preserved in European institutions such as Sweden’s National Museums of World Culture, highlight women’s central roles in pre-colonial belief systems and environmental stewardship. Although collected by Swedish ethnographers during early 20th-century expeditions, the artifacts’ cultural significance remained largely unstudied abroad and forgotten within their countries of origin.

Colonial disruptions severed Zambia’s connection to this heritage, deliberately erasing women’s contributions. When researchers visited communities like Bangweulu, locals had no memory of the cloaks or Sona symbols—knowledge preserved only in foreign archives. Co-founder Samba Yonga expressed her shock at this erasure, noting how even grinding stones once used as female tomb markers had lost their cultural meaning.

Today, a cultural resurgence is driving efforts to reclaim identity through fashion, music, and academic research. The virtual museum collaborates with elders who still retain fragments of Sona knowledge, cross-referencing oral accounts with scholarly research. Each social media post generates public astonishment, affirming Yonga’s belief: reconnecting with these artifacts transforms how Africans understand their history—and themselves.