'I'm Not Extinct' - Jamaican Taino Proudly Declares Ancestry

[TDowl]

Then Mo, did you think that all the herbs, roots bark, vines knowledge came from Africa? memba some species are native.

Thanks for the Guyana piece, yes I heard about the science..

[Stonigut]

Actually I have done a little research back in the day that sheds a little light on the obeah thing, but bottom line is it is very clear that it is actually an Akan thing, yes, a Twi speaking cultural thing and the funny link Mosiah is that Surinam actually have as strong and maybe stronger link through their maroon culture to Akan nations than our maroons here in jamaica, and the maroons there being up in the hills people crossed over with Amerindian culture to some degree.

Read up on the maroons of Surinam and probably by extension to the other guianas as the borders become less clear up in the hinterland.

Back to the obeah thing, sone of the best Akan, Twi culture experts actually think that it is derived from the name of a place some where west of ashabnti area where the priests actually were trained in the obi arts, yes maybe Harry Potter stole this idea it goes a lot deeper than that and some of the information is now lost to antiquity.

[Stonigut]

Black American thing is very interesting and our history don't tell the whole story or even part of the story. Apparently one of the largest incursions into Jamaica culture in a short time was carolinian loyalist planters coming to jamaica around the time of the independence struggle in America, think Mel Gibson in the movie ' the patriot' for every American patriot there was an opposite number that were english loyalists that had to get out of town and they in fact brought over ten thousand slaves into jamaica in the 1770's, which is a very significant number of the total jamaica population at that time.

I have been to the low country area in the Carolina's a few times and the geechee/ Gullah population sound very similar to a rough West Indian style talk, I found that we share the world 'unnu' and it means the same thing. There is all knd of connections that we have lost over the ages.

[Islandman]

Quite a few words that the Gullah people use that would be familiar to us. They use "nyam" the same way we do, they call a white man "bukrah" or something close to that, and the sentence structure of the dialect is essentially the same. The Gullah Bible reads like a patois Bible.

Also, some of the Brer Rabbit stories of the black American south are strikingly similar to Anansi stories.

[Stonigut]

Yeah lots of connection, much as it sounds strange Carolina and Kingston were we'll connected in the age of sailboats which was pretty much here right up to recently like early 1900's. My great grandfather used to run a droger up till close to 1920, running goods between Kingston and st Elizabeth.

[Willi]

We dont know what we have...

Spanish Town is the oldest inhabited post columbian settlement in the Western hemisphere? It has al the history we could want and has the 2nd iron bridge ever manufactured. Henry Morgan is buried in the ground of the catherdral!