Black Panther

I attended the picture-house the other night to watch Black Panther. I took with me a teenaged boy thinking it would be his kind of film. It was, and mine also. It is part of the successful Marvel franchise; all the films are pretty much the same, with a hero or heroes saving the world from some terrible threat. This script had a few more twists than certain others, and there were some funny moments, but the best part for me was its portrayal of Africa and black people. In this film, they were the heroes and heroines, the masters of technology and the smartest people on earth. Instead of being slaves or criminals, they belonged to an advanced civilisation. The actors’ beautifully lilting African accents added a real charm to their characters.

Kawanda, one of the world’s poorest countries, was in fact home to several ancient African tribes who successfully mined powerful metal of asteroid origin. They were the first nation to fly and were more advanced than the ‘developed’ world. Avoiding global politics and international disputes, the Black Panthers, or kings of Kawanda, were charged with protecting and concealing their power. The film’s closing scene showed the Kawandan monarch offering to share his technology with the United Nations, smiling benignly when a North American diplomat pondered aloud what a poor nation of farmers might offer the world.

I've just ordered The Puzzle of Ancient Man: Evidence of Advanced Technology in Past Civilizations by D.E. Chittock. He attempts to demonstrate that ancient civilizations were far more developed than we imagine. The accepted secular worldview states that our ancestors were animals, brutal and unlearned, slowing developing and progressing towards our current enlightened and glorious state. https://creation.com/ancient-civilizations-and-modern-man I suspect that ancient man knew far more than we give him credit; perhaps Kawanda is not so fictional a concept after all. 

Image by Toprak Babacan from Pixabay