The Yoruba word for calabash is Igba. The calabash plant (Lagenaria sireraria) is a member of the cucumber family. The fruits are large, round and soft-skinned when young; with aging the skin matured into a tough, woody shell. The Yoruba used the hard shells to make bowls, containers, and cups, and also for ornamental purposes.
The Yoruba did not write, but they narrated their ideas, philosophy, science and technology to Christian missionaries who then made the written records. According to Ellis AB (1894) (in The Yoruba-speaking peoples of the slave coast of West Africa. Chapman & Hall, London), for example, the Yoruba believed Obatala and Odudua to be their progenitors, and that these were coeval with God.
Ellis wrote:
‘Obatala and Odudua, or Heaven and Earth, resemble, say the priests, two large cut-calabashes, which, when once shut can never be opened. This is symbolised in the temples by two whitened saucer-shape calabashes, one covering the other; the upper one of which represents the concave firmament stretching over and meeting the earth, the lower one, at the horizon.’
Ellis continued:
‘According to some priests, Obatala and Odudua represent one androgynous divinity; and they say that an image which is sufficiently common, of a human being with one arm and leg, and a tail terminating in a sphere, symbolised this.’
A number of conclusions are apparent from these accounts by Ellis. One, the ancient Yoruba believed that from its very beginning, the earth was created as a round object. Two, the Yoruba also believed that the earth was created with a continuous unbroken, and unbreakable, curvilinear relationship with the sky. Three, the Yoruba further believed that man was created inside an earth that was spherical in its shape.
The ancient Yoruba were the first to realise that the earth was round in shape. They were in possession of this round earth knowledge at a time when the rest of the world believed the earth to be flat. The idea that the earth was flat appeared in early Norse, Indian and Chinese cosmographies (Hanna 2023). The ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and Greeks depicted the earth in models as a disc of land encircled by, or floating on water. It was not until the 5th century that European philosophers and scientists jettisoned this flat earth idea. Muslim scholars revised their belief from flat to spherical earth about the 9th century. The Chinese only changed their flat earth perception following encounters with Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century.
The concept, data, ideas or instruments that the Yoruba employed to determine that the earth was round is not at all known. The chroniclers, the Christian missionaries, had not been interested in what the Yoruba knew but in how to replace that knowledge. And sadly, within a couple of generations, they had succeeded in their mission.