How did our ancestors communicate securely?
Believe it or not, the image below (source: British Library) is an encrypted message (constructed from cowrie shells and seeds) of peace and goodwill.
Over the coming days/weeks, I will be diving deep into how the ancient ciphers of Yorubaland work, their construction and their application in today's world.
Potent ciphers can also be built with the Odu Ifa binary system. It is after all a 16 x 16 matrix system capable of generating 256 random binary digits.
"The àrokò messaging system was used among Yoruba-speakers in Nigeria to send letters over long distances (often confidentially). These letters were made from materials such as cowrie-shells and seeds and their meaning was deduced from factors such as the position of each item in a message string, or even, as Karin Barber writes, puns in the Yoruba language. Sending a comb to someone meant a separation or break-up, because the Yoruba word for a comb is òòyà, and the verb yà means to part."[1]
References:
1. Karin Barber and Stephanie Newell, ‘Speaking out: Dissent and creativity in the colonial era and beyond’ in Gus Casely-Hayford, Janet Topp Fargion and Marion Wallace (eds), West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song (London: British Library, 2015), p. 124
1. Karin Barber and Stephanie Newell, ‘Speaking out: Dissent and creativity in the colonial era and beyond’ in Gus Casely-Hayford, Janet Topp Fargion and Marion Wallace (eds), West Africa: Word, Symbol, Song (London: British Library, 2015), p. 124
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