Surfing isn’t solely a Polynesian cultural invention, the practice existed independently in South America in modern day Peru and in West Africa in modern day Ghana In 1640, a German writer documented children riding waves off the coast of Ghana. 130 years before Cook ever saw Hawaii. Historians have traced independent surf traditions up and down the West African coast going back nearly a thousand years.liberia, Senegal, Ghana, Angola, Sierra Leone all have extensive surfing cultures and histories. You’ve never heard this because colonizers didn’t have a word for what they saw, so they called it “swimming.” By the time they had a word for it, that word came from Hawaii. Some colonized cultures get romanticized. Others get erased. Ghana’s surf history was never lost. It was buried in an archive for 400 years while a cleaner story got told instead. #africanhistory #blackhistory #surfing #ghana #africantiktok
0.0% ERengagement of this clip — above the author's average (0.00%)
top 27%outperforms 73% of the author's clips
184%of the author's average views
