A notched bone some twenty thousand years old. A surgeon’s manual that sorted injuries by prognosis. A mathematics textbook signed by its scribe. Granite walls laid without mortar, libraries of hundreds of thousands of manuscripts, and some 100,000 shafts cut to carry water under the Sahara.

This book gathers twenty-six relics of African science, mathematics and engineering, from the Ishango bone to the Bamum script, and sets each one beside the story that was told to deny that it could have been made by African hands.

Arranged in five parts each focusing on the science, trade, scholarly works, the architecture and the engineering of pre-colonial Africa, it pairs photographs of each object and site with the record: who built it, what it shows, and what was said about it by those who could not accept that Africans had made it.

Collector’s Edition: 210 × 279 mm, 156 full-colour pages on 150gsm coated paper. Green buckram cloth with a gold-foiled spine, matt dust jacket with gold foil, printed endpapers, antique-gold sprayed edges, green ribbon marker, black-and-green head and tail bands. Printed to order in the UK. Free UK delivery, ships in 10–15 working days.