![]() An evil person’s punishment was the most extreme retribution Niger-Congo society could confer on any person: The individual was ritually forgotten by his or her society and thus unable to receive blessings, bound to roam Earth alone. Wicked individuals faced serious consequences for their actions, but at no time were they thought to have communed with a satanic figure. This faith had no devil figure, no embodiment of evil. Evil was believed to be caused by human malice or ill will that was animated through curses and medicinal mixtures employed with witchcraft.Įvil was perceived by the ancient Niger-Congo peoples to be a human force caused by people’s feelings of resentment, envy, greed, or the like combined with techniques of witchcraft. The spirits included ancestral and territorial spirits, which were both forces that had more immediate consequences for the day-to-day lives of the Niger-Congo than did the creator god. From at least the sixth millennium b.c.e., Niger-Congo religious philosophy consisted of a creator god, who stood at the zenith of the religious hierarchy and was the maker of all things various other levels of spirits and a realm of evil. Niger-Congo religious beliefs and practices centered on basic human concerns regarding the creation of the world, human origins, malevolence caused by evildoers, and protection and beneficence emanating from the spiritual (divine) sphere. ![]() These ancient peoples spoke ancestral Niger-Congo languages, inhabited the woodland savanna of West Africa, and produced microlithic stone tools from the seventeenth millennium b.c.e. The practice among the Niger-Congo-speaking peoples of a religious belief system that included an omnipotent god of creation can be traced back to the sixth millennium b.c.e. The Niger-Congo religion recognized three levels of spirits: ancestral spirits, territorial spirits, and, by the sixth millennium b.c.e., a creator god, suggesting an early manifestation of monotheism.
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