• 1 U. Beisel, A.H. Kelly, N. Tousignant, 2013, p. 3, on insects in general.

2Although termites may be “sure to unsettle ontological and epistemological distinctions”,1 this essay does not link up with such paradigmatic claims, as the data of the current exploration are anthropomorphic and regionally limited. Most of the data for this essay were in fact drawn from the West African savanna and Sahel—where both authors have conducted long-term fieldwork among West African Mande peoples (i.e. Bamana, Kuranko, Kisi, Maninka).

• 2 http://www.termiteweb.com/the-macrotermes-termites/ [accessed 27 September 2021].

3It is known that termites engineer the earth’s fertility, and certain types of termite mound—especially those of the Macrotermes termites, which are unique because of their “fungus cultivation habit”2—are strongly linked to indigenous cropping practices that profit from termites’ soil engineering.

• 3 For a visualization of the immense irrigation system that termites create, search for “casting term (...)

4Termites’ extensive underground tunnel networks function as giant irrigation and aeration networks helping rainwater to infiltrate the soil, groundwater to rise and pass through it, and air to circulate within it. Termite mounds are associated with increased soil humidity as they draw moisture from aquifers to the surface of the soil,3 and plant roots follow their tunnels.

• 4 P. Hauser, 1978.

5Termites in fact transform the earth: they directly improve the fertility of soil by enriching the topsoil and recycling woody organic material. They carry fine mineral-rich particles of clay from deep underground (10–15 m and up to 70 m),4 a process which both enriches the soil at the surface and compensates for erosion. Termites also concentrate minerals, especially calcium carbonate (CaCO₃), which improves soil fertility. Termites also reposition the fine clay particles by eating and then defecating them.

• 5 J. Fairhead, M. Leach, 2003; A.F. Iroko, 1996.
• 6 J. Fairhead, M. Leach, 2003, p. 200. However, people do not always welcome all species of termites, (...)

6Despite termites potentially being pests, Fairhead and Leach and Iroko both detail how farmers in many regions prefer fields with many and large termite mounds, as they are a sign of soil fertility and moisture.5 Kuranko- and Kissi-speaking farmers of Guinea single out abandoned termite mounds as good sites for growing pepper, tobacco, squashes, and other crops with high demand for nutrients.6

• 7 J.M. Hunter, 1984; J. Fairhead, 2017. It is cosmologically significant that it is reported that wom (...)
• 8 A. van Huis, 2003.

7Termite earth is referenced as a direct source of nutrients in human consumption. Many pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa experience cravings to eat the earth inside termite mounds. By eating earth already transformed by termites, such women seek to transform the vitality of their own unborn children by drawing on the transformative power of the termites—in the language of modern science we should refer to this as acquiring essential mineral supplements from the termite earth.7 Termite earth is used in excision and circumcision rituals too, by blacksmiths who incorporate it into medicinal preparations they apply to the wounds of adolescent girls and boys in preparing them for the reproductive vitality of adulthood.8

• 9 See, for instance, S.P. Belcher, 2006; G. Dieterlen, 1952; J. Jansen, J.R. Fairhead, 2020.
• 10 Van Huis gives abundant data and references first of all for large-scale consumption of termites al (...)

9Termite mounds are a very common and widespread theme in the creation myths of societies in West Africa, as people learned to value the transformations of the earth effected by termites, and their appraisal of such transformations will have been the inspiration for the numerous oral traditions in which termite mounds feature as the cradle of life.9 Such myths attest to the central place of termite-related knowledge in human society. In a habitat liberally sprinkled with termite mounds, the centrality of termites to creative forces is almost self-evident, given their significance in successful food acquisition. In addition, it should be noted that the value of termites is not limited to their effects in preparing fields for agriculture, for in being themselves edible they act as a food source.10 Termites provide important clues about the agricultural calendar too (thus contributing to food acquisition), for the annual flight of the winged termites (called alates or aletes; see below) may not only be described as rather miraculous, but occurs predictably at a certain hour on a certain night each year, providing a precise seasonal timekeeper for farmers.

• 11 Baobab seeds have a hard, thick peel that requires external force to be opened, thus giving space f (...)
• 12 Cf. G. Dieterlen, 1952; S. Brett-Smith, 1994.
• 13 For pythons in creation myths, see S.P. Belcher, 2006; G. Dieterlen, 1952; J. Jansen, J.R. Fairhead(...)

10Quite often the termites’ contribution is not directly visible as a protagonist in African creation myths, when termites afford other beings, such as trees and other animals, the opportunity to feature. For example, termite mounds regulate the germination and growth of certain flora, most notably baobabs11 and the Ficus seeds that sprout in the fungus gardens that the termites cultivate to feed themselves. Indeed, we find that these specific trees are themselves “trees of [the origin of] life”.12 The same function as originators of life is attributed to certain other creatures such as pythons, which are known to live in abandoned termite mounds.13

• 14 For examples, see A.F. Iroko, 1996.

11Termites, or at least their mounds, are therefore important in the shrines and rituals of initiation-based societies that address matters of fertility, both productive and reproductive.14 For instance, Mande hunters go to termite mounds to revere their ‘ancestor’ Mande Bori. And the shrines of the Komo secret society that deals with matters of masculinity have the form of a termite mound. And, last but not least, ‘the governor’s palace’, the central shrine in the Hauka ritual that Jean Rouch filmed in his famous 1956 film Les Maîtres Fous, is a concrete construction shaped like a termite mound.

• 15 A.F. Iroko,1996. Samuel Ntewusu (University of Ghana at Legon) noticed, as a child, that human corp (...)

12Termite mounds are seen not only as the origin of human life but also as the end of it: termites recycle human corpses and thereby link the living with the parallel world of the dead where the disembodied reside.15

• 16 Termites are evolutionarily related to cockroaches and are strictly vegetarian; ants are related to (...)
• 17 Mature alates have wings, and when they sense that conditions outside the mound are suitable, they (...)

13Throughout their lives people in West Africa feel inspired by termites, in the example they set in their social behaviour, their code of teamwork. The fact that termites work in a disciplined manner in large highly organized groups reflects values strongly upheld in initiation-based societies and labour group organization. For example, the job of worker termites is to make the mounds and produce food for soldier termites, which are incapable of feeding themselves from what is naturally available. In return, the soldiers protect the workers against attacks by ants.16 The alates’ sole purpose in life is to mate—a temporary fourth category, alates are produced only when a termite population reaches a certain size—and by doing so to establish a new termite colony elsewhere.17

• 18 In A. Van Huis, 2017, there is an overview of ideas shared widely all over sub-Saharan Africa about (...)

14Political institutions and authority structures following the logics of the tripartite organization of a termite colony—with an organized and industrious social world with a royal couple as the centripetal source of everything, supported by soldiers/warriors and workers/slaves—are common in West Africa, and it is tempting to suggest an influence, given the termites’ impact in the many spheres of life.18 Indeed, the social metaphor derived from termites was noted by early Portuguese visitors to West Africa:

• 21 For historiographic background information to the Sunjata epic, the primus inter pares among the ep (...)
• 22 C. Giesing, V. Vydrine, 2007.
• 23 Analysis in J. Jansen, 2016. See also S. Brett-Smith, 1997.

16Sometimes the lines between species blur and termites are detectable indirectly. This, we argue, is the case with the famous Sunjata epic, a narrative that seems to develop without any reference to a crucial role for termites.21 But, as Cornelia Giesing has documented, West African political elites often justify their authority by claiming descent from a hero who was born to a wild woman captured in the bush, where she lived in a burrow like an aardvark.22 Sunjata’s mother Sogolon the Ugly, for instance, is described as such a wild woman with characteristics of an aardvark—her hunchback body form—and those of a porcupine, an animal that lives in the holes dug by aardvarks and, like aardvarks, leads the life of a solitary hunter.23

• 24 Biologically, the aardvark is a unique animal, as it is the only surviving species of the Tubiliden (...)
• 25 This aardvarks-against-termites image may explain as well the seemingly bizarre epithets ‘Killer-of (...)

17This aardvark lifestyle suggests a deep, but antagonistic relationship with the earth and termites. Termites are in fact the main food of aardvarks, and aardvarks work tirelessly to destroy termite mounds so that they can eat the termites, of which they may consume up to 300,000 per day.24 An aardvark-like woman/princess is therefore a good mother-figure for a warrior-child destined to rule an agricultural society, in particular to overrule a predecessor when this predecessor is a blacksmith, a person whose knowledge is in particular mediated by termites.25

• 26 We mention such excellent studies as E.W. Herbert, 1993; S. Brett-Smith, 1996; W.E.A. van Beek, 201 (...)
• 27 See the ‘explicit imagery’ in E.W. Herbert, 1993.
• 28 E.W. Herbert, 1993; blowing air into the furnace symbolically represents ejaculation.
• 29 Mutatis mutandis, people in West Africa have attributed great forces to the product that blacksmith (...)
• 30 A. Gottlieb, 1982, 34 referring to scholars who represent menstruating women as polluting and dange (...)
• 31 The understanding of iron production as analogous to sexual reproduction is beautifully illustrated (...)

19The transformation of iron ore into metal is considered equivalent to the production of life. Numerous studies26 describe how West African civilizations conceptualize the smelting of iron as reproduction of human life: the furnace is built to resemble a woman’s womb and breasts,27 the dual bellows resemble a man’s genitalia.28 The insertion of the tube of the bellows into the furnace to produce iron is analogous to sexual intercourse, and there are associated sexual taboos across the region regarding the blacksmith’s work. For instance, while working at a furnace, a blacksmith is not allowed to have intercourse with a woman (i.e. ‘another woman’) and is not permitted even to spend the night in the same room as his spouse, since any hint of intimacy with another woman might compromise the ‘birth’ of the iron. The cycles of reproduction of people and iron must be rigorously separated from each other.29 Women are a danger to the furnace; and in particular menstruating women are kept at a distance, since menstruation is recognized as a sign that a woman has not conceived a child and so is temporarily seen as the “antithesis of life”,30 again threatening the ‘birth’ of iron from the furnace.31

• 32 Nouns in many West African languages are not gendered. A word for ‘man’ or ‘woman’ is added to the (...)

20The high esteem for this knowledge of ‘life issues’ is not limited to male blacksmiths; their female counterparts32—usually called ‘potters’—are equally and similarly esteemed. This becomes clear when one considers smelting as earth technology. As a matter of fact, ‘smelting’ is not restricted to the production process of iron; rather, it is the process of transferring the power of the earth into society. The key to understanding blacksmiths and potters is that male blacksmiths negotiate with hard earth (in the form of ferrous ore), and their female counterparts work with soft earth (in the form of clay). The clay is as essential to male blacksmiths too, because they use it to construct the furnaces they use to smelt the iron ore. Both male and female earth technologists transfer/integrate earth into society, and they all accomplish the transformation of earth into a societal product.

• 33 H. Florusbosch, 2000, he demonstrates that the numerous art historians who have worked on potters a (...)

22Potters integrate clay from termite mounds into their pottery, and we see this as recognizing the cosmological force of termite mounds as indispensable to the process of transforming soft earth into hard, impermeable pottery. Henrike Florusbosch, who studied potters in south-western Mali, recounts a myth about a time before there was clay, during which potters used termite mounds to produce pots. The first clay was obtained as a result of a sacrifice made to a bush spirit (jinnu) who transformed a termite mound into clay, thus providing potters with their raw material. Ever since, in return for the clay, potters have been obliged to offer an annual sacrifice to the bush spirits. When manufacturing new pots, potters use crushed pieces of old pots and material from termite mounds. Partly technically inspired, the practice also firmly grounds (pun intended!) the relationship between the earth and the pot’s future owner.33

• 34 We have heard of cases in which the furnace was constructed on the site of an (abandoned) termite m (...)
• 35 There may be some chemical or technical logics in integrating clay from termite mounds in mud const (...)

23Male earth technologists use clay from termite mounds in the construction of their furnaces.34 A large literature describes such earth technology from a purely metallurgical point of view, chiefly related to management of the temperature in the furnace.35 As a furnace used for smelting must be able to withstand very high temperatures and a great deal of internal pressure, a real danger to blacksmiths has always been lethal explosions caused by faults in the materials used to construct their furnaces, making the ability to select the right type of clay a crucial skill. In our view, however, it is incorrect to see the use of termite mounds in the construction of furnaces as chemical knowledge to avoid explosions; it is the relationship with the termites that is of vital importance. The choice of termite mounds as construction material for furnaces or the choice of a termite-infected piece of wood illustrates how people comply with cosmological processes by teaming up with termites, because of the transformation processes the termites induce.

• 36 For detailed exemplification, see S. Brett-Smith, 1994 and 2014.

24Blacksmiths do not limit their integration of the termites’ work only to the production of iron and pottery but also into their third specialism, which is the production of ritual objects, such as their carving of masks and dyeing of cloths.36 For example, male blacksmiths are also the only people allowed to sculpt the masks used for the all-male Komo initiation society of the Mande regions of West Africa, in which the blacksmiths also play a leading ceremonial role.

• 37 This theme is not restricted to Africa; it seems universal. In Greek mythology, Hephaistos was marr (...)
• 38 For an overview of versions of the Sunjata epic that feature the clash between Sunjata and Sumaoro/ (...)

25Male blacksmiths may have a powerful position in many societies,37 but in West Africa they maintain this position, more than other people do, by integrating a contribution by termites. This offers, again, a new perspective on the Sunjata epic. All versions deal with the seemingly disconnected tales of the origin of Sunjata’s mother Sogolon the Ugly and the clash between Sunjata and Sumaoro/Sumanguru, a sorcerer-blacksmith. From a ‘deeper’ perspective, that of the termites, the two tales are closely connected, however, as the one who draws on the powers of the termite is eliminated by the son of a terminator of termites; he who complies with cosmological processes is eliminated by brute force.38

• 39 For this reason we have avoided linking the powers manifested by termites analytically to the much (...)
• 40 Artisanal miners in West Africa consider the use of modern extraction technology to increase produc (...)

28So far, we have noted that those who have worked with termites and benefitted from their activities have experienced them as benevolent. Hence, in West Africa, termites and termite mounds are integrated into ritual life, the production of utensils and medicine, and stories told about human existence, so that the contribution of termites makes a positive impression on us.39 This is different from the contribution by earth spirits, which have recently received a certain amount of analytical and ethnographic attention, for the relationships of earth spirits with humans are ambivalent, with their wrath a constant threat to humans.40

• 41 Such programmes insist on compensating local populations for the losses they suffer from mining act (...)

30An understanding of the earth and respect for all its affordances may also shed new light on how large-scale commercial resource extraction violates people’s commitment to and caring for the earth. When African governments sell concessions to multinational mining companies, they sell more than inert minerals—something that is rarely considered in corporate social responsibility (CSR), yet which can undermine their declared principles.41 Perhaps unsurprisingly, questions related to the earth as a vital substance cannot be negotiated through CSR programmes, which of course do not respect the termites’ contribution and do not address the matter of the earth’s aggrieved spirits. Bad times will follow, and vernacular understanding will argue that the economic outcomes demonstrate, even validate, the anger of the spirits. Dealing with large-scale mining is therefore perhaps the greatest political challenge currently faced by West African governments … and the greatest cultural threat faced by West African societies.