Memory Board (Lukasa)

The Luba people of the Democratic Republic of Congo have a rich and ancient history dating back hundreds of years, with an oral tradition that talks of the migrations and dynastic lines on which modern Luba culture is based.

The keepers of the history of the Luba are members of the Mbudye society, whose sacred role was to keep the history from generation to generation so that the Luba heritage would be preserved. This sacred and living chronicle of the culture could also be referenced should a dispute arise based on descent.

To achieve this goal and memorize the enormous amount of Luba oral history, members of the Mbudye society utilized a mnemonic device known as a Lukasa. The Lukasa was always of generally rectangular form, with one or two heads rising from the top, probably representing original ancestors.

The body of each board however was different, in that the various stories of the heritage of the Luba were represented by beads or incised designs, that the particular society member would be able to remember by touch or sight. For example, a specific set of migrations of a certain chief might be represented by five beads; each a single place that the chief stopped at on the way to his ultimate goal. The importance of each may be augmented by using a larger bead for a more important point.

Additionally, some Lukasa simply have raised or incised designs, serving the same function – at once appearing as a simple board with strange patterns, each line or group of designs would represent a complex part of the oral history; sometimes taking hours to recount an area no larger than a centimeter square.

For a pre-literate society like the Luba, the Lukasa was a brilliant device that allowed the individual historian to recount vast amounts of data by reminding him of pieces of a larger story.