When I started reading your post, I must admit that the first thing that popped into my head was “I am sure most of these names would be from the western world and would be men”. But I was happy to see you acknowledge that there may have been people from other countries or even women who may not have been known or celebrated at that time.
While growing up in Nigeria, I observed that smart people were typically seen as crazy or even mocked. You were expected to conform to the expectations of your community and you dare not think differently. Knowing this, I am pretty sure that those who possibly fell into the category of Humboldt probably went unnoticed.
Yes, I agree. It's not my normal style to ignore women and people who are not from Europe, but it's really difficult to find evidence of anyone else in this window of time who might have had a claim to full knowledge.
Trust me, I agree with you. It is one of the major issues we have in Nigeria, in my tribe and even in my family. We the youth, seek to learn more about our past but nothing was documented. Our history lives and dies in the memories of our ancestors which is so sad because we want to hear about the great people from our history. The intellectuals, the warriors and artists of the past are all unknown to us.
No one knows this yet, but my plan for this Christmas is to get as much of my living family members together and then start documenting all of the stories they used to tell us when we were children. I am passionate about learning about my culture and my people, so that maybe 100 years from now, someone will write about the intellectuals, warriors, linguistics, scientist, artists and so on from Nigeria.