Opele and Odu Ifa Conversion to Base 2 and Base 10

Centuries before the first computer was ever invented, West Africans were already programmers who developed an advanced computing and mathematical system called  sorcery or witchcraft by people who didn't understand the underlying science.

Opele divination chain is simply 1 byte. Megabytes and gigabytes are higher units of Opele, depending on how many times it is thrown on an opon Ifa divination tray.

The chain is made up of eight concave shells divided into two groups of four. Each group is representative of four cowrie shells, which implies that the eight shells are eight cowries.

Each concave shell has a front and a back corresponding to the split side and smooth side of a cowrie shell.

Each group of four shells has sixteen possible outcomes that are the sixteen principal ODU.

A shell, like a dice or cowrie, is a transistor whose front is 0 or off and back is 1 or on. Each group of four shells is therefore 4 bits (binary digits) and the eight shells are 8 bits.

Since 8 bits = 1 byte, each group of eight shells is 1/2 byte while the chain itself is equal to 1 byte. In computing, half byte is also called a nibble.

An ODU is a nibble or half a byte. The sixteen principal ODU are therefore equal to 1/2 byte x 16 = 8 bytes.

When the double line is substituted by 0 and the single line is replaced by 1 each ODU is 4 bits or 1/2 byte and the sixteen principal ODU are binary numbers.

Consequently, the sixteen principal ODU are:

Oyeku 0000

Okanran 0001

Otuurupon 0010

Owonrin 0011

Ika 0100

Ofun (Orangun) 0101

Iwori 0110

Osa 0111

Obara 1000

Odi 1001

Ose 1010

Otura 1011

Irosun 1100

Irete 1101

Ogunda 1110

Ogbe 1111

When converted from base 2 to base 10 the sixteen principal ODU are decimal numbers:

Oyeku 0

Okanran 1

Otuurupon 2

Owonrin 3

Ika 4

Ofun (Orangun) 5

Iwori 6

Osa 7

Obara 8

Odi 9

Ose 10

Otura 11

Irosun 12

Irete 13

Ogunda 14

Ogbe 15

Some Examples of how ODU Ifa is converted to decimal number:

1. Oyeku

0000 = 0x8 + 0x4 + 0x2 + 0x1

       = 0

2. Iwori

0110 = 0x8 + 1x4 + 1x2 + 0x1

       = 0 + 4 + 2 + 0

       = 6

3. Otura

1011 = 1x8 + 0x4 + 1x2 + 1x1

       = 8 + 0 + 2 + 1

       = 11

Therefore, the sixteen principal ODU are Yoruba machine codes as well as a coded way of writing some numbers of the decimal numerical system.