It's always bugged me. What makes Africa (and possibly middle east) lack any form of development? It's as if they are stuck in a prehistoric age.
I dont think it's because of other countries intervention, because their development wasn't stopped. It pretty much didn't even begin.
inb4: because blacks
I'm not trying to be racist, but if you think Africans are different, then what made them different.
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Because zebras dude
Late agriculture and isolation.
Because Africa is basically the human homeland.
Everything you need to survive is there, the right weather, the right food, the right terrain, everything necessary for human life to develop and sustain itself is all over the place. Whereas anywhere else you have to get creative to survive.
>and possibly middle east) lack any form of development
The middle east and North Africa are far from lacking any form of development, for a long time their civilization was comparable to Europe. They're just got a raw deal when it came to cold war politics.
White people steal all of development to build their so called civilization.
Mongols kind of left them lagging behind too, didn't they?
Kind of, Mongols annihilated a lot of the progress the Muslim world had made and left them lagging behind but they were still far from savages. Hell, the Ottoman Empire was in the middle-east and it was a major world power well into the modern era.
>Everything you need to survive is there, the right weather, the right food, the right terrain, everything necessary for human life to develop and sustain itself is all over the place.
Like what? How is Africa's tropic weather better? How does Africa have more food? What's so great about Africa's terrain?
if you look up iq studies africans are over a standard deviation lower
This is a good answer. Necessity is the mother of invention and the Africans found it easier to live at one level, to survive and to sustain than to ever have to innovate. Which is fair enough, there is no proof to conclude that there is something intrinsic in humans that makes them want to innovate unless they really have to out of necessity.
Take for example war. War leads to great innovations from differing power structures having to find new ways to destroy the other. In the sub-sahara you just didn't find that through the kinds of conflicts that they fought.
Everyone living in mud huts is meme Africa senpai, and you saying the Middle East might have lacked development shows you might have a bad grasp of history.
>when it came to cold war politics
Lets forget about XX century. Lets forget colonisation. Even before that Africa lacked any political unity which would let them grow further than isolated tribes.
Interesting point. But even with "everything you need to survive" most of African history are
brutal internal tribal conflicts.
Mali was pretty developed wasn't it? Must've taken some brainpower and thinking to get all that gold.
>brutal internal tribal conflicts.
There more I read about African history, the more I get the sense that this is a red herring that European and American scholars are obsessed with and isn't really a big part of African society.
we have this thread 4 times a day. It will inevitably turn into racist bickering but I'll drop a few simplified suggestions:
1. The idea that some group "didn't develop" is a flawed premise. History is not Sid Meier's Civilisation, cultures don't develop down a linear tree. Expecting that everyone ends up like modern western society is absurd. All you can try to ascertain is why they developed the way that they did.
2. Jared Diamond memes aside, geography and the general environmental situation played a role. The Sahara desert is isolating, and contact with others has often been a driver of change. There are further deserts in the south, as well as difficult to cultivate jungles. Tsetse flies make harnessing draft animals very difficult, thus reducing the food surplus necessary for the development of an artisan or cultural class. Diseases like malaria also take a toll on human workers.
3. Remember the changes that created modern western society were pretty abrupt and revolutionary. Agriculture was the main source of employment for the world for most of history, and modern machinery for labour, warfare etc are very recent. The period of their emergence was roughly parallel to the invasion, enslavement and oppression of African groups, and very few groups made use of them before modern globalisation anyways.. Also note that modern African states very much have access to these technologies. They use cranes to build skyscrapers like everyone else.
>How is Africa's tropic weather better?
Nice and warm so you can just chill without having to worry about inventing clothes or not freezing to death whenever the winter comes.
>How does Africa have more food?
How do you think other apes eat? They just pull some fruits off the tree and get to work. And all the food that man developed eating are right there all over the place just like always.
> What's so great about Africa's terrain?
A lot of it is nice and flat so it's good for humans trying to run after Wildebeest or something.
You're both fucking idiots. The rise of civilization has nothing to do with 'necessity'. Africa's environment isn't some kind of paradise, and the rest of the world isn't some kind of hell. Civilization arose when agriculture was introduced into certain highly productive environments such as the Nile and Mesopotamia, resulting in population growth, the rise of cities, and increasing social complexity culminating in the emergence of a state society. Then it spread from those areas into other areas capable of sustaining it.
Agriculture emerged in Eurasia around 8000 BC, and in Africa around 2500 BC. This gave most Africa hardly any time to develop. Most of Africa has shit land and is infested with tsetse flies, meaning only a handful of areas could actually support high populations.
>Lets forget about XX century. Lets forget colonisation. Even before that Africa lacked any political unity which would let them grow further than isolated tribes.
I wasn't talking about Africa on that specific point, I was talking about the middle-east and North Africa.
>Nice and warm so you can just chill without having to worry about inventing clothes or not freezing to death whenever the winter comes.
Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean?
>How do you think other apes eat? They just pull some fruits off the tree and get to work. And all the food that man developed eating are right there all over the place just like always.
So if hunting and gathering is so productive in Africa, why did they develop agriculture and why did every population on the continent except for a few Bushman tribes adopt it?
>A lot of it is nice and flat so it's good for humans trying to run after Wildebeest or something.
Nowhere else in the world is flat? Africa doesn't have mountains?
You're an absolute fucking retard. Stop pretending to understand something you've never studied.
>we have this thread 4 times a day
I don't lurk here often, sry.
>I was talking about the middle-east and North Africa
Sure, for the most part, their development is comparable to Europe.
>War leads to great innovations from differing power structures having to find new ways to destroy the other.
So where is progress in Africa now? I see the war being here everywhere.
> Most of Africa has shit land.
Do you have sources on that? That would explain a lot if it's true.
>Unlike Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Mesoamerica, Southeast Asia and the Mediterranean?
I was mainly comparing to Europe and yes in a number of those places the winter wouldn't be so great and particularly in deserts just sleeping like an African tribesman at night would not be fun.
>So if hunting and gathering is so productive in Africa, why did they develop agriculture and why did every population on the continent except for a few Bushman tribes adopt it?
I never said they were more productive that agriculture, I just said they're productive enough to not be worth inventing agriculture.
>Nowhere else in the world is flat? Africa doesn't have mountains?
You would be wise to notice the most mountainous places in Africa like Ethiopia are also among the most historically well developed.
>You're an absolute fucking retard. Stop pretending to understand something you've never studied.
I think you're just looking to pick a fight on Veeky Forums rather than you have some massive fundamental disagreement with the concept that whilst Africa can support human life perfectly well it's environment doesn't exactly lend itself to innovation.
So in which part of Africa do you live in?
It had much more involved in it.
It wasn't the cause but it helped exacerbate it.
Half of the continent is covered in desert and jungle. Here's a map of cropland showing just how little of it is actually cultivated. and about the effects of tsetse flies: healthpolicy.fsi.stanford.edu
>I was mainly comparing to Europe
Well that's stupid.
>number of those places the winter wouldn't be so great and particularly in deserts just sleeping like an African tribesman at night would not be fun.
Half of the places I listed are as hot as Africa. I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, do you think Africans sleep outdoors or something?
>I never said they were more productive that agriculture, I just said they're productive enough to not be worth inventing agriculture.
But they DID invent agriculture, you moron. Anyway, you obviously have no idea how agriculture arose. It emerged in environments where hunting and gathering was so productive that people could settle down and population could expand. In other words, it emerged in the most productive environments, such as that of the Middle East in the early Holocene, not in the least productive.
>You would be wise to notice the most mountainous places in Africa like Ethiopia are also among the most historically well developed.
Nigeria, Mali and Sudan are not mountainous, and they were among the most developed parts of the continent. The Great Lakes region was mountainous and only tribal chiefdoms emerged there. Ethiopia was developed because of the Red Sea trade and a productive agricultural base, not because mountains made life hard. If anything, mountains are usually a barrier to the development of civilization.
>the rest
I'm pissed off at you because you're spreading this bullshit idea that Africa was some paradise and that civilization was born of hardship, which idiots on this board buy into. I hate when people who haven't studied a topic pretend to know what they're talking about.
Egypt is in Africa and it was one of the first civilizations.
And don't say they weren't really African, Nubia was just a bit south and they had civilization too. And they were black.
>for a long time their civilization was comparable to Europe.
Incorrect, for most of human history it was far surpassing Europe. Europe was a backwater until the last few centuries, while cities like Baghdad were like the New York City or Paris of the ancient world.
This
This.
>Half of the places I listed are as hot as Africa. I don't know what the hell you're trying to say, do you think Africans sleep outdoors or something?
No, I'm saying it's more important to worry about increasingly advanced methods of shelter when you have to contend with sub-optimal weather conditions.
>But they DID invent agriculture, you moron.
Agriculture emerged independently in 3 regions of Africa. Ethiopia, West Africa, and the Sahel. To be fair none of these are exactly the East African flatlands were humans emerged as I was describing earlier.
>Nigeria, Mali and Sudan are not mountainous, and they were among the most developed parts of the continent
I know, I never said mountains are where the most advanced African civilizations were, I said they are among them.
>If anything, mountains are usually a barrier to the development of civilization.
That's not exactly true. The most advanced civilizations of the Americas developed in some of the most mountainous of places.
>I'm pissed off at you because you're spreading this bullshit idea that Africa was some paradise and that civilization was born of hardship, which idiots on this board buy into. I hate when people who haven't studied a topic pretend to know what they're talking about.
Calm your batty. It's not that important when someone is wrong on Veeky Forums.
But the shelters were adapted to local conditions though and with local fucking materials.
>Calm your batty. It's not that important when someone is wrong on Veeky Forums.
It is when it kinda colours the development of of a thread such as claiming they are right and throwing a fit when proven wrong or go "nah nah nah nah I CAN'T HEAR YOU "
I think what a lot of people don't factor in with this conversation is the fact that most of SSA was a human based economy. Everything was done by hand. In many places the work is still done by hand. Plowing sowing reaping was all done with hand driven tools. If it wasn't done yourself it was done by your slaves. This I believe was an even bigger brain drain than tetse or sleeping sickness. When people did what little trade with outsiders they could buy their fancy wheeled tools and oxygen drawn carts but why bother when you have a fleet of able-bodied slaves to do it for you. Just look at the post civil war South US to draw the same similarities. Hell some people opposed the cotton gin because they didn't want their slaves getting lazy
>cities like Baghdad were like the New York City or Paris of the ancient world.
So you are saying the reason European civilisation surpasses middle east is lost religious wars? IIRC that region was in decline even before adopting islam.
Fuck off back to /pol/
b-but that's due to globalisation, and the spread of other groups' technologies, unlike every other city on earth and also almost every other development in human history!
...or something.
It was actually Mongols who destroyed all other civilizations except Paris and New York.
>and possibly middle east) lack any form of development?
WE'VE GOT AN IDIOT HERE.
For middle east, yes. But as far as I know nomads didn't dwell deep in Africa, did they?
This, why are you guys so scared to face reality? I'm not saying IQ is the sole reason for their stunted development but it would be intellectually dishonest to say it isn't even a factor.
Ok, let's say it's true. Then what made them have lower IQ? We all once were Africans, so what changed?
Caucasians and Asians migrated to climates that humans are poorly adapted to survive in. As a result the lower IQ members of our tribes died before they could reproduce, resulting in a slightly higher average IQ.
And people with high IQ are often isolated autistic and unable to work in groups, your point being?
Can you faggots make a pastebin document or google docs or anything so you can simply copypaste the answer and maybe make a sticky or something?
I'm really interested into this topíc, but lack proper time spent studying it.
I think some sticky with basic african history could improve this place and lessen the pol shitpost.
Did you know Africa is one big country?
No I didn't just like Australia is a continent right?
Actually, I always wanted to know more about the Berbers and the Moors and other north-African civilizations, and how far into the desert many of the nomadic people ventured and traveled.
I don't get it. Is asking about Africa automatically is a /pol/ shitpost?
I was poking fun at OP's generalization. Australia's totally a continent since its so big and also contains the Nation of Australia and the Emu World Order.
No, but claiming terms of why they didn't archieved or develop as and always comparing africans with europeans.
There's nothing more than a question why africans have failed to get to the same level than the rest of the world.
It always get infested with pol shit.
I made a new thread.
No, but showing a clear, fallacious bias based on race is. Africa certainly does not lack development. Look at any major African city and you'll see this. Polfags can't handle this though because it destroys their ignorant view of "muh white superiority!".
>Africa certainly does not lack development.
But... can you name a single major scientific discovery coming from (non northern) Africa?
>emu casualties that high
Auscuck detected
Because there is no room for higher IQ tobe useful in these primitive societies. The climate and available resources are plenty for small populations but the jungle and savannah works against trade and the development of larger cities. The environment allows for dumb shit like putting every boy through some dangerous trial to "become a man" which arguably works as some sort of devolution when it comes to cognitive capacity. Speed and strength is emphazied by their environment and culture, intelligence not so much. There is clearly less room/use for it there otherwise africans (especially sub-sahara) wouldn't be at the IQ bottom together with some prehistoric races such as australian aboriginals.
>What makes Africa (and possibly middle east) lack any form of development? It's as if they are stuck in a prehistoric age.
This line of thought makes you a nigger, in the Aaron McGruder sense of the word. In that you have this baffling misconception that could be solved by five minutes on wikipedia but you're trying to flaunt your ignorance for some reason.
Then paste that magical proof here and we shall see.
1. Development is not measured in terms of scientific discoveries. Uruguay and Argentina have high development, yet they don't have many scientific discoveries.
2. See
>Middle east
>Development never began
This has to be fucking bait. How can people be so ignorant? You do realize when most Europeans were living in caves, the Sumerians were carving out the most advanced civilization ever seen on the planet for its time. Don't assign the shit state the middle east is in now to what it was for a majority of history; a pool of innovation and discovery.
saved
>Europeans were living in caves, the Sumerians were carving out the most advanced civilization
And now we have the exact opposite :D
The Sumerian's descendants are still carving out the most advanced civilizations on the planet.
Oh please.
not him but you can trace europe to romans then to greeks then to egyptians then to babylonians and sumerians.
GENETICS BTFO
Citation needed.
Then no doubt iq is rising fast in africa since its so hard to survive there
why it's wrong then.
en.wikipedia.org
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>Civilizations influencing later civilizations.
Wow, user. Thanks for the insight!
>asks for citations proving that civilizations influence later civilizations in the previous post
>"ha I already knew that"
Damage control much?
I thought you meant you could link all of these civilizations to one genetic group specifically that originated in Mesopotamia, spreading out to Europe to create civilizations like Rome and Greece. Apologies if you misunderstood me.
not him, but you said descendants, not cultural influence.
That wasn't me. I assumed he was referring to descendants as cultural descendants.
Surprised nobody mentions the Emu genocide. one eighth the total population, man.
They needed a "Great Empire" to spread civilization.
isolation and geography and disease prevented unification and exchange of ideas and technologies.
Whereas the rest of the world had the silk road and Mediterranean sea to advance everything more quickly. Human civilization evolves faster where there is more population density and trade with people further away.
literally everywhere on earth it's easier for humans to survive wtf are you talking about.
And europe was behind everyone until the 1500s except for Sub Saharan Africa.
underrated. guns germs and keks!
The problem with IQ=intelligence is that their societies didn't collapse. The Khoisan people score 65 on IQ tests, yet their societies function perfectly fine. They developed language and have persisted for thousands of years. Don't you think they would've died out by now?
Mali managed to reach the same levels as the rest of the Muslim world. If they really had lower IQs, don't you think they wouldn't have been able to reach that point?
The kingdom of Kush arose around the same time as Egypt. Do Nubians have lower IQs as well?
Afro-asiatic people, arguable one of the most influential groups of people in history, originated in Ethiopia. The IQ there is also extremely low. Something doesn't add up here.
Genetically, humans have only been separate for, at the most, 70,000 years, a drop in a bucket on evolutionary scales. What caused every group of humans other than Africans to magically evolve to be more intelligent?
Celts and Germanics invented nothing up until very recently. Does that make them less intelligent as well? If so, why are their IQs so high? Greece and Italy both had the first Euopean civilizations. Why are their IQs so low in relation to Germanics, who didn't develop states until a millennium later?
IQ does not measure intelligence.
>ctrl+f capitalism
>0 hits
wtf
because pol can't understand that low IQ != stupid
So you're implying that groups of people from the Sahara, certainly one of the harshest environments on the planet, should also be the most intelligent people on Earth. IQ contradicts that. So, once again, why would non-Africans have higher IQs?
People on this board aren't receptive to the idea that imperialism has had any effect on post-colonial nations. Sure, I we could discuss how in 1400 some African States were on par with European states, and that Imperialism and the inclusion of Africa into a global market has been nothing but bad so far, but many people wont accept that as why Africa is a shithole today.
I think part of why this is left out in the discussion is the general framing of the questions as "why didn't Africa develop" vs. "why is Africa so fucked up today." It makes people look at it in a wider and more fundamental way and take into consideration factors on African development since its earliest history. I think many here would agree that the last few hundred years of colonisation, decolonisation and globalisation has negatively affected most of Africa.
I'd argue that a lot of it isn't so much that Africa didn't develop, but rather, all of the developing it did was wiped out by colonization. That's why I bring up colonization.
>early civilization was predicated on agriculture
>sub-Saharan Africa is absolute shit-tier for cultivation
>the small pockets where cultivation was possible, developed states and unique cultures
>small pockets were bordered by land completely unsuitable for development, so expansion was unfeasible
>completely detached from other civilizations, especially the powerhouses in Egypt, Sumeria, and the Indus Valley, so no exchange of knowledge/resources, one of the driving forces of innovation
>pocket-states quickly reach their zenith as a result, stagnate and die or fade back into obscurity
> Look at any major African city
youtube.com
>Everything you need to survive is there, the right weather, the right food, the right terrain, everything necessary for human life to develop and sustain itself is all over the place. Whereas anywhere else you have to get creative to survive.
Completely the opposite.
To be honest, blacks, not dindus, but real darkness blacks must have some genetic predisposition nullifying them from forming intellectual societies, the highest they could get was literal tribal society.
Break it down. The Egyptians came and left. They were around for about a millennium, really think about that length of time.
Then the Greeks and Phoenicians, they covered a lot more ground than just Nubia. That's pretty much the whole of Northern Africa down to the Western coasts.
Within a fairly shorter period of time than the Kangz, the Romans came. Basically reclaiming and pruning the land grab.
After the Romans fell, guess who the but the fucking Vandals tried it on for themselves, although short lived. Who comes to save the day? It's Byzantines.
All finally falling into the hands of Arabs.
So roughly from 3,000BC-700AD, and that's disregarding the continuation in the middle ages.
And yet after all this time, what more compelling evidence does anyone need to prove that there is a distinct incompatibility with blacks and intellect.
oh wow trash on the streets, an unprecedented sign of primitive locals.
The city I live in dumps enough raw sewage into the ocean to make swimming questionable. and I can't go into a park without finding discarded bottles and chip bags. People are filthy, and modern consumer culture exacerbates that.
I think the most important part of the IQ argument is that if groups average 65/85 IQs, there surely must be highly intelligent people that have several SDs above the mean. Just because many people have an 85 IQ doesn't mean they ALL do. Even if we assume that great leaders and inventors require high IQs, there must have been at least a handful of 140s out there. What's even more important, though, is what you pointed out: The fact that civilization doesn't require high IQs. You don't need a 100 average to know how to use a fucking plow or sort papers. The whole IQ thing falls apart from the get-go in my mind.
>the inability to innovate
the intrinsic factor of not being able to innovate tech due to landscape
the extrinsic factor of not being innovative due to disparity of other people selling service during colonization and now globalization
and what the fuck is the point of being the leader if all you can do is hard work and not see result (asian exceptionalism)
Because the Sahara hasn't been a factor in human evolution long enough to create its own group of people. People don't even have permanent settlements in the Sahara proper as far as I know
>People don't even have permanent settlements in the Sahara proper as far as I know
like 5 seconds on google could rectify that error.
I think you're not seeing this from an evolutionary perspective.
The first humans evolved in Africa. Let's look at Africa and then look at the humans that evolved there and see what works out, yeah?
Humans are pretty shit at everything. We don't have claws, or sharp teeth or anything. We've got horrible peripheral vision and don't run very fast. We're not particularly strong and we're really soft and exposed. Our eyesight isn't that great, nor is our sense of hearing.
It's a good thing that we're tall, though. I mean, we're not tall like giraffes, but we're apes that stand upright. That's something, wouldn't you think? Good enough to see over some tall grass, perhaps.
Oh! You have opposable thumbs. Most of us do, anyhow. So we can use shit like spears. And we're fucking intelligent. Like, rational intelligent. Well, at least most of us are intelligent. So we figured out how to, like, throw spears. Or make more spears. And give them to our friends.
While we're not particularly fast, what we can do very well is keep homeostasis, even on the move. Some people on Veeky Forums might not know this, but if you go outside and it's hot, or if you go for a run, you sweat. Well, early humans were fucking naked usually, so they were always sweating and always staying cool.
Another thing about sweating is that it lets you stay cool without having to stop to pant, like dogs or buffalo or gazelles. Especially gazelles. Because while gazelles are fast, they use a lot of energy to run. We are intelligent and work in groups. We are good at long-distance running, so we can indeed outrun a gazelle. All we have to do is make it fucking exhausted.
Africa actually isn't that hot, mostly. Sure it's shitty, and it's sunny, but ni- black people evolved first, in africa. Their skin is more able to reflect UV light or something. You'll notice that all the dark-skinned people tend to concentrate in VERY sunny environments.
cont.
2/2
In summary, humans evolved to suit a continent just fine. Unfortunately, Africa is pretty shitty in terms of, like, dirt and shit. Well, it's got plenty of shit. Or it had plenty of shit, before all the gazelles got ran down.
What I'm trying to say is, yeah. Fine. You and me and everyone else alive RIGHT NOW probably would consider Africa to be shit. It is, if you want to have the kinds of lives we have. However, for primitive humans ages ago, africa was fucking perfect.
It would be perfect still, for modern life, if it wasn't for what is likely a multitude of Severe Fucking Problems that I'm not entirely sure on.
europeans were not living in caves at the time
