How can there be so many (conflicting) ethnicities so densely packed together?

I'm skeptical about this map's accuracy

I'm asking a question about tribal division in africa.
I don't know why everyone is replying with european ethnic groups.
Obviously something changed in europe that allowed for larger nations to develop that didn't happen in africa and i wanna know why

>Obviously something changed in europe that allowed for larger nations to develop that didn't happen in africa

It's called empire nigga, read some Thucydides or Tacitus and you'll see all these tiny little irrelevant Germanic and Celtic ethnicities that don't exist anymore because they're part of larger states. Hell, read the Aeneid and you'll see the same thing in Italy, and read any Greek text and you'll see the same thing in Greece. No one in Greece thought of themselves as "Greek" for most the period we call Ancient Greece, and their dialects were barely inteligible. Then you have now-extinct languages like Dacian and Thracian and Illyrian to the North of them

>No one in Greece thought of themselves as "Greek" for most the period we call Ancient Greece

This is not true. Unless by ancient you mean bronze age, as opposed to classical, but then that seems like an irrelevant comparison

Environmental Factors working in tandem with Genetics and Epigenetics.

If you watch the map, the central band has more numerous pockets of diverse ethnicity than either the northern half - the desert, or the southern half - the southern grasslands.

The central band is what is the rainforest. The climate is eternally wet and nature is always bountiful. It is the type of environment which did not require large-scale migrations or hunting expedition to obtain food. This type of climate produces cultures which are stagnant in terms of desperation and need. The lack of need inhibits any higher invention or social discussions.

Second, the rainforest is dense and inhibits large-scale movement and thus socialization in mass scale. Large scale socialization is a primary need for making larger nation.

This fact is not isolated to Africa. The Equatorial bands aka rainforests in every continent are home to similar cultures. Similar types of diversity are also found in places with Monsoonal climates which do not swing to extremities i.e. either desert or snow. E.g India and SE Asia. However, here due to a productive climate, and freedom of mobility, variation in climate nation states did evolve out of primitive tribal groups.

North Africa did see the rise of nation states - Kemet and Demet and then unification of both of those cultures. The Berber Kingdoms were also large entities, even though they were of multiple ethnicities

I'm rusty on Southern African History, perhaps other can shed light on the evolution of nations.

Thank you for answering the question

It was the same in Europe during the middle ages though, people more than 30 miles appart had problem understanding each other (see the eggies/eyrem anecdote). Languages only began to standardize in the 17-18th centuries with the 19th century and nationalism kicking it into overdrive.

for fuck´s sake i don´t care what happened in europe, i wanna know why this didn´t happen for africa as well.

Lack of colonialism, and isolation over large periods of time.

Also geographic conditions

Look at all those straight lines. How many of those do you think accurately border ethnic groups? So, say you have 20 ethnicities before, and they're all severed by Britbong arbitrary borders. Each one is forced to separate themselves further because of nationalism, fights for control of a shared government, and proximity to other ethnic groups.

Geography leads to isolation, leading to acculturation.

Nation states came to Africa very recently
Europe also used to be very diverse before the rise of nationalism caused linguistic and tribal identities to be replaced by a national identity.

>densely packed together
Memes aside, Africa is really big. Like really, really fucking big. You only hear about the same places over and over or "Africa" as a blanket term because most of the continent is either wilderness or small villages/towns. There's also the whole birthplace of humanity thing, all non-africans descend from a minority of populations that left, the vast majority of original humans stayed there. This does not mean there was a single wave of migration or that it was a single group that left, though, but sub-saharan populations are descended from a lot more groups than everyone outside them.

Niggers are still in the mesolithic in terms of human behavior so they are still in that stage where tribes slaughter eachother for the simplest reasons.

No user, the word 'Greek' comes from Latin.

Fucking butthurt
>europe was the same before it started to not be the same
You're avoiding the question and implying what op never did. You're the one dwelling into racism there friendo.

>The central band is what is the rainforest. The climate is eternally wet and nature is always bountiful. It is the type of environment which did not require large-scale migrations or hunting expedition to obtain food. This type of climate produces cultures which are stagnant in terms of desperation and need. The lack of need inhibits any higher invention or social discussions.

microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Tropical_Rainforest

The Mediterranean.

Africa didn't have the means to support a large and centralized empire, which means that there was less cultural assimilation. Oh, and they could not wage wars on eachother nearly as well as Europeens. Look at a map of different packs of wolves, if you like.

Because these "ethnicities" are basically village tribes
Africans often genocide other villages

Because Africa is fucking huge and has a lot of geographic barriers separating various peoples from one another.

>Africa didn't have the means to support a large and centralized empire
Except in Ethiopia, Songhai, Mali, Sokoto, and Mwene Kongo, yeah.

Because African empires never got passed the fuedal stage in societal development.

>which means that there was less cultural assimilation. Oh, and they could not wage wars on eachother nearly as well as Europeens.

What

Why do people here think Africans couldnt communicate with each other. You know people spoke multiple languages and the abundance of languages used in trade.

Africa was never the same thing in its entire history just like every other continent.

If you are actually interested in the topic and willing to read something on it, there's a paper by Ian Hodder on his anthropological study in Kenya. He arrives at the conclusion that the individuals are strongly conformist and their identity depends on their unique material culture. He also proposes an explanation to the question why one of the peoples more easily accepts influences from the other one. A very influential study for the development of Theoretical Archaeology.

Hodder, Ian 1997 The Distribution of Material Culture Items in the Baringo District, Western Kenya; in Man, New Series, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Aug., 1977), pp. 239-269.

The paper is on Jstor.

>How can there be so many (conflicting) ethnicities so densely packed together?
Try to think about those "small" splotches on the map in terms of human walking distance.I there is no easy access to horses then the range of an ethnic group becomes rather small.

Thanks for the visualization. However, without your thoughts, I'm presupposing here.

The northern parts (Nordic Lands and Canada) are highly productive but they also swing to extremities of seasons. They see a very long winter and such climate produce cultures who value "preservation of sustenance" and "socialized hunting or gathering" [we are speaking about the ancient times]. The climate itself inhibits population burst and whatever population exists, learn to socialize and gather in larger numbers. Another thing is that it is believed that humans have reached that far much after the last Ice-Age.

I hope this is what you are inferring.

>The huge biodiversity of bacteria and fungi in the rainforest is not due to nutrient rich soils. In fact, the rainforest's soils are quite nutrient poor. What powers the recycling in this ecosystem is the constant thick layer of leaf litter atop the forest floor. This is where the decomposition occurs, and is the home for a wide range of microorganisms like bacteria, fungi, and even protozoa in all different shapes and sizes.

>From early on, people have had issues interacting with rainforest soil. Settlers didn’t realize how different this ecosystem was from the temperate forests they were used to, in which all the nutrients were within the soil. Much of the rainforest was cleared due to this misconception. When crops were planted in attempts at agriculture in these tropical climates, the people were at a loss when they died. Sadly, while we know better today, rainforest is still deforested and degraded at an alarming rate. Profits on goods such as wood, exotic species and other things are still enough incentive for companies to continue taking what they want of the ecosystem far beyond a sustainable level. Slash and burn agriculture is also an issue because much of the rainforest lies in third world countries, where people are simply trying to survive and using any resources they have.

>How is one ethnicity different from the other if they're so close together?

They're not.

> The Magumbo people stir their mud soup to the right!
> The Obungo people stir their mud soup to the left!
> Wow! Two totally unique and distinct African cultures with their very own traditions!

This encouragement of tribalism by ivory tower academics only serves to keep the Africans poor and stupid.

You really know jackshit nothing about the shit you are talking about.

Ah. I get it. Then I would like to apologize that I wasn't clear in my original post. When I spoke about the bountiful nature - I wasn't thinking about the agriculture. Rainforest cultures have never engaged on their own, in any agricultural practices. I should have said, gatherers.

Because they never really went through nation forming. Take Poland for example: originally there were Masovians, Polans, Lendians, Vistulans, Pyritzans, Obotrites, Goplans, Wolinians, Opolanians, Lupiglians, Golensians, etc. Nowadays we just call them "Poles".

In Germany there were Saxons, Franks, Cheruscians, Suevians, Chattians, Tencterians, Thuringians, Hermundurians, etc, today their descendants are just "Germans".

Africans didn't go through a similar process so every little Ooga Booga village is treated as a separate ethnicity.

Their environment promoted stagnation which in turn promoted genes which promote the thriving upon such stagnation. A circular self-feeding cycle. Evidently their historical circumstances and how it affected them culturally and genetically resulted in little being done in the grand scheme of things.

>Rainforest cultures have never engaged on their own, in any agricultural practices.

They did though actually they just engaged in the things that people do to make farming in rainforests work.

>Africans didn't go through a similar process so every little Ooga Booga village is treated as a separate ethnicity.

That's massive as fuck bad generalization though. Like the whole village is an ethnic group thing is a meme at this point. There was never one group that was X for all history they changed and shifted and formed new identities and split apart and absorbed others and coalesced into bigger groups. They did have nations though but they just aren't really well known.

You whole statement is basically saying stuff that can't be disproven (because not even Science has dealt with it or proven it. IF oou can find an intelligence gene you won a nobel prize basically) and banking on people to go along with your adhoc explanation.

Hmmm. Yes.

I would presume that those practices are quite specific, compared to the extensive nature of farming elsewhere in the world?

It's a hyperbole, but it's pretty accurate. Germans, Poles, Russians, French or English managed to hammer their shitty little tribes into nations, Africans weren't able to do that. Modern Nigeria has FIVE HUNDRED (!!!) "ethnic groups".