There are tribal savages living right next to a settled civilization

The tribal savages have to live somewhere. What, is there supposed to be a semi-tribal buffer between the two groups?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish

>What are Degar/Hmong
Or a gazillion other examples.
Turns out that empires are often tyrannical and some people prefer the freedom of savagery to the slavery of civilisation.
Consider taking a look at the book 'The Art of Not Being Governed'. It's an interesting look at this subject.

Happened in real life OP. Early Russian empire shared borders with samoyedic tribes, Chinese had semi-nomadic people surrounding them in parts of their history, medieval African kingdoms had ooga booga land ten steps away, etc. Sure, the more settled always had an advantage and tended to win out, but its still relatively realistic. It more or less depends on WHY the savages choose not to settle as to how it can be utter bull.

Coming from Brazil, yes it does.

Or Kansas.

because fuckton o' guns> most tribal weapons
This leads to the assumption that those that cannot protect themselves are in need of care, which denotes that they are children that need to be taught, and as we all know children are little shits that don't know how to do anything and deserve to be put in their place, and therefore cannot possibly fathom the man with guns reality without using drastic action.

None of which applies in a fantasy setting

That is an excellent book and I'm pleased someone else on Veeky Forums has read it.

You mean Ar Kansas.

>Ar Kansas
That sounds like some faux-Arabian kingdom. Funny how just splitting up a word can make such a difference.

How come?

We burn Rome to the ground

Again

Historically there almost always is as border villages populate before steppes or 'wilds' and almost any 'empire' in history had a pretty sizeable buffer zone of a few dozen miles before known habitations would contain hostile peoples. Most medieval cities were actually charnal houses of death with much lower life expectancy than the surrounding countryside (living in London was hellish).

Realistically savage is a political term and not one that accurately describes people up until the industrial revolution and then it really just means 'people who are not in the industrialized economy'.

Separating people with indoor plumbing from people without really just describes infrastructure. Where are they getting the copper pipes, exactly? The irrigation channels? The outboard access to water so that it will flow away from their village?

Like you could set any of that shit up without money or training.

No one here in America would make that distinction. Your entire continent are our tribal savages. The term is local, political, and inaccurate.

>left out ya idjit

4/10

But we did that already

Can't we go burn down those other guys who keep saying they're romans?

What about those other guys in the south?

>wouldn't the savages eventually figure out that indoor plumbing is preferable to shitting in a hole and wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection you can't treat because there are no doctors
It's fantasy. Maybe it's a tribe that has a form of plumbing and their own doctors, but otherwise stick to a traditional way of life.

Like japan! Keep your hole, just add sewers.

How far would you consider "right next door"?
My current campaign is revolving around a group of tundra savages, but there is real civilization a couple of hundred miles to the south, which is where the players are from originally.

Many great empires were surrounded by (near) useless lands so they lived just next to literal tribes.
The Roman Empire after the conquest of
Gaul.
The chinese empire and all their barbarian neighboor except Korea/Japan and in a lesser measure the south.
All middle-eastern empires being oasis of civilizaions surrounded by sand nomads.
The mesoamerican civilizaions just next to jungle tribals.
Heck even western europe and eastern europe for a long moment.
Ect...

No wonder they hated neighboring countries

They should have been more like neo-Luddite ecoterrorists who are trying to "reclaim" the land but just end up blowing up stuff.

This post is using tribe and steppe nomad interchangeably. The people inside the korean empire and just outside of it would be indistinguishable from each other.

Other than lines on a map once you're out in rural villages there is basically nothing that separates one from the next. They're all tribes. A roman in a village is the same as a germanic person in one of their villages.

Also, none of them EVER had plumbing. That wasn't anything but a ludicrous luxury outside of a tiny number of cities under mountains until the industrial revolution.

You're thinking Soutwest Florida (namely swamp lands where plumbing is a bitch to install). Kansas is just boring middle class farmers.

Basically Kansas is the agriworld of the US.

Have you ever heard of the steppes m8
The mongols were rather close to people who lived in walled cities.
Sure there were some states between them and the fuckhuge chinese empire or kingdom or whatver, but those states in-between were way more civilized

>It's a fantasy world. It does not absolutely adhere to the laws of reality, and has no need to do so.
here we go again with 'its fantasy lol I dont need explanation for anything wheee' bullshit.

>'its fantasy lol I dont need explanation for anything
It's true tho
if you want everything explained perhaps fantasy isn't the right genre for you?

I'll explain if it's relevant. There's no need to explain the exact processes behind every single thing in fantasy fiction. You don't need a four page essay on why a dragon is able to achieve flight. Reasonable people will accept that the dragon is flying and leave it at that.

Unless of course they are turbo fucking autistic without even the barest shred of suspension of disbelief and/or eager to prove how "smart" they are by picking apart every little fucking thing. But most people leave that know-it-all middle schooler routine behind and actually try to have fun without irritating everyone around them with pointless, obnoxious pedantry.

just because magic, a traditional part of the fantasy, often has unexplained origin does not mean that you can insert whatever lolrandumb shit and don't have to justify it.
Think of it this way: when you read LOTR the appearance/nature of Balrog and Gandalf's ability to defeat it both present themselves as unexplained magical things. However the setting knows what Balrog is, why does it appear where it appears and a relative powerlevel between Balrog and a Maiar.
Just because some things are magical does not mean they also defy logic.

>How do you even justify this?
You don't, the trick is to keep thm Tribal, but drop the Savage part and actually give them a cultural identity and some sort of civilization, like the Iroquois Confederacy, or the Cherokee before Jackson ran them out. They keep the tribal identity and many of the more important aspects of the culture, but at te same time you just make them another civilized group of people that just so happen to look, speak, and believe different things and would much rather not deal with people who aren't them.

Even the Germanics had villages and some form of early political organization, and the Scandinavians despite being the poster child for surely savages were civilized and organized and had to deal with politics (hence the reason why Jommsborg both rose and fell)

Basically, make them an actual people rather than just the stereotype gained from marauding Scythian tribes that the Greeks had to deal with.

Magic does not excuse a setting from having internal consistancy. Those that attempt to handwave how and why the magic actually exists and effects the world, and instead use magic as a shitty writer's convinience tend to be shit writers without a single creative bone in their body.

Magic should not make things not make sense and sweep the shitty writing under the rug, it should be a tool that helps make things make sense by saying how the magical/fantastical elements are making the otherwise impossible possible.
Sure, its good to have some suspension of disbelief, because no one can write perfectly, but as with all things there is a limit one can go before realizing that the handwaving "a wizard did it" cop out is just stupid and only there because the writer is a hack.

People wiggling fingers and saying gibberish to shoot fire from their eyes? Sure that's fine. Fighters swinging swords so hard they create DMC air waves? Sure if there's the precedent. Completely ignoring all logic though is retarded

>just because magic, a traditional part of the fantasy, often has unexplained origin does not mean that you can insert whatever lolrandumb shit and don't have to justify it.

why not? Its magic, I aint gotta explain shit.
>lotr
I did not give 1/10th of a fuck about where the balrog came from orwhat it was. It was a cool scene and that's all that mattered.

Yeah, because Tolkien never went back and explained and elaborated on things long after the fact.

Isn't that exactly what the Gruul do though?

Ask the Native Americans.

Answer, no, they can't figure it out until educated by said civilization. That doesn't happen until they are conquered. Just ask the actual Indians. They still shit outdoors after hundreds of years of colonization trying to bring civilization.

Only conquering works.

If you don't think through why the borders are there and why the civilisation and tribals don't mix, you'll likely miss or fuck up relevant details (like presence or absence of trade, level of hostility to strangers etc). Then when your PC make some trivial move like importing a shitton of weapons and arming a tribe to spark a war of unification you'll either have to handwave a lot of bullshit or admit that the whole balance of your region was hinged on noone ever doing some fairly simple and logical things. Both options suck.
It's somewhat fine to go 'this region is like that, if you ever go there I'll detail out the reasons why', although this approach leads to global inconsistencies -- but to start with 'you don't need an explanation' is shit.

>why not? Its magic, I aint gotta explain shit.
I hope I'll never have to play with you.

>because Tolkien never went back and explained and elaborated on things
That's cool, although suboptimal. Tolkien, however, didn't go full retard like the user above declaring 'itz magic I aint gonna explain shit' for every thing that happened.

>why not?
The only functional difference between magic and science is that magic doesn't exist. Hence, you can make your own rules for it. However, from an exterior point of view, magic needs to function as a science. Predictable, follows set rules, doesn't contradict itself and doesn't come out of nowhere. Narratively, if someone could just wave a magic wand and fix anything, then it's bad storytelling. Having magic viewed scientifically within the world is also bad storytelling as it can destroy the mythos and aesthetic.

Harry Potter having magical loopholes save him every other fucking book is bafflingly dumb and makes everything up until that point seem meaningless. Magic is never clearly defined and only given the faintest of passing details (oh you need to do this specific motion and incantation, except when you don't). As such when it does magical bullshit nobody can declare it defies any rules, because there aren't any established fucking rules.

If you walked out of your house and saw a big futuristic metal dome in the distance, you'd probably be scared, confused, and maybe a little curious. You'd probably ask around with those nearby, trying to see if anyone knows what it is, before you go find the smartest person in town or the leader of your town to see what you should do about it.

It'd probably get decided that someone should get a closer look. We'll assume that you're the most competent one for the job, so you head out to this big futuristic dome. As you get close, you note it's the biggest thing you've ever seen. Near the base is an opening, two figures in futuristic armor standing guard. You try talking to them, but they don't seem to speak the same language. One of them beckons you over, laughs about something, and hands you a fistful of rare gemstones before shooing you off.

That's about how it would look to some barbarian tribe who comes across a walled city and their scout is handed some shiny beads.

Yeah, they might assume that life inside is better, since these people seem so advanced and apparently the average guard has that sort of pocket change, but it's tough to say what they should do about it? Throw themselves down to try and beg for work so they can get more beads? Try and attack them to get their wealth? Try and learn their tongue to enter as equals? Or remain wary and fearful and avoid these strange people?

Even if the barbarians figure it out, it doesn't necessarily mean that the city will have them, nor does it mean that all the barbarians will agree on the same course of action.

Not him, but I wouldn't really agree with that. You look at something like Lovecraft's stories,(most of horror, really) or things like Norse mythology or northern European folklore stories, and magic DOESN'T follow any particular set of rules, and is inherently chaotic, in a big bad world that can never be understood no matter how hard you try.

It's not really something that meshes well with the current cultural zeitgeist, but it's hardly inapplicable.

So what you're saynig is you have the attention spand of an 8-year old? Most of us are a bit more mature and intellectual than that, and if something wierd happens its generaly considered good writing t at least attempt to explain why it happened, even with magic.

Say the reason why X thing works is because of some magic. Okay, that's fair enough, but how is the magic just making things work? Is it a kind of spell? A Ward? Protection from a deity? What is the magic actually doing to makeit work?

If the magic is workig purely because "lol its majik dun haf t expran it XD" Then why does the story exist to begin with? If magic can break logic and everything, why doesn't Gandalf just snap his fingers and teleport the One Ring into Mt Doom? Or dunno just tn the ring into a jar of natty peanut-butter and eat it? Since we're operating under "lol its magic" then there would be no reason why he couldn't just do this, meaning there would be no point to LotR actually happening

In order to have a cohesive story and narrative that doesn't collapse in on itself the moment you actually start thinking, you need some rules and background logic to build around, which is doubly so for any fantasy setting that prominently features magic since you need to actually have a way of explaining how and why magic does what it does. When done smartly, magic can be an excellent tool that allows you to build a vibrant world more fantastical and vibrant than ours, but when mishandled and abused as a convenience, then the whole thing just turns into eitherschoolyard children going "Nuh-uh, I'm the super and your dead!" make believe games, or a poorly butchered Monty Python sketch that was made by a fan who had no idea what he was doing. The setting stops being an actual fantasy setting and instead becomes a shitty parody of itself, much in the same vein as when tv and things make shitty spoofs about Dragon Ball Z, or becomes just an unfunny slog like a Seltzer and Friedburg movie.

Or indigenous people in the Amazon, although many are using modern goods, even if they use them to live in the jungle and fish/hunt better.

Some of them are much more primitive.

Or like, those random guys in the Indian Ocean who throw spears at anything that approaches and scream bloody murder, etc. It's not clear they have a solid grip on fire, or somehow use it less than you would think. Something like that.

They live on a shitty little rock and it's easily accessible by modern boats, it's just nobody wants it that much or to bother with them because they try to kill you with spears and rocks, so they haven't been personally studied

when that "civilization" is brazil its pretty easy.

The difference is that even in those settings and stories, magic tends to have at least some rules or warnings to them, and tend to follow some patterns. While they are mystical, you still get the sense that the magic is limited and follows some internal logic, even if it is inexplicable to mortals.

Take Norse like you mentioned. Runic magic and Oaths had power to them, and that much was understood as well as the inate rule that unless you were a God, and even then only on occasion, there was some give and take in how magic worked. Odin had to sacrafice himself and hang to gain the pwoer of runes, The Well required you to give up what you hold most dear to drink the water, Balder was immune to nearly all harm but not from weapons not made of metal, etc. While the rules are never truly explained, and the magic is mythical and mysterious, there is still a sense of underlying consistency in what magic can and can't do, and how it somewhat works and has its affect. There remains an internal consistency and sense on how things happen, and the magic is used to explain the how and why, rather than just using it as a shitty cop-out of "lul its magic I don't have to explain shit XDDDDD :^)"

As some who has never lived next to Indians but has talked at length with a lot of people who have I would say you are wrong.Indoor plumbing is not that big of improvement to sanitation if the population one know how to bury the poo in a safe way, and two has a low population density. A lot of people forget that waste water is a issue that can become deadly if plumbing gets broke.

>wiping your ass with leaves that may or may not give you an infection

This may come as a shock but people did find out safe things to clear their asses with before TP was a things. If they live like that and are in their home region they will know what leaves will not cut their asses when using it to clear up. If they do not get a cut in their neither regions a infection from that act is unlikely.

>internal consistancy.
Internal consistency does not mean explaining in gross detail the mechanics behind every fantastical event. Shit even Star Trek knows when not to go too far explaining how everything in the setting works. But then you go on to defend suspension of disbelief using examples of shit that defies conventional explanation. So I don't know where you actually stand on this.

If you're saying that the setting should not contradicting its own set precedents, I agree with you. If you're saying everything needs an encyclopedia volume on the why and how, I do not.

"Why don't the barbarians have plumbing and electricity" isn't hard to explain, if it needs to be. Shit, there are places in Kentucky and West Virginia that illustrate that point quite nicely.

But that doesn't mean I don't agree with what said. I can tell my players that's the way it is and leave it at that until it becomes relevant. If we never delve so deep into barbarian culture as to need to know why they're still shitting in holes, then that's fine. If we do, that's also fine.

What I take issue with is this idea that world building means creating an entire detailed alternate history and science from the get go. Too far in that direction and you're attempting to come up with several entirely new and distinct languages for every culture, economies, tax policy, the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow. It's madness.

And yet every time someone says "you might not need to go into detail explaining that" it's met with the same baseless reactionary contempt.

>Predictable, follows set rules, doesn't contradict itself and doesn't come out of nowhere.
That's not entirely true. Magic is not science and can actually be unpredictable random chaotic monstrous thing that does whatever it wants, appears and disappears randomly and defies explanations. It's just so hard to create good stories with a premise like that, most of the GMs will never be able to pull it off, falling instead into the lolrandumb territory. Also, it detracts from what fantasy want to be -- a conflict of good vs evil.

Examples with 'magic' like this: Roadside Picnic (the novel STALKER is loosely based on) and from the same authors 'Definitely Maybe' where magical events impede the scientific process of humanity.

Have you heard of the inner city?

>this is what anprims actually believe.

The inner city likely has plumbing and computers, chief. Your sarcasm would be better served using a rural area as an example.

>And yet every time someone says "you might not need to go into detail explaining that" it's met with the same baseless reactionary contempt.
Never seen that. It's always, as illustrated in this thread, the "ain't explaining anything it's magic" crap, or it's lolfun cousin "the Ugly King is a gold dragon polymorphed into a cow! It flies around breathing fire! Because it's alcoholic and does whatever it wants!"

The fractal approach to setting (no details until you zoom in) is a reasonable thing, although you should know who the Ugly King is and why does he hide in the ruins long before the PCs reach the throneroom.

Not entirely, but as I said, if something comes along and solves the plot and isn't explained or set up, then it's bad writing. You absolutely can and SHOULD have magic seeming impenetrable to the scientific lens. Magic isn't "dont have to explain shit", it's "I can't explain shit." That's what makes it magic.

A better way to state it is that science has laws we obey without knowing them, magic has rules we don't completely know. And some rules can be broken, sure, but working within the rules you know is prime fantasy and magic lore.

Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans. They didn't. The reason here is because negroids a different species and CANNOT think or reason in the abstract like caucasoids.

If you are going to have this in your setting, you'll have to make them different species, too. Notice that orcs are near-universally tribal and at a lower technology level than humans and elves. The inbreeding that games say is possible ignores is a jewish lie. The real-world genetic problems when going between the species collectively called "humanity" can't be ignored.

>. So I don't know where you actually stand on this.
That's because you haven't been paying attention to the argument moron. No one is saying that magic can't be used to allow crazy things. The point we're trying to make is that it shouldn't be used as a cop-out like this chucklefuckIs trying to advocate.
I have no idea where you get off trying to defend him, but you seem to be retardedly making assumptions about what we're arguing for and against, and kep assuming and fighting against this strawman thattheonly other alternative is "explain EVERYTHING!" when no one is arguing for that.

Again, seeMagic should be a tool to hlp allow for fantastacle elements., however its existance and some basic rules and reasons should be established so that the whole thing doesn't crumble under the weight of its own plot holes. It doesn't matter how vague or specific they are, as long as there is a precedent that allows crazy stuff to happen, then you can go as far as you want with it so long as you remain consistent.

Oddly enough, you mention Star Trek, and ironically its scifi technobabble is actually the least agregious thing about it. Looking on the surface, the series lays and introduces some ground rules on how their magic bullcrap works, and at least tries to pretend that there in an in-universe consistency even as they make shit up. Even if its never explained, the fact that there are boundaries and rules as to what can be done is eluded to enough that having suspension of disbelief is a non-problem regardless replicators, nutrino fields, warp-factors, and tachions. Really, the only thing that even gets close to threatening that sense is thier idea of how a semi-post-scarecity society works, but that's an unrelated topic

The settled civilization is basically East St. Louis.

So to sum-up
>Magic=Good/Cooler setting
>Mysterious Magic if fine, as long as its either consistent or has a reason for why it be
>You don't have to explain everything, just have precedents or reasons.
>"It just werks!" is for lazy idiots with no attention span or creativity
>The is a noted difference between "lel Empire last forever because MAJEEK" and "Using magical forms of mass-communication and enforcement of laws on leaders via Geass, the empire was able to remain stable". Learn the difference, it just might save your life, or at least ensure you don't look like an idiot 3rd grader

>t. /pol/lack who failed biology and has no knowledge of how phylogeny works
Learn the difference between species and sub-species retard

Also, West Africa Ethiopia would disagree. Hell, those guys enslaving and selling their less-civilized neighbors to Muslims was how the Slave Trade that much of Europe's colonies relied on.

Check history. Extrapolate from it if you want.

The tribal land has terrible diseases only the locals are immune to, or know how to treat. Civilized individuals dying in their lands is taken as proof that their way of life is righteous.

They live in places unsuitable for the agriculture of civilized peoples. Arid steppes, deserts, swamps full of peats and bog iron.

Put some mountains between savages and settlers.

They have plumbing made of wood and druids are, among many things, doctors. One of them recomends those leaves because they have antiseptic properties.

The western clans disdain of those conforts for they produce effeminates. See how weaklings manage to reach adulthood in cities of stone? And some of them bed a woman without having to gift her with a wolverine's pelt?

They actually spend less time getting fed than settled ones. The forest provides those that knowt it.

The tribes and tribals we have here are massively retarded, like in most everything they do.

I remember awhile ago some rather large settlement was given for some illegal logging/government racism. Several million US. Not even joking their leaders spent all of it, even extending credit, on cars. Nothing but cars.

If that was exclusive to brazilian tribals, the entire world would be a better place.

You're mistaking a human trait for a regional one.

When has a non tribal community spent all their money on frivolities? Never heard of it.

1. Ethiopia was originally caucasoid, as any source will tell you. It was overrun by negroids.
2. "HURR MUH SUBSPECIES" excuse which ignores every single piece of scientific data ever recorded. Pic related, it's your "argument" being shat on from 5000 miles away.

>I have no idea where you get off trying to defend him
I agree with his point of a detailed explanation potentially not being necessary. And even in his original post, he said that if it needs to be explained it will be. Very simple. You should be able to get that at least.

Well this thread has gone down the shit hole anyway now that we've gone full /pol/ pseudoscience.

Former nomads who had society based around holy pilgrimage, but their holy sites have been destroyed so now they've just given up and settled down somewhere. Technology hasn't quite hit them yet, will in the next decade.

...

Because we ride out and crush the tribes if they unite, sometimes we pay them fight or raid each other

Well it's happened historically, most often because the tribal peoples' geography and/or demography made settling in large numbers difficult.

Most tribes are actually descendents of runaways and outcast who rejected civilisation and degenerated into tribal states.

>Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans
Europe was hardly relevant to anyone but Europe until the Renaissance
Europe had to use said africans because they couldn't survive in Africa
Blacks ran Mali, which owned Timbuktu which was the learning capital of the world after Baghdad got Mongol'd and before the Renaissance.
Not only was the richest man who ever lived black, but his predecessor knew the Americas were across the ocean due to science, he just died before he reached them.
If said rich black man didn't go on vacation across the sahara white people probably wouldn't have had their little Renaissance and have stayed irrelevant to everyone but white people.

And in a more tangible tech level thing, most of Subsaharan Africa was iron age despite not being able to trade ideas and technology like Europe, Asia, and basically the rest of the world. Savages don't basically figure out iron and fucking carbon steel blast furnaces of all things,
Source: news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1916&dat=19780914&id=MOogAAAAIBAJ&sjid=SG4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1193,3647298 and revolutionize their agricultural systems by themselves

This is good post.
Especially that last bit about infrastructure. 'Civilisation' doesn't just suddenly happen because you want it to happen.

Had something similar in the game. Only tribes were living in mountains and treated those who lived on plains and in cities with disdain. They traded with them but never intermarried because plainers were considered too weak and untrustworthy. Also not many plainers could go through a ritual of maturation that called for a man to catch a mountain goat without any ranged weapons.

Orc tribes who too lived in the mountains were actually considered much more respectable than humans of the plains.

If that's your case, you may want to see this then:
hariragat.blogspot.com.br/2014/05/highland-southeast-asia-for-your.html

>A Tradition of Defiance
>The great hook for FRPG worldbuilders to use Zomian concepts, I think, comes from the scholars’ central hypothesis about this ‘ghost’ region: that the highland peoples are who they are, and live the way they do, as a conscious act of refusing to assimilate into the lowlander-dominated nations surrounding them.

If you squat when you shit, your butt cheeks and anus and sphincters all line up so that minimal wiping is required. The sitting posture is really not ideal for human defecation ergonomics.

No but like india is a great example. On one side of the country you have one of the most cost effective missions to mars out there, while on the other you have literal tribal warfare, with some nice dead people in a freezer who are totally alive for religious reasons in between.

God damn you are fucking retarded.

>this triggers the /pol/

user, when you are shitting in the woods and geting ticks all up into your asshole when there is a perfectly good and clean toilet not so far from you, you are retarded.

>Timbuktu which was the learning capital of the world after Baghdad got Mongol'd
You do know that Baghdad was still the learning centre of the world after the Mongols as the Hulagu strongarmed the city into becoming an economic powerhouse?

>Africa had 50 millennia to stop being niggers and start acting like Europeans.
I love seeing this because its completely retarded and hangs on the rickety bridge that is " A black kid bullied me in dschool" dehumanisation. No you retard, the majority of africa didnt progress because africa is a shit place, with little safety for free time and shit nutrients for brain growth. Europe and china however both are literal edens. Bustling in resources and agreeable temperatures.

Like shit you probably think inteligence is genetic instead of based on variables like culture and food.

6/10 bait made me respond.

>This thread

>I will give up a certain amount of suspension of disbelief for the sake of fantasy.
>EXCEPT FOR INDOOR PLUMBING REEEEEEEEEEEE!

You all have autism.

O boy African history revisionist troll is here.

First all, the richest man in history was not Mansa Musa, it was King Solomon who was literally recieving 25 tons of gold a year in tribute. (Inb4 Solomon wasn't real, the amount of historical evidence for Musa's and Solomon's wealth is the same, nearly zero.) Secondly, one African tribe learning how to make a blast furnace speaks nothing for the state of the rest of the continent.

>Europe and china however both are literal edens.
Africa has more potential resources than Europe and China combined for ancient Kingdoms. Yet, Africa managed to neglect to domesticate one plant or animal on their own, or really use their natural wealth in any meaningful way to join the other world superpowers. I mean, Musa's been mentioned above, and he bankrupted his entire treasurey to go on pilgramage to Mecca. "The richest man in the world" literally did the modern equivalent of being "nigger rich" in the name of bling.

This. /pol/ memers and retards think 'progress' is a linear arrow and works just like a videogame.

Of course a fucking retard from Brazil doesn't know shit.

You know how much money the pharmaceutical industry puts in cataloguing shamanic knowledge from jungle tribes so they can use that to find new kinds of naturally occuring medicine?

True. Notice that in your example, it's typically a civilized nation in fertile lands, bordering "primitive" people living in arid lands.

No point in conquering empty steppes or deserts.

Africa is the same size and has the same landmass as all of Europe, China, and the US combined.

It's not one large contra, it's a fucking huge ass landmass on the scale of Russia, except with less accessible natural resources.

>king solomon
>real
Hahahahahaha, get out of here creationist scum.

Reminder that it took THOUSANDS of years for farmers to gain the same quality of life that nomadic hunter-gatherers had.

You can't really blame hunter-gatherers for not jumping on the farming bandwagon when for most of existence farming was a horrible choice that people had to be forced into through societal and religious rules.

The animals in Africa don't domesticate. Most of them are murderous. They manages cows, and that's really all they did domesticate....because the fucking LIONS and HYENAS EAT DOMESTICATED ANIMALS.

As for resources....diamonds? Why bother. Wood? That's a laugh, the wood there is fucked up shit that comes in boules and lumps when you're lucky and takes such massive effort to cut down and hew that it takes entire work gangs to take down one tree without modern equipment - mahogany is the hardest wood known all on it's own. Steel? Not in a fucking desert without volcanic activity to provide the basic materials for smelting.

Yes, lots of resources, but you actually have to put infrastructure in place to take advantage of any of it, and they didn't have the infrastructure to do that with because they were too busy dealign with killer animals and surviving on what can grow in the desert when it's not monsoon season.

That was legitimately the case in the book "the Eye, the Ear, and the Arm", which was a book about three private detective mutants in indistinct future time Africa. Arm was my favorite: he was a spindly elongated man who was deceptively strong.

What's more plausible? That two real figures were raised to a mythical status in history, or that atrributions of their wealth should be taken as literal? Both have evidence for existing, the question here was about their legends.