Educate me

[onlymark]

Is is now a common belief that mankind originated in east Africa and spread throughout the world. So in effect we all started out equal.
Then leaps forwards were made by the Egyptians, Arabic nations, India, Mayan civilisations and the Chinese to name but a few. Europe lagged behind.
Africa, south of the sahara, did nothing.

Time passed, empires rose and fell, developments in all disciplines took place, Europeans became the colonising giant after a slow start and ruled the world (apart from I suppose China, but we got handholds in many places there).
Africa did nothing.
The biggest home-grown thing that showed African advancement was the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, which relatively are not impressive compared to the rest of the world.

What made Africa advance so little over the time of human existence?
They may well have been held back by colonisation, but that's no excuse for the thousands of years before when not a thing happened.
Whilst inventions and advances were being made all over the world, they didn't. How come Europeans advanced so far and subjugated Africa so easily when we all started out equally all those millennia ago?

Dare I say it? Are Europeans more intelligent? Is it because of climate? Social factors?
So basically two questions -
1. What made Europe and Europeans eventually rule the world when all mankind started off equal?
2. Why didn't over the thousands of years Africa develop also, except where they had influence from the Arabs or Europe?

[Deleted]

I've often pondered about this too. And I think a lot of it has to do with climate and where the country is located. People in the colder countries have had to live in a different way to the ones in the hotter ones. They don't take siestas for instance in cold countries because there is no need for them. So what else did they do instead with their time, stuck inside as they were? They planned, they experimented with science, inventions, building, etc.

This in turn gave them the know-how on how to get to far off countries, and what happened then (with colonization) is well documented. And so changed the way the world is now. Droughts and extreme heat, where it's hard to grow produce has probably added to the lack of advancement in some countries in recent history also.

[onlymark]

We all started off with the same brain so there's got to be something.
As regards the climate thing, then why did Arabic nations make such great advances in mathematics, the sciences and the arts when it was hot there and not a lot grew?
In Africa, especially near the equator, the climate is extremely pleasant, never too hot or too cold, the soil is fertile and productive. Yet little happened to drag them out of the dark ages.

What I want to know is why, apart from a bit of a thing in south and central America where they did advance for a while, why is it, or was it, that native American Indians, Aborigines, Māoris and the numerous south east Asian inhabitants, (probably the original occupiers of the land after finding their way from Africa) as well as those in Africa, were still doing the same things they'd done for thousands of years in the same way whilst many other nations made advances?
Climate can't be everything.

[Deleted]

Have you ever heard of the phrase ''when push comes to shove''? I see Historical Europe in kind of in that way. It was over-crowed in some areas, disease was rampant (the Plague for instance, that wiped out many at the time). They needed to find cures, experiment, get out and explore. The European countries, although dis-connected by language, were connected more so in other ways, just by being so much closer in miles to each other. They interchanged ideas and knowledge.

Other places like Africa, people didn't change much because there simply wasn't the need to. As for advances in mathematics, well India was very big on that too. But they were more civilized in some ways centuries before the Europeans were. I'm not an expert on climate, but I think it probably has a lot to do with it, at least at some point in time in history. Advances in the 'arts' are not the same as advances in science. It's wonderful to see what people in history drew and painted and sculptured, but that alone did not help in the advancement of their nation.(s).

[onlymark]

Yet disease was rampant in Africa also. Yet it also is a land mass not divided by seas, so even though they also spoke different languages, there was no interchange of ideas and knowledge.
In the time of the earliest civilisations in Mesopotamia and Egypt there was nothing developed in Africa and the population of Europe was still minimal.
What happened? What was the spark that set off other areas and not Africa? And if we initially developed the same, all were hunter/gatherers, then why didn't Africa move on? And if it wasn't for outside influences, probably never would have done.

I take in what you say though Deyana, I'm not disagreeing with you as such, I'm just going back earlier.

[bixaorellana]

I'd say the only way to discuss this is by objectively stepping outside our own culture. By "our culture" I mean that of anyone here who grew up in Europe or one of its New World former colonies, including Australia and New Zealand.

Our view of civilization and development is the one always held up to us as a model. It includes imperialism, giant wars, major dependence on other countries for a food supply, as well as "developments in all disciplines".

It can be argued that Africa developed a way of life suitable to its needs and that its problems are due to the "colonising giant". As far as we know, "moving on" may not have been the right thing for the life of the planet or its inhabitants.

[Deleted]

I see all sorts of parallels and contractions across the planet regarding development.

For example, we have been faced with the "American model" since WW2, and to many Americans, anything that the rest of the world did differently was backwards and pathetic. Did the rest of the world agree? Not always.

Soon we will be subjected to the opinion of our upcoming Chinese overlords. Will their opinion of the way we live be correct?

[onlymark]

Whether our 'civilisation' is right or wrong or however you may define the word, and certainly some of our practises are not civilised, it doesn't change the fact that whilst many nations and areas developed, whilst many invented new things and ways of doing old things, whilst technical advances were made, the sun and the stars understood more, medicine improved, mathematics, physics, all the sciences and arts changed (and unfortunately, better weapons also), Africa never produced one leap forward (that I can think of anyway).

It must be unique in this not happening, during human development for thousands and thousands of years.
But the question remains for me. Why not?
The climate is not unique, socially it is not unique, resources are plentiful..........
Are Africans just different somehow?

[Deleted]

Well, Africans invented mathematics for one thing. Where would we be without that?

[Deleted]

Haven't Africans been more isolated then others? They still (even now) hold on to old traditional methods of doing things, perhaps it's a matter of not wanting to change? I just don't know...

[Deleted]

Africans abandoned their traditional spices and now make everything with Maggi cubes every chance they get. Is that a traditional method?

[onlymark]

Apr 28, 2010 21:21:36 GMT kerouac2 said:

Well, Africans invented mathematics for one thing. Where would we be without that?

Who was that then?
As far as I know it was the Egyptians who started the first number system followed by the Babylonians. Unless you count the Egyptians as African, which I'm sure they dispute. And I did say "south of the sahara"!

[Deleted]

I do count Egyptians as Africans. Are we measuring skin tone?

[hwinpp]

There's not enough evidence for me to believe the ancient Egyptians were black Africans. They certainly weren't the Arabs that live there now either. Maybe they were related to the Berbers?

[bixaorellana]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but this thread is making me very uncomfortable because the question being posed seems to have a strong element of racism in it.

We can really only know the Africa of post-European incursion. Like other cultures which were disrupted by European presence, we'll never know in what direction they might have gone otherwise.

[hwinpp]

One more thing I'd point out is that progress and development happen under pressure, maybe this was never there pre colonialism? Or has this been mentioned already?

[onlymark]

Racism?
Better stop the discussion then. Can't talk about anything when the cry of racism is heard.

In other words, crap.
A valid question is why didn't Africa develop.
When the Pyramids were being built, Europeans were probably still scrabbling around digging roots out with sticks - so is it racist talk against Europeans?
When Babylon developed, South Americans were jut starting to make pottery - is this racist talk against them?

Why didn't American Indians, Aborigines, Māoris etc develop? If you can't ask that question without someone saying it's racist then you can never ever discuss it because in doing so you have to acknowledge that they are different, and in saying they are different then you are termed to be racist.
It did happen and they are different.

Like other cultures which were disrupted by European presence, we'll never know in what direction they might have gone otherwise.
But that doesn't account for the thousands of years before European presence. Our influence is relatively recent and for millennia before that they were free to do as they please.

hwinpp may have a point about pressure. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that.

[Deleted]

Is a civilization that prefers a village life based on subsistence automatically inferior to a culture that has decided to build cities and sell junk bonds?

Interestingly enough, it was the whole point of the film "Avatar".

[onlymark]

Inferior and superior do fall under the banner of racism. But developed, less developed - Other terms sometimes used are less developed countries (LDCs), least economically developed countries (LEDCs), "underdeveloped nations" or Third World nations, and "non-industrialized nations". - are not racist.

The term "Human Development Index" is a composite statistic used as an index to rank countries by level of "human development" and separate developed (high development), developing (middle development), and underdeveloped (low development) countries.

If you look at this map -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UN_Human_Development_Report_2009.PNG

And this list of countries related to the map -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

You'll see that out of 24 countries that are classed as Low human development (least developed countries), 22 are in Africa.

And if we all started out equal all those thousands of years ago, why has Africa not developed?

[bjd]

This is indeed an interesting question. I went to have a look at my bookshelves. I have one book I bought in the 1980s called The Rise of the West by MacNeill. Flipping through and looking at the index, he doesn't seem to mention Africa at all. Civilization starts with agriculture in the Fertile Crescent and spreads from there. The back cover of the book also mentions his thesis that development was often the result of encountering new ideas or situations.

I also have a 1997 National Geographic atlas of the history of the world. After mentioning that Man started in Africa, there is no more mention until the 15th century with a page about Mali and Timbuktu. It says that some of these African states were stimulated by trade with Muslim dynasties that moved southward after 900 AD. The Empire of Mali lasted 200 years until 1464.

I would suppose that geography would have prevented contact between groups in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but there are certainly many areas where this was not the case.

[onlymark]

Precisely.

[Deleted]

Apr 29, 2010 9:02:56 GMT onlyMark said:

Inferior and superior do fall under the banner of racism. But developed, less developed - Other terms sometimes used are less developed countries (LDCs), least economically developed countries (LEDCs), "underdeveloped nations" or Third World nations, and "non-industrialized nations". - are not racist.

Indeed, but it is cultural imperialism. Economic development? What if a culture chooses not to develop economically. In Tarzan Goes to New York, the main character was not at all impressed by most of the "development" that he saw. People living in concrete boxes, etc...

"Let's invent money and then we can say that anybody who doesn't use it isn't developed!"

[tillystar]

It can be argued that Africa developed a way of life suitable to its needs and that its problems are due to the "colonising giant". As far as we know, "moving on" may not have been the right thing for the life of the planet or its inhabitants.

This how I have always seen it.

[fumobici]

And yet essentially none of us would willingly choose to live in one of those undeveloped African countries given the chance, and many Africans make great personal sacrifices to leave and come to the modern world. I think even if we cannot agree that modern Western civilization is in a sense objectively superior to a life of dirt poor tribal subsistence, until there's a huge stream of people leaving the developed world to live in extreme poverty without modern conveniences or technologies, that question has been pretty much answered for us.

Modern Western civilization may not be unambiguously better than dying at perhaps 30 something uneducated because you have no access to medicines, schools or clean water... No wait, it is.

[hwinpp]

Most people will equate development with the ability or the willingness to construct with durable materials. This is not always possible.

I've heard the incredible theory that part of the Amazon basin was once without forests, populated by a civilization that had mastered canal building. Alas no trace is left of it other than lines in the forest that you can only see with infra red camera shots.

Apart from Hawaii and the Easter Islands there seems to have been no conventionally recognizable development in the Pacific either. Though the Polynesians did manage to populate the entire area with very simple means of navigation.

[Deleted]

As our "developed" world begins to fill with half-dead ancient zombies in wheelchairs or connected to tubes in nursing homes, even after most of their brain functions have withered away, one might also wonder about "developed" vs. "overdeveloped" -- and there are many other examples of how abnormal our life has become by taking things too far.

[onlymark]

Apr 30, 2010 2:32:10 GMT fumobici said:

And yet essentially none of us would willingly choose to live in one of those undeveloped African countries given the chance,

If I could live in Namibia or Botswana I'd jump at it. But granted, not as the locals live.

[onlymark]

I agree that 'development' is not always a good thing. Especially when it means irreparable damage to the earth. But I can't go with the thought that Africa "developed a way of life suitable to its needs" out of choice.

[Deleted]

No, that is true. They have been pushed to the side and many of their resources have been plundered. We haven't really been playing fair either by propping up the regimes that are the most willing to give us everything we want, even if it means killing their own people.

Things might have turned out much differently if Europeans had never set foot on African soil.

[onlymark]

Colonisation. Good or bad?
That's a thread all by itself!

Why colonised countries go bad after independence.
That's another thread.

This could last until we are all "half-dead ancient zombies in wheelchairs or connected to tubes in nursing homes, even after most of their brain functions have withered away".