29-07-2003 02:30									#91
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quote: But shouldn't be Indonesia or Oceania the most developed land in the world, then?

Good point, I've given this some thought myself.

As far as Oceania is concerned, the Polynesians islanders did develop very advanced canoes, but there were several factors which worked against them. The islands themselves were small, and lacked metal ores. They were also spread far apart, and there was no large scale trade between them, as far as I know.

Their naval expansion was organised in the form of tribes branching off into new tribes on new islands, linked solely by culture, rather than a single throne organising new colonies and trading ventures.

The lack of resources on their islands may also explain why they never completed the vital first step of developing ships composed of multiple planks, rather than hollowed out logs.

Another factor which counts against them is that they were latecomers, in terms of history. They only reached New Zealand in AD 900, by which time countless more advanced empires had risen and fallen. Given the time, they could have developed truly advanced wooden ships, since they already had canoes composed of a main body, connectors and outriggers.

Australia has a whole hoard of disadvantages, including zero domesticated animals and plants, hostile environments, and a relatively short coastline, like Africa.

Indonesia is more difficult... I'll have to think about that one.

	29-07-2003 03:33									#92
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quote: (which i think people here are under-estimating african advancements)

when i read about african advancements, many of them amaze me, but the fact is that they were made in isolation and for other reasons the africans could not build on them. There was some african civ near the ivory coast that had very advanced astronomical knowlegde, but it failed a thousand years ago or somethn.

The same can be said about New World cultures. The Anaszi made many advancements, as did the Missisipian cultures of Cahokia and the like, but these isolated advancements could only go so far in the absence of writing and other key technoligical discoveries. Thus, when these civs failed, their tech was for the most part lost with them.

To say the sub-saharen cultures are primative, is entirely accurate. Yes, at different points in time they made very impressive discoveries, but they could not retain these. Europe was many times more advanced when it came imperializing the place. To deny this is hard for me to imagine.

	29-07-2003 04:16									#93
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I seem to recall that about a decade ago archaeologists found some gigantic iron meltic furnaces somewhere in east Africa, Kenya I believe. They were dated to somewhere around 1000 BC, and would have been the largest smelters of their era. The industry didn't seem to last very long, so presumably the deposits ran out. Currently the only place in Africa that has significant iron deposits is South Africa.

Another factor that may have limited Africa's development is the difficulty of travel between nascent civilizations limiting the sharing of technology and ideas. European civilization grew up around a central ocean, the Mediterranean. China and India fluorished along the banks of very long, major rivers, the Indus, the Ganges, the Yellow. The rivers and calm seas not only nourished the budding cultures, but also provided communication between small states along their shores and banks. Africa's overall geography would seem to work toeards isolating communities instead of uniting them. Africa has the Nile, but the central Nile flows through a desert, the Sudan. Throughout history small states have cropped up along the shores of the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the edges of the Sahara desert and along various rivers in the interior. These states don't seem to have acquired sufficient "mass" in order to survive. It may be significant that the more advanced nation states that waxed and waned throughout Africa's history have generally done so in isolation from each other. Looking back through history you don't often find major states appearing adjacent to each other in both location and in historical time. As an example, the empire of Mali was located adjacent to Timboktou, but was seperated from the latter by hundreds of years.

It should be pointed out that every continent has had it's share of foundering civilizations. Along the Mississippi and Ohio rivers there are remnants of Native American mound cities. We all know about the various short lived mesoamerican cultures. There are remnants of long dead cultures, cultures which didn't survive, in Europe too. Take Stonehenge for instance. The same is true of Asia. Heck, for that matter all of the old civilizations have been gutted and deserted! The reason that "our" civilization has survived is that we have picked up the pieces of the old cultures that we found useful and have carried these pieces onward with us. It is apparent that there have been many instances throughout human history when this did not occur, that the cities were found wanting either by their inhabitants or by their neighbors and so were relegated to the great trash heap of history. Indeed this ending appears to have been more often the rule than the exception. Maybe the proper question to ask is what are the crucial ingredients that allow a civilization to survive?

	29-07-2003 04:19									#94
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iron smelters in 1000 BC? did any other civilization melt iron at that time?

I thought it'd have been developed in greece and egypt and so on by around 800-600 BC.

	29-07-2003 04:25									#95
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oh no, Iron working is a Hittite thing, IIRC.

	29-07-2003 04:27									#96
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eh? I thought one argument against the pyramids being built before 1000 BC was the fact they could hardly work their stones with anything less than iron

I'm almost certain none of those big civs had iron before 800, let alone 1,000.

	29-07-2003 04:28									#97
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quote: Originally posted by Ecthelion iron smelters in 1000 BC? did any other civilization melt iron at that time? I thought it'd have been developed in greece and egypt and so on by around 800-600 BC.

I'm not exactly certain of the date, but it was in the "first millenium BC", which would have made it somewhere between 1000 BC and 0 BC.

	29-07-2003 04:30									#98
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yeah, it'd be a biggie to me if they knew to melt iron before the so great egyptians and greeks did

	29-07-2003 04:39									#99
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All the surviving European civilizations have had writing from the beginning, or soon enough. And if Africa was not isolated, as some of us believe, how can it be explained that they do not adopt the arab writing, or design their own in the first millenia?

	29-07-2003 04:40									#100
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from the beginning? you've clearly played too much civ

	29-07-2003 04:41									#101
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quote: Originally posted by DAVOUT All the surviving European civilizations have had writing from the beginning, or soon enough. And if Africa was not isolated, as some of us believe, how can it be explained that they do not adopt the arab writing, or design their own in the first millenia?

Might want to check out my post for the answer... because individual tribes didn't get big enough, in short.

	29-07-2003 04:52									#102
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quote: Originally posted by Ecthelion from the beginning? you've clearly played too much civ

Played too much civ ? Definitely true. :

And all surviving european civ inherited from the beginning the latin language which was spoken and written. I accept that Romulus and Remus did not have the writing though.

	29-07-2003 05:48									#103
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Davout:

but they did adapt Arabic spoken language... Swahili is bastardized arabic...

	29-07-2003 06:43									#104
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I see that one of the larger problems with this discussion is that some people don't seem to be looking at more than one factor at a time (the [i]if oceans are so important, why aren't the island peoples of the Pacific the world leaders in tech?[i] arguments here). The advantage of easy access to the sea rests mainly in the lower cost of transport by sea, which in turn makes trade more profitable. This assumes however that you are near enough to a market for your products to take advantage of the sea, which is something that people on far flung islands do not have. It also assumes that you have something that others value which can be traded, and vice versa. When these factors are in place, then both economies become more productive and the regular contacts between them effectively increase the size of both societies for the generation and propogation of ideas, eg a new innovation in one place is noted by traders from another and taken home where an attempt to recreate it may happen.

A lot of people have noted that Africa has had numerous contacts with other peoples, and this is true. The problem is that the vast majority of this contact happened very late in the game. While the societies around the Med had thousands of years to take advantage of contacts with one another, people in East Africa have only had perhaps a millenium to do so. There is also a major difference between people along the East African coast or the Sahel having contact with Arabs and people of the vast interior, who had little contact with those of the Sahel or the Eastern coast. People assume that there were extensive contacts between these areas, but that is not at all the case for the reasons that I set forth in my long post earlier, namely that it is very difficult to travel from one region to another in Africa even today unless you have an airplane. In the past disease zones also inhibited movement. Even after horses and camels were introduced to the continent (fairly late) they were limited to certain areas where disease would not drop them very quickly.

Why did so many innovations come so late in the game for Sub-Saharran Africa? For one thing there just weren't all that many people in that part of Africa for much of recorded history. Much of the land area was occupied by hunter gatherers like Bushmen and Pygmies. It has only been within the last two thousand years (compared perhaps 6,000 or more years in other areas) or so that advanced agricultural techniques together with good metal working have been available in Sub-Saharran Africa in any other than a tiny scale. Without these techs populations were very limited. Assuming that an inventor or genius is born with the same frequency in different areas (just to make a point) a lower population will produce fewer of them.

Once an innovation is adopted, it is by no means a guarantee that the idea will survive the test of time. Perhaps the inventor was the only person who knew how to use it, or perhaps the conditions that created a need for the invention have changed. This sort of thing happens all the time, as anyone who has worked with legacy computer code can tell you. One way to save an idea over time without maintaining the whole economy that may have spawned it is a written record. This is of course impossible to do when one does not have writing. Then one must rely on oral tradition, which rarely survives the culture that spawned it, unlike writing that can often be translated and transported to other completely different societies far away in space and / or time.

So between the less than ideal starting conditions (which the vast majority of humanity have in common with Africa), isolation on a large scale (ie intercontinental) and most other scales as well, Sub-Saharran Africa failed to reach critical mass until thousands of years after more fortunate (in the case of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China) and less isolated (Europe, the Levant, North Africa, SW Asia, East Asia etc.) areas did. By the time of the Bantu explosion it was already too late for most of Africa to catch up culturally to the vast chunk of the globe which had such a head start. The same is true of America for that matter, though the Americans did not suffer as much from transport difficulties as Africa did.

	29-07-2003 06:50									#105
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quote: Originally posted by Azazel oh no, Iron working is a Hittite thing, IIRC.

I thought it was chinese? or were the just the first to smelt pig iron? yeah, come to htink of it, i think the hitites were the first, but it was very impure and not much to note. Greeks didnt do it till much later... they loved their bronze

	29-07-2003 06:54									#106
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quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer i have one of those history atlases that shows clearly the dramatic change in the african populations in ancient times, showing there must have been mass migrations and contact between all of africa... not on the scale of central asia but still significant... i'll try to find a map online but i'll briefly describe some population changes. Africa south of the Kongo but also including east africa in 2000 BC was made up of Khoisan speaking peoples. the linguistic group in the Kongo is not known by historians but probably was not Niger-Kordofanian/Bantu. The Sudan, Chad, and Niger were of the Nilo-Saharan language group. The Bantu existed only along a region in west africa from roughly Nigeria to Liberia. By 1000 AD, however, the Khoisan group was reduces to mainly the Nama and Ikung peoples in southwest africa while the Bantu filled up west africa, the kongo, and bantu peoples like the Xhosa and Shona were in south africa. so the point is, there was plenty of migrations and contact between all of sub-saharan africa... and yes, i now realize that the philly public school system was probably exaggerating the glories of sub-saharan africa. nevertheless, it was more advanced than i think people here are thinking thanks

I know this Albert, but 1000 AD is very late in the game. Also, a many generations long advancement of metal working agriculturalists does not equal regular contact sufficient to transport products and ideas, anymore than one can say that the Irish had contact with the Indo-European group that settled in Western China along the Silk Road. Sure they belonged to the same linguistic group and shared some very archaic things in common culturally, but without a doubt they would not have recognized one another as long lost "cousins". It wasn't until fairly recently that even linguists would have made such a claim.

The Bantu explosion is a great story in its own right, and it deserves to be told as such. They did it on their own with extremely minimal contact with other civs, and they were extraordinarily successful. To compare them to others in a competitive sense isn't particularly fair or useful, as all groups are sensitive to their initial and ongoing conditions. The same thing can be said for the peoples of the Americas who were isolated (though not as severely) as well, but who managed to nonetheless to produce impressive accomplishments.

	29-07-2003 06:58									#107
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quote: Originally posted by MrFun I cannot recall any period when African civilizations were isolated from other parts of the world.

Start from now and compare phone connections, airline connections, internet access etc. ad nauseum in Africa to almost any other part of the planet and keep going back until even the archeologists throw up their hands and admit that they don't know what the hell was going on. During this entire period Sub-Saharran Africa was isolated compared to most parts of the planet.

	29-07-2003 07:04									#108
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quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer Sikander and whoever else mentioned Diamond... he is wrong in the case of domesticatable animals. The Bantu who went from a small area in west africa to suddenly settling nearly all of sub-saharan africa around the turn of AD were initially pastoral cattle herders who then settled in the rest of africa. the zulu, a bantu people, were known as farmers and cattle herders before Shaka. as for muslim intervention in west africa... explain states like Ashanti, Dahomey, and especially Benin which remained pagan and developed with no contact with the muslim world.

Where did horses cattle and camels come from, and how did they get to Africa? How long did that take? There's the head start that people in Asia had in this one area. Add to that the other animals that they had, as well as the much larger numbers of quality crops and it adds up to an enormous advantage for the Eurasians.

	29-07-2003 07:14									#109
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I'll have to go with Jared Diamond's explanations - lack of domesticatable plants and large animals, long North/South axis, and natural barriers preventing frequent exchanges of information.

	29-07-2003 07:49									#110
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The Scythins discovered Iron working methinks.

	29-07-2003 07:59									#111
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quote: Originally posted by Kramerman I thought it was chinese? or were the just the first to smelt pig iron? yeah, come to htink of it, i think the hitites were the first, but it was very impure and not much to note. Greeks didnt do it till much later... they loved their bronze

Earliest evidence for iron smelting in Africa so far is a site in Agadez, Niger, dating to about 500 B.C.

There are also prehistoric iron mining sites in sub-Saharan Africa, and its interesting to note that when David Livingstone met smiths who worked iron in Mozambique, they were of the opinion that the mass produced British iron tools were of an inferior quality to their traditionally made ones.

	29-07-2003 08:29									#112
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom Earliest evidence for iron smelting in Africa so far is a site in Agadez, Niger, dating to about 500 B.C. There are also prehistoric iron mining sites in sub-Saharan Africa, and its interesting to note that when David Livingstone met smiths who worked iron in Mozambique, they were of the opinion that the mass produced British iron tools were of an inferior quality to their traditionally made ones.

"Inferior! There can only be one answer to such an insult. I, William Smith challenge you to a hammerdance!"

	29-07-2003 09:55									#113
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quote: Where did horses cattle and camels come from, and how did they get to Africa? How long did that take? There's the head start that people in Asia had in this one area. Add to that the other animals that they had, as well as the much larger numbers of quality crops and it adds up to an enormous advantage for the Eurasians.

Cattle was domesticated in africa... but as for horses and camels, even Egypt didn't have these until fairly late (horses introduced by the Hyksos at the intermediate period before the New Kingdom) and traditionally, the camel is said to not have been introduced until the arab conquests of the 7th century (though it seems impossible that camels weren't introduced earlier)... so egypt until the New Kingdom only domesticated cattle... no horses, camels, sheep, chickens, goats, etc. until well into egyptian history.

as for quality crops... that can't be it... native crops domesticated by west africans included sorghum, yams, and peas while east africans farmed millet and more sorghum... i dont know where these crops stand compared to the barley and wheat of the middle east and europe but africa possessed good enough numbers of crops apparently.

	29-07-2003 10:26									#114
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and by the way, the people who discovered iron smelting is not known by historians or archaelogists for sure... the thing is, most of you are looking at it as a stand-alone advancement... in fact, iron was being used even in the bronze age but civilizations then lacked the resources, technical skill, and/or technology to utilize it effectively and in great abundance. the use of iron in great quantities took hundreds of years of slow advancement.

nevertheless, it is generally thought that iron smelting as we know it originated in a civilized context around 1400 BC in Anatolia with the Hittites. the barbarian invasions of the middle east and greece around 1200 BC were so successful because the barbarian groups (most of whom historians have no idea where the hell they came from but the caucasus and central asia seem likely for some of the invading peoples) had armies of infantry armed with iron weapons. it is not known for sure if they adopted these weapons from the urban Hittites or if these semi-nomadic peoples developed iron smelting on their own... (Anatolia and the caucasus are neighbours after all) in any event, their weapons clearly allowed them to destroy the Hittite empire (which makes you question if the Hittites really utilized iron that much as they were destroyed so easily) and most of the civilized middle east except for Egypt and Assyria (which quickly adopted barbarian infantry tactics).

so the point is, historians don't know for sure who 'invented' iron smelting but it took hundreds of years of slow development... it is worthwhile to note though that the people of the Caucasus, the Hittites of the anatolia, and the Assyrians of northern Iraq were mainly the first peoples to utilize iron and they all are of roughly the same area so iron smelting most likely was developed by a people in this region

	29-07-2003 10:30									#115
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that was a very articulate post, AS, not your typical 'ebonics'

	29-07-2003 10:53									#116
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Sikander:

quote: Inferior! There can only be one answer to such an insult. I, William Smith challenge you to a hammerdance!"

Will Smith?


Kramerman:

better be articulate, i spent about five minutes typing up those three paragraphs... my average post only takes about five to ten seconds so i type it how i talk. i'm sure when you just type up some quick responses, you also are loose with the grammer and all that jazz and type more colloquilly (hope i'm using that in the right context)... the only thing that sets my posts apart from yours or everybody else here is that my every day speech includes slang words, aint, yall (well slowwhand uses yall too), and the occasional curse...

	29-07-2003 11:27									#117
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quote: Cattle was domesticated in africa...

Domesticated cattle didn't turn up South of the Sahara until the 3rd century BC, and it took a couple millennia for them to get to the other end of the continent (they had to deal with tsetse flies killing them off). As Sikander pointed out, this was far later than what was achieved in Eurasia.

quote: but as for horses and camels, even Egypt didn't have these until fairly late (horses introduced by the Hyksos at the intermediate period before the New Kingdom)

Subsaharan Africa didn't have domesticated horses until the first millennium AD, two millennia later than Egypt. Again, a huge advantage. And they never made it South of the tsetse fly zone.

quote: so egypt until the New Kingdom only domesticated cattle... no horses, camels, sheep, chickens, goats, etc. until well into egyptian history.

I don't know about camels (or chicken, which is less important than the other animals as it is incapable of pulling a plow, but I doubt your assertion on that), but Egypt certainly had sheep and goats far, far before the New Kingdom. Hell, the Bantus domesticated/aquired them in Sahel at approximately the same time as they did cattle (around a millennium before the New Kingdom).

	29-07-2003 11:46									#118
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quote: Originally posted by Albert Speer as for quality crops... that can't be it... native crops domesticated by west africans included sorghum, yams, and peas while east africans farmed millet and more sorghum... i dont know where these crops stand compared to the barley and wheat of the middle east and europe but africa possessed good enough numbers of crops apparently.

The numbers of crops are not so important as WHEN the crops or domesticated. Jared Diamond lists the much later domestication of crops such as corn in Meso-American as one of the primary reasons the civilizations in that area were so far behind the European ones. Why I don't know the exact date, I suspect the crops you mentioned were domesticated much later than those in the Middle-East or China. It takes time for a civilization and society to develope and invent new technology, and areas that fall behind too much normally need a massive infusion of technology from elsewhere to catch up.

Note: There are specifc charactoristics that Jared Diamond lists for making it easy for man to domesticate crops, many middle eastern varieties were ideal since they naturally had a short growing season, but they also tended to be naturally nutritionally beneficial. Less suitable crops can undergoe effectively thousands of years of evolutionary pressure from man before they become trully suitable for cultivation. As an example, in their natural state almonds are laced with cyanide, and its a form of almond that posses a mutation which people cultivate as a crop.

I really do suggest that you get ahold of a copy of Jared Diamond's "Guns Germs and Steel" and read it sometime. The link I just gave goes to the amazon site, and has reviews which summerize many of the book's major points.

	29-07-2003 11:56									#119
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Domestication of sub-Saharan crops were domesticated several thousand years after those of the fertile crescent. The other major problem was that the varying climates withn sub-Saharan Africa prevented spread; for instance, crops like Sorghum and Millet, which came from Sahel couldn't be grown on the Cape.

	29-07-2003 15:42									#120
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crops native to africa are not nearly as good as those in the americas for example. in the second half of the 19th century crops from the americas (notably maize) were introduced from the americas to africa, it was partly because of this that the population in sub-sarahran africa rose so much during that period.