And don't say "because of European colonization and oppression". Surely a race advanced enough to create ancient Egypt wouldn't be held back by something inferior Europeans did to them hundreds of years ago.
shareMost of ancient Egypt didn't consist of black people, save for the Nubian Kings period. Black people did live in that country, but they were mostly not the dominant ethnic group or culture there.
Second, the reason Sub-Saharan Africans never advanced very far was because they lacked one very important thing: horses.
Now you gotta ask yourself, why horses? What's so special about them?
I came across a Quora answer that asked why Europeans (as well as the Middle-East) advanced far faster than Africa ever did. The OP revealed that it was because of horses. The moment humans discovered they could tame and ride horses, it opened up a whole new world for them. They could travel farther, carry bigger loads, communicate farther, and even build cities. Horses were integral to the advancement of human civilization.
So you have to ask yourself, what does that have to do with Africa? Well....it was discovered that horses mysteriously dropped dead when brought to parts of Africa south of the Sahara. It was also noted that Africans didn't have them or use them at all, and they discovered before anyone else that zebras were too wild to be tamed. Scientists did research, and discovered there are a bunch of viruses floating around in the air of Sub-Saharan Africa that kill horses. I suspect Arab traders discovered this the earliest when visiting south of the great desert.
So basically, horses never naturally migrated to Sub-Saharan Africa due to that big desert in the way, and the illnesses that killed them off before ever setting up territories further south. Therefore, native Africans never had any wild horses to tame, and never could really advance very far beyond building huts, simple farming, and making tools. This is partially what led to stronger, more advanced civilizations to exploit Africa for centuries, because they had an advantage over native African tribes with technology.
These days, if you bring a horse to some place in Africa, you a.) better have a danged good reason to do so, and b.) get it heavily inoculated.
Let me put it another way: if you had two identical islands full of resources and dropped 1,000 black people on the first island and 1,000 whites or Asians on the second island, which island do you think would be more prosperous 100 years from now?
shareI have a better one.
Picture yourself being able to switch between two bodies and lives. In one life, you are an African farmer. In the other, you are a farmer living in, say, northern France. Both of you are living during the Middle Ages.
As an African, you have no plow, no wagons, no horses or oxen to pull said wagons, the only way to harvest your crop is by hand, possibly with small, stone knives or simple scythes. You have a large family and neighbors that can help you with the work, but it's hard, and the soil is difficult to grow things in. The only way you can get your crop to market is by walking on foot carrying it in baskets. Getting everything done is very slow because you have no large animals to help you, and even worse, you've got issues with birds and pest creatures trying to steal your crop while working.
As a European, you too have a large family to help with the farming, and you too must harvest your crops with primitive tools, but you have metal hand scythes you bought from the local blacksmith years ago. (Your local blacksmith was able to get ore from the local miners because they used ponies, donkeys, and mules to haul the ore out of the local mine in carts and over to the smithy). Your family uses a plow to get your field set up, rather than just using gardening hoes, you have oxen to pull them, or cheap horses that can be a pain, but workable, and when the harvest is done, you have a wooden wagon that can carry a lot more crops than what you could carry in a basket, and you can hook up to your horse and drive to town to sell. You're gonna need that horse too, because town is 5 miles away, which can take the better part of the day on foot, versus using your horse and wagon.
Now ask yourself this: would you, as a European farmer, have been able to do as well as you have without horses to help develop the more advanced tech that the African farmer lacks? Or would the African farmer have had a better time if his people had had access to horses?
The Northern European farmer was far from set. Applied fertilizer basically was unheard of. They had a poor understanding as to why an area that had livestock did better with crops than an area that saw no such thing. Iron and nickel (to make steel) were not to be found in every locality. Poor understanding of agronomy was a major contributor to the French Revolution as people were starving because they could not figure out why the potatoes they grew suddenly would not do so anymore (crop disease). The Northern Europeans did better because the growing seasons tended to be less extreme leading to fewer crop failures. All in all Northern Europeans going into the 20th Century were underfed because agricultural science was far from developed. A major reason for wars and conflict. Most people were hungry whether asleep or awake. As I understand it American Indians did not have the horse until the Spanish brought them to North America and yet they fed themselves fairly well before the white man came. North America made its contribution back to Europe by introducing the potato and tomato and small game animals such as turkey. By the way horses were a very small factor as a draft animal until the second half of the 19th Century limited to the more affluent.
shareFirst off, this is not about the French Revolution. The peasants were starving due to over-taxation from the govt. as well as bad weather causing bad harvests. It has nothing to do with European advancement.
Second, this is about why Europe advanced far faster than Africa ever did, particularly in the Middle Ages.
Third, it was medieval farmers who first figured out crop rotation, and they actually did make use of animal dung (and even human dug) as fertilizer, though their methods of refining it and using it weren't always that good. The potato thing didn't come about until the 1600s, when they were brought back from the New World, and by then crop rotation had already been developed, whereas on the New World (particularly in Central and South America) never developed crop rotation and growing corn is what led to the Mayan empire falling apart due to starvation and not being able to feed everyone.
I'm sure you're aware that in the late 1700s saw the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, which led to more advanced farming techniques in the 1800s and early 1900s, as well as more food available for the more advanced countries, such as England, America, Canada, and quite a few nations in Europe. Not everyone suffered a potato famine like Ireland, and often the solution involved moving to America, where there was plenty of fertile land to farm on.
Mining has been around since the time of the Sumerians, maybe even earlier. While medieval people didn't have the same technology for mining as the people of the Industrial Era, that didn't stop them from using mules and donkeys (close relatives of horses) to drag [probably wooden] wagons of ore out of the mines, far more ore than what a human could carry on his back or in his arms.
You're correct, most peasants in the medieval era didn't have horses. Most kept donkeys and mules because they were cheaper and sturdy animals. Peasants often didn't even ride them, they had them work as pack animals or pulling wagons, but that didn't mean some more affluent peasants didn't have access to the lower-quality horses. They just didn't have the same fine breeds royalty or nobility could ride into battle.
I was making a point about how an acute shortage of food can lead to political instability. I've read time and again that manure back then was just something to be gotten rid of due to the smell and rodents. That outside of the Germans manure applied ahead of a planting of a crop was almost an accident versus an informed practice. Taxes to the point of being oppressive have always been applied but the squeeze stops short of starvation because the peasants could not feed themselves. Many European countries found the potato adaptable which made them vital as a food source in short order. Not all food sources were adaptable to all countries. In some cases it took many many many years of plant breeding to get foods such as tomatoes to grow in cooler climates than Central America. Nobody is disputing that mining has been around for a long time but iron is not in every locale waiting to be dug up. The reason why some European countries rose up to be world powers was iron along with coal was abundant within their respective borders. They did not have to buy it from another nation nor did they have to go to war over it. Germany and England being examples.
shareYou still miss the points I'm trying to make, that Africa (save for Egypt) never got very far because they didn't have horses or the same advantages Europeans did. They had to spend more time surviving than they did innovating due to the shitty climates they lived in, lack of resources, no real pack animals to help with traveling long distances or transporting goods, and wasting time fighting with each other.
Now, do you wanta go around again? I can do this all day.
Horses? Africans were not even able to make use of the effin' WHEEL!
shareThey did, but even with carts, there were no pack animals to pull them (we're talking sub-Saharan Africa here), and the terrain was even more difficult for wheeled vehicles to traverse than in Europe. Let's not forget that traveling by most rivers in Africa could be treacherous (and possibly so even today) due to waterfalls.
shareLet put it this way:
Zimbabwe.
1. White farmers, Zimbabwe a net exporter of food and grains.
2. White farmers are ousted and black "farmers" take over the farms. Shortly Zimbabwe is dying of hunger and it need help in food and not only from the west.
https://www.wfp.org/countries/zimbabwe
Look at south Africa as well
We are not anymore in the middle ages and access to information and technology is available for everyone.
Yeah, and look at what's holding Africans back now: the Africans themselves. They really don't give a shit about each other. The moment any of them gets an advantage over the other, they immediately kick out the ladder underneath them and treat their own people like shit. Just look at every tin pot dictator like Idi Amin, who rose to power in any of these nations, as well as the tribal behavior that continues to this day. Who needs the white man when the native Africans can be just as shitty to each other?
shareWhoever is quickest to minimize emotion and maximize logic. A lot of negative emotion is whipped up when it comes to slavery to hold black people back in general. At the same time if white people believed in witchcraft which they did in great numbers hundreds of years ago or were poor at understanding religious text (medicine is the work of the devil) which they did more recently then they would be held back. Maybe the better example would be one island of woke black people versus the other island of Salem witchcraft believing plus progress is the work of the devil white people?
shareThe Salem witchcraft believing people would end up far more advanced and it's not even close. Back in their day Europeans were exploring the world and coming up with new technologies as sub-Saharan Africa remained in a primitive state.
shareBack in their day Europeans were invading, appropriating cultures and technologies all over the world as sub-Saharan Africa minded their own business...
shareKeep in mind that the term "cultural appropriation" is a bullshit term created by spoiled, lazy, entitled black people living in modern-day America, who sit on their asses and collect a free check as bribery to vote for politicians who fought tooth and nail to try keeping them slaves over 150 years ago, and instead now enslave them with lies and money stolen from hard-working taxpayers. Not to mention that loud, tiny group of black people in Academia who insist on the bullshit Afrocentric Egypt concept, completely ignoring the evidence in front of them.
All the while, these rotten, racist hypocrites are pulling doing the exact same "cultural appropriation" sin with this farce of a docuseries. They are so desperate to try and make themselves relevant they'll attempt to rewrite history and lie about their own background to try and feel more important, and frankly, people are gonna draw the line at some point, and this appears to be it.
Back in the day everyone was invading everyone. Moors were all over Spain, ottomans tried to conquer Europe. Hell even Genghis Khan tried to invade Europe, coming all the way from Mongolia, native Americans were wiping each other like there was no tomorrow, the Aztec empire was built on conquest and killings.
Europeans were more technologically advanced and they prevailed in the end but any of the other would have done the same, or worse, given the chance. You are just sour it wasn't you.
That's very true. Europeans don't have a corner on conquering, empire-building, mass murder, or racism. Everyone else was doing it too, and yet only white people of European descent are the ones getting attacked and lectured on it, while the others are given a free pass and ignored.
shareEven worse, I even heard opinions on how Spain was culturally enriched by the invading moors ...
It's ok or even desirable when THEY rape, kill, enslave but somehow it's evil when the white men does it.
Even in Egypt, the Nubian invaders are seen by black supremacists as the first coming of Jesus ..
Ugh! Racism by another name still smells just as rotten.
shareSub Saharan Africa was minding their business due to infighting (let’s just call it like that) and lack of knowledge/technology.
African tribes were busy enough killing each other and creating their own, local empires … still killing and raping/enslaving other people …
Btw, European colonization of Africa happened a lot later, end of the 19th century, start of the 20th century … prior to that there was a Muslim/Arab colonization… but you don’t care/speak of that …
"Scientists did research, and discovered there are a bunch of viruses floating around in the air of Sub-Saharan Africa that kill horses"
There were also a bunch of viruses floating around in the air (and water) that killed white people.
Didn't stop Apartheid from happening or the Dutch taking all the diamonds.
Also, the Vikings (compared to similar peoples) didn't use horses much. Did they ride horses across the Atlantic?
The Japanese managed to get by until the Europeans showed up just fine and they barely even used the wheel.
These are poor excuses.
Plenty of capable societies sprang up all around the world while missing one big factor like these examples.
You can get by without horses (and more) if you have manpower, cunning, wisdom and, just as important...stamina.
Stamina being possibly the most important word here.
The Vikings actually did ride horses when it was possible. In fact, combining a Norseman with a horse created an 8-foot-tall force to be reckoned with that terrified people all along the coasts of Europe during the dark ages. They sailed longboats across the Atlantic. Now, think about how their ancestors were able to get as far as Scandinavia on foot, compared to when they tamed horses during the last Ice Age.
But you even state in your own writing that viruses aren't a deterrent for humans because we have ways of getting around that. Horses are not that smart.
The Japanese had horses. They got them from the Chinese and Koreans through trade, and they were a force to be reckoned with in their heyday. In fact, take note of the Chinese (as well as the Koreans and Japanese) being able to advance further along due to use and availability of horses early on as well. Same goes for parts of the Middle-East, particularly the Fertile Crescent.
Incas were able to get along without horses or wheels, but in the end, the Spaniards still managed to wipe them out faster than it took for them to build their civilization.
You also forgot that much of Africa has a very harsh environment, whether it be the Savannah, the jungles, or the deserts. Harsh environments and scarcity of resources leads to competition, competition leads to tribal warfare, tribal warfare leads to death and loss of knowledge among the older crowd. That was happening over and over again in the past, and also worked against Africans. They had the stamina, but not the numbers because they kept killing each other, or they died of starvation/disease before reaching old age. There were attempts to band together different tribes, but the alliances didn't last, or there was betrayal.
I still maintain that the lack of horses prevented Africans from advancing any form of civilization beyond primitive tribes. It was the same story over in the Americas as well. You had indians still living in primitive conditions when visitors from Europe showed up with more advanced technology.
south america was wiped by STDs, not the spains
shareDo you know who has a very harsh environment? Scandinavian people. Because its freaking cold out there most of the time. They cant grow anything much of the year you know. Advanced just fine.
You excuses are very poor and naive. Stop reading and retelling ridiculous theories.
Tarzan movies are not African history.
shareEgypt was created by multiple black groups from the south and Asiatic groups from the North. They intermarried and were an Afro-Asiatic people. Black Africans don't live only in "Sub-Sahara". Africans had an intercontinental trade route lasting millenia and always intermarried and interacted with each other.
Ancient Egyptians at their height were not European.
You watch too many Tarzan movies.
I would take an online source with a grain of salt as a lot of things are not checked for validity. The biggest reason that Northern Europe advanced faster was there was more stability due to fewer conflicts. Note that I did not say that there were not any conflicts. Just less in comparison to the equatorial regions. In my mind this was due to Christianity being embraced helping to tame the populations. Like it or not the Church helped give rise to the university system which allowed for some scientific advances such as genetics (Gregor Mendel).
shareBut didn't Europeans suffer from a lot of smaller conflicts across the continent? I mean, many of the countries we know today used to be a collection of much smaller kingdoms/states that fought against each other for over 1,000 years after the fall of Rome. Part of the reason they learned to make better iron [and later steel] weapons was because war led to a greater need for better weapons, and in the midst of that, people learned to make better tools for non-military activities.
shareYou can’t actually be that naive to actually believe it all? Not everything that is written on the Internet is holy truth. There are lots of conspiracy theorists that make up things or twist facts to suite their theory.
shareUmmm, the Mayans didn’t have any horses. How come the Mayans were not living in mud huts? They had cities, advanced civilizations, etc…Cortez brought the first horse to the Americas
shareThe Mayans were innovative...for a time. Sadly, their civilization couldn't last for more than a few centuries because they didn't know about crop rotation, and their over-use of corn on the same soil over and over again led to the soil being sucked dry of nutrients, leading to less corn, leading to starvation, and then causing a collapse of their empire long before the Spanish conquistadors ever showed up. By the time the first ones showed up, the Mayans were little more than a few scattered tribes living in crappy huts in the jungle, and their great cities had been swallowed up by that same jungle and were crumbling.
There is no proof Cortez himself brought the first ever horse to America. Sorry.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/blog/american-horses-horses-in-north-america-a-comeback-story/#:~:text=In%20the%20late%201400s%2C%20Spanish,and%20spread%20across%20the%20nation.
I don't know what history books you have been reading...sorry
[deleted]
Lol
shareEgypt was repeatedly invaded which should be obvious.
shareWant to see a funny meme?
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.pCa7oPirrkoGfxEqgU5D9gHaHl?pid=ImgDet&rs=1
Of course this is a joke but there is a pretty big difference between medieval euro architecture versus African architecture. There are some pictures on the net that make the comparison. That's not to say that Europeans are smarter, I've known a lot of really smart black people and I've known some dumb ones too, same with Caucasian people as well.
I am not totally sure why some civilizations advance faster and further than others. There can be so many factors involved in it like, wars, famine, climate, uprisings, lack of skilled laborers etc... etc..
I'm just glad I live in a fairly advanced society right now. I mean, I can get just about anything 'on demand' in my area. It's great living in the 1st world. But I would imagine it sucks living in the 3rd world.
I've seen those memes. They make me sad, because some African nations have the resources they could have used to better their peoples' lives and to come closer to joining the First World, but their leaders and corrupt governments just threw it away and exploited UN and foreign kindness at the expense of their own people.
shareI remember getting into a really bad flame war with some poster over this topic on the old IMDB boards.
I insisted that they needed more skilled laborers to fix their issues, the guy got really pissed off and said no, they just need us to send them more money! Needless to say, the convo didn't get very far before the name-calling started. Lol
Whatever it will take to solve it their issues is tough to say but throwing money at it doesn't seem to work. It's a complex problem that may never get resolved.
It's not for lack of money or technology. There are many factors working against allowing Africans to develop their own countries, and one of the biggest ones is their tribal ways, including exploiting others in order to survive the moment they get an advantage over their fellow Africans. It's not just people from outside who are a problem for Africa; it's also the way people are within the countries themselves. Just look at Idi Amin and other tin pot dictators that rose to power in Africa.
shareYep. The corruption is a huge problem, anytime a nation tries to aid these countries, it just goes to the wrong people.
For the most, not much can be done about it.
thank you for your service
shareThat was a stupid meme. https://www.mappr.co/most-beautiful-cities-africa/
shareI know you're trying to redeem Africa with this reply but that link didn't do the continent any favors. lol...
Some of those cities still look quite average when compared to the Euro cities of today.
Although, Johannesburg South Africa looks pretty good but that doesn't help the situation either since SA is mostly white. :)
At any rate, that meme is supposed to be a joke anyways. There are some nice looking cities in Africa.
It is the most advanced.
It's called Wakanda and it's a fantasy.
If Slavic people are White why are so many Slavic countries so poor and unadvanced?
shareBefore WW1, most Slavic peoples lived within the borders of empires. If you look at a map of 1800 Europe, you will see that all of Central and Eastern Europe, and the Balkans was carved up between German States (later Empire), the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.
It wasn't until after WW1 that most Slavic peoples got their own countries, many of them squished together with other Slavs by the western powers. Czechoslovakia (Czechs and Slovaks), Yugoslavia (Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Slovenes, etc.).
During WW2 the Slavic lands were some of the harshest battlefields. Poland invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union 1in 1939, then the main battleground for the Soviet offensive toward Berlin 1944-45. Yugoslavia was invaded by the Germans and had the most active partisan resistance.
Following WW2, most Slavic people were trapped behind the Iron Curtain, under dictatorial regimes beholden to Moscow.
They have only truly been free since the early 1990's. They are moving up steadily.
That doesn't address my question to the OP, who framed it based on skin color
share