Why has Africa always remained primitive ?

[Sarevok]

Africa is where humanity started. From there humans spread out across the world. They built great Empires in Europe, Asia, the Middle East etc. Yet civilization remained very primitive in Africa itself. Africa was and continues to be the most backward part of the world despite being the origin of humanity, What could the reason for this ? Why has no great civilization sprung up in Africa ?

[Gigaliel]

Well, Africa spawned Ancient Egypt which would qualify as 'great.' Carthage is also a less grand example. As for why the great empires were almost always found in Eurasia, the simplest cause would be the fact that the region did not have foodstuffs suitable for mass production, such as rice or grain, to support the population required. This is the hypothesis (very simplified here) put forth in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

If we continue with the hypothesis of early civilizations being correlated with their agriculture, this precipitation map illustrates where societies could develop. It was also a matter of luck what crops developed in these regions. Europe had grain, India and China has rice, the Americas made do with maize, and beyond Egyptian grain I don't think Africa had anything suitable for large scale agriculture, although I'm not certain of that point.

[Sriad]

500 years of taking it up the ass from Europe might have a bit to do with it.

[Superman]

There have been at least two great empires that developed in Africa. One was called something like "Malay" and I don't remember the other.

Someone help me out here.

[Sriad]

Lots of internet research later (that is to say, this is mostly right, but take w/salt... my primary resource was African Timelines):

Going back further, before the slave trades (Eastern and western) and European Imperialism shot everything to hell, there was of course Ancient Egypt, where agricultural civilization (albeit under many different dynasties) has been continuous since ~6000BCE.

Nubia was the next major civilization to take off, in the areas modernly known as southern Egypt and northern Sudan. The Nubian kingdom of Kush lasted from around 800BCE-200BCE, followed by rule under the Noba people(possible origin of "Nubian"). There was civilization in the region long before, but it had been dominated by Egyptian kingdoms.

In 300 BCE the Aksum (Ethiopean) Empire came about, Also from around 300 BCE, the Niger and Senegal flood plains were seats of civilizations also.

By about 100 CE the Roman Empire had a solid grip on great big swathes of northern Africa.

In the 6th-7th centuries CE, Islam sweeps across northern Africa, and in 740 the Moorish Africans decide they agree with Gigaleal and conquer Spain, bringing their agriculture, art, engineering, and industry until they're unseated in 1492.

Around 1000 CE the Ghana empire was at it's height of power, used iron weapons, and had an active trade in gold and salt. From 1050 or so to 1100 internal struggles destroyed it.

As the Ghana Empire declined, the Mali Empire (consisting of many areas previously under Ghana's control, especially gold mines and the Niger river flood plane) grew, reached its peak around 1300, and by 1400 had dissolved to court intrigue and succession struggles. Many smaller states formed around this time.

In 1441 the European slave trade with Africa started, massively disrupting established trade-routes and wealth flow. Centuries of strained justification give rise to Modern Africa and our modern perceptions of Africa's history.

[Darth Wong]

Africa is where humanity started. From there humans spread out across the world. They built great Empires in Europe, Asia, the Middle East etc. Yet civilization remained very primitive in Africa itself. Africa was and continues to be the most backward part of the world despite being the origin of humanity, What could the reason for this ? Why has no great civilization sprung up in Africa ?

At what point did Africa start falling behind everyone else? It's not as if they were technologically behind the rest of the world at the time Carthage was fighting with Rome.

[Sriad]

I don't believe (could be wrong) that African civilizations ever developed their own powder-weapons or artillery. Slave trafficers and those in power could trade for them, and they had no incentive to allow the technology to propogate.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Well, Africa spawned Ancient Egypt which would qualify as 'great.' Carthage is also a less grand example. As for why the great empires were almost always found in Eurasia, the simplest cause would be the fact that the region did not have foodstuffs suitable for mass production, such as rice or grain, to support the population required. This is the hypothesis (very simplified here) put forth in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

He also mentions the lack of domesticatable animals, and points out how history might have been different if, say, the Zulus could have fielded armies of rhino calvary.

[Darth Wong]

Well, Africa spawned Ancient Egypt which would qualify as 'great.' Carthage is also a less grand example. As for why the great empires were almost always found in Eurasia, the simplest cause would be the fact that the region did not have foodstuffs suitable for mass production, such as rice or grain, to support the population required. This is the hypothesis (very simplified here) put forth in Guns, Germs, and Steel.

He also mentions the lack of domesticatable animals, and points out how history might have been different if, say, the Zulus could have fielded armies of rhino calvary.

I saw that quote and my first thought was that he has obviously never thought about the practicalities of fielding rhino cavalry. Even if you could domesticate the beasts as per his scenario, their enormous food requirements would make them extremely impractical on the campaign. Each rhino needs more than 100 pounds of food per day, and the animals need to conserve their energy so I don't think they would take too well to long marches.

A rhino cavalry charge would be devastating for sure, but an army reliant upon them could not venture far from home, thus greatly limiting their usefulness.

Besides, the Africans already tried using huge cavalry animals in antiquity: Hannibal's elephants.

[weemadando]

Well, lets not forget things like "Great Zimbabwe" with an impressive metallurgy trade and all the rest... But something did go sorely wrong at some point.

[Sriad]

Well, lets not forget things like "Great Zimbabwe" with an impressive metallurgy trade and all the rest... But something did go sorely wrong at some point.

I would've mentioned Great Zimbabwe, but at that point things were getting kind of muddled, and I couldn't quite figure out who'd built what from the resources I could find online.

It IS interesting to note, though, that there have been many attempts to deny GZ's African origin:

"When African nationalists were demanding independence in the 1960s, the Smith regime actually sanctioned historians to write a fake history on the origins of Great Zimbabwe, denying its African origins.

This was not different from the accounts of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century antiquarians, which linked Great Zimbabwe with Phoenicia, with Saban Arabs, with the Egyptians and the rest of the near East. We would call that, in the scholarly world, 'antiquarian revisionism' - trying to use old values to support a wrong cause altogether. "

Dr. Innocent Pikirayi, lecturer in history and archaeology, University of Zimbabwe.

[Lusankya]

Besides, the Africans already tried using huge cavalry animals in antiquity: Hannibal's elephants.

Apparently Hannibal's elephants were from a now-extinct species of elephant. It seems that they died due to over-domestication, because Elephants have too long a lifespan for people to breed them as domestic mounts. When it takes eight years (or however long it is) to get one grown Elephant, it's easy to understand why people don't bother.


A documentary I watched a while back suggested that cultivation and domesticatable animals were important to strong civilisations. While southern Africa was full of things which were good for people to eat, it didn't have cultivatable grains (which have give a lot of food for the amount of effort you put in) and the animals which people ate were skittish because they were used to being eaten by lions. In the end, it's all about how effectively you can use your manpower, and if you can't farm grains, can't raise livestock and can't increase the amount of work each labourer can do with the help of mounts, your effectiveness is going to be limited.

Most of our farm produce happened to originate in the middle east, which was actually quite handy for us, because that particular latitude happened to have a lot of land along it for people to grow food on, and it was easier to spread the plants east-west than it would have been to cultivate them further north.


ROAR!!!!! says GOJIRA!!!!!

[Talanth]

And of cource there was the great glory of the queen of sheba. Not wholely the myth we all thought according to one documentory I saw on the history channel recently.

I'm pritty sure this is the one, but my computer doesn't want to play it for me. Linky

[Broomstick]

There are a shitload of tropical diseases and parasites that evolved along with humanity in Africa, and represent a drain on the workforce and a source of infant mortality. It doesn't bar civilization, but it does make for a negative that isn't present elsewhere. At least not to the same degree. Some of those "exotic" diseases - such West Nile - are now widespread thanks to the movement of people around the planet. Even so - West Nile has an "off" season during the winter where I live. In its native region it's a year-round possibility.

I don't think Africa's "primative" state is a one-factor thing. Certainly, the centuries of European interference account for a lot of the present state of affairs. In many areas tse-tse flies and their accompanying diseases made keeping domestic animals difficult or impossible - the Meso-Americans built a civilization without significant domestic animals, but they didn't have the disease burden, they had domestic crops, and they weren't having to fight invaders from Europe and Asia most of their history. Which is another point - Africa has agriculture, but many of today's most important crops are from elsewhere. The species available to Africans in the distant past were limited. Africa does have millet, and there is a grain called teff from the Ethiopian highlands, but teff has a very limited growing area, even today.

It's possible that Africa had some pretty advanced civilizations in the distant past who never built in stone... in which case no trace remains. There is little written history of sub-Saharan Africa before the European expansion and a few accounts by muslim travelers.

[Lord Zentei]

500 years of taking it up the ass from Europe might have a bit to do with it.

That has little to do with medieval times; moreover, that does not explain the backwardness of Africa compared with other continents that were colonized.

Moreover, blaming the Romans for holding Africa back is fucking retarded. Not only did they never penetrate far into the continent, being limited to the north coast, the presence of Romans in Europe and Asia was a stabilizing influence, so this theory does not explain why Africa should be worse off than Europe or Asia. Same goes for the Arabs, though they managed to penetrate further.

Egypt, Aksum, Carthage: these were all on the north and north-east coasts; they were not truly a part of the subsaharan domain in a cultural, economic or ethnic sense. Zimbabwe, Mali and Ghana were in the southern domain, and though advanced, they were not competitive with the civilizations in north Africa, Asia or Europe. Moreover, they all had only tenous contact with the north.

My hypothesis is that it is simply a matter of geography: no civilization invents all the advances that it uses; this implies that civilizations benefit from contact with one another, and thus advance more rapidly when they are able to communicate. Much of Africa was unknown to the north or at best remote until the Age of Sail, thus they were hidebound by their isolation. This hypothesis would also explain the fact that Old World civilizations were able to advance more rapidly than the New World ones.

[Vendetta]

At what point did Africa start falling behind everyone else? It's not as if they were technologically behind the rest of the world at the time Carthage was fighting with Rome.

The Industrial Revolution.

Large bits of Europe are easy to farm, and these bits are all close together, allowing for large concentrations of population to develop around industrial centres and still be fed by their surrounding countryside, and allowing goods to be transported easily and in bulk between population centres (by canal and later rail).

Although there are fertile areas in Africa, they are far apart, and not conducive to transportation or long term storage of goods.

Europe was able to industrialise, Africa was not.

Also, almost all of Africa's coal reserves, another major power behind industrialisation, were in the south, an area which, before colonialisation, had a great deal of disparate tribes, again, a barrier to large scale effort like industrialisation.

[Lord Zentei]

At what point did Africa start falling behind everyone else? It's not as if they were technologically behind the rest of the world at the time Carthage was fighting with Rome.

The Industrial Revolution.

Most of Africa was already well behind Europe and the Near East during the Reneissance. It's more a long-term trend than a specific development that puts Africa behind.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Besides, the Africans already tried using huge cavalry animals in antiquity: Hannibal's elephants.

Not the same thing; elephants have never been truly domesticated, only tamed. Among other things, that means they never underwent the kind of selective breeding to produce a true war elephant, like a warhorse or war dog. The most important reason the use of elephants in warfare was so limited was that if they paniced, they'd turn around and trample their own side. If they could have been bred for more agressiveness/less fear/less sensitivity to pain ( like a gigantic pit bull ), they would have been more effective.

As far as the logistics of rhino calvary go, sure, they would have been a pain. However, if ancient armies could supply elephants, surely they could supply rhinos.

[Pablo Sanchez]

At what point did Africa start falling behind everyone else? It's not as if they were technologically behind the rest of the world at the time Carthage was fighting with Rome.

The Carthaginians weren't "Africans" as we understand the word to mean today. Carthage was a colony founded by Phoenecian settles from what is today the coast of Lebanon; they were Semitic people (like Arabs, Hebrews, or Egyptians). We concieve of the Mediterranean coast of Africa in different terms today than did people in the ancient world; to a Roman these places were more or less part of Europe because they were connected by lines of communication through the Mediterranean sea. It's only beginning the 8th century, with the conquest of the region by hostile Muslims, that the Mediterranean began to be seen as dividing North Africa from Europe.

At any rate, throughout history the people of North Africa have been divided from Subsaharan Africa by the wide Sahara desert; it's only geographical coincidence that they happen to be considered part of Africa (for comparison, if you look at a map, Europe is part of Asia to the same or greater extent that North Africa is part of Africa--Europe doesn't even have a clear dividing line like the Sahara). It's an oversimplification to call them African.

If you're asking when these people became less advanced than Europeans, the answer is fairly simple. The Europeans began to pull away in the early middle ages (11th century), as North Africa experienced climate and terrain changes from a place that shipped grain to Rome to a desert. With the Renaissance, the general technological lead that Europe had over the Muslim Middle East applied equally to North Africa, and finally the Industrial Revolution demolished any doubt.

When you talk about SubSaharan Africa, the answer is a little less simple. Probably by around the time of the Roman Republic, Europe was advanced all out of proportion in all significant technologies (engineering, metallurgy, mathematics, writing, etc.) over the SubSaharan Africans--although some African nations developed high standards in certain areas like the arts. Other African nations like Nubia and Ethiopia remained in close competition with the rest of the world until crippled by the Arab invasions of 700-800 CE at which point they stagnated.

But, on average, Europe maintained an enormous lead from then on; a Roman legion could as easily have subdued an African army from 100 BCE as one from 1800 (if we disregard the importation of European weapons that took place later on).

The reasons for this--
1) Lack of navigable waterways. SubSaharan Africa lacks rivers that are capable of offering effective transport for people and goods. This retards the development of population centers and trade, which in turn retards technological development.
2) Lack of natural resources. SubSaharan Africa is generally poor in natural resources like iron. This is bad for obvious reasons.
3) Poor agricultural land. Generally speaking, land in Africa is not very good for long-term agriculture. This means that people adopted nomadic lifestyles of hunter-gathering or cattle herding, which were suited to the land. This meant there were few fixed population centers for most of the history of Africa, which is also bad for technology.
4) Almost no connections to the rest of the world. Apart from a few narrow trade routes, they was very little intercourse between SubSaharan Africa and the rest of the world. Other nomadic areas like Mongolia kept up with the civilized peoples by benefitting from technological diffusion (steelworking, stirrups, and so on). Africa got no such benefit.

EDIT:
Rhino cavalry is a stupid idea for several reasons. Rhinos are ill-tempered, not at all receptive to domestication, and stupid compared to elephants.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Rhino cavalry is a stupid idea for several reasons. Rhinos are ill-tempered, not at all receptive to domestication, and stupid compared to elephants.

Bolding mine; that was Diamond's point; the other problems might have been partially correctable with selective breeding, if they could be domesticated. Properly bred war elephants would be better, no doubt.

[Darth Wong]

Besides, the Africans already tried using huge cavalry animals in antiquity: Hannibal's elephants.

Not the same thing; elephants have never been truly domesticated, only tamed. Among other things, that means they never underwent the kind of selective breeding to produce a true war elephant, like a warhorse or war dog. The most important reason the use of elephants in warfare was so limited was that if they paniced, they'd turn around and trample their own side. If they could have been bred for more agressiveness/less fear/less sensitivity to pain ( like a gigantic pit bull ), they would have been more effective.

The Indian elephants were quite effective against Alexander. Their limited usefulness probably came about more from their great logistical requirements and the fact that humans who had been properly prepared and trained to deal with them could do so provided they had the right kind of weapons.

As far as the logistics of rhino calvary go, sure, they would have been a pain. However, if ancient armies could supply elephants, surely they could supply rhinos.

Not necessarily. Elephants may consume more food than rhinos, but they are also very efficient walkers, and are therefore as suitable as any high-mass animal for campaigning with an army. Rhinos, on the other hand, rest most of the time and probably can't keep up a walking pace over long distances. The entire army would have to slow its pace of advance to a crawl if it was forced to rely on rhinos, who can manage bursts of speed but aren't efficient walkers.

[Aeolus]

Diamond also mentions that crops planted in one region of Africa cant be grown in other regions. As opposed to grain which can be grown across most of Eurasia.

[Elfdart]

It IS interesting to note, though, that there have been many attempts to deny GZ's African origin:

And those attempts belong in the same shithole as other forms of bogus history. There was a similar movement in the US (among Mormons in particular) to give credit for Amerindian buildings to lost clans of white people. It's not much different from the idea that the pyramids weren't really built by the Egyptians, but were built by aliens, Greek wizards, giants, gods -anything but dark-skinned people since that idea was so implausible.

Rhino cavalry is a stupid idea for several reasons. Rhinos are ill-tempered, not at all receptive to domestication, and stupid compared to elephants.

Almost all animals are stupid compared to elephants. If rhinos could be tamed like elephants, let alone domesticated, they could be quite useful for several reasons as long as they stayed in Africa:

1)They can eat native plants, so there's no need to set aside crops of oats and barley as you do to feed horses.

2)They are more resistant to native diseases. Domestic horses keel over and die throughout the central regions of Africa. The tse-tse fly alone wipes out most of them.

3)Rhinos are far more powerful than horses. This would not just let them dominate a battlefield, it would make them useful for pulling ploughs and carrying cargo.

4)Rhinos are related to the horse family, so they might be among the smarter mammals.

The problem is that of all odd-hooved mammals, only the horse and donkey can be domesticated. Rhinos, zebras, tapirs and hemionids can't.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Haile Selassie tried to make a go of things for Ethiopia, but Africa just doesn't have the industrial base.

[Big Orange]

The Carthaginians weren't "Africans" as we understand the word to mean today. Carthage was a colony founded by Phoenecian settles from what is today the coast of Lebanon; they were Semitic people (like Arabs, Hebrews, or Egyptians). We concieve of the Mediterranean coast of Africa in different terms today than did people in the ancient world; to a Roman these places were more or less part of Europe because they were connected by lines of communication through the Mediterranean sea. It's only beginning the 8th century, with the conquest of the region by hostile Muslims, that the Mediterranean began to be seen as dividing North Africa from Europe.

I wouldn't say Ancient Egypt was really Semitic; if you look at many of the wall paintings and statues they look nothing like Semites. In fact they look more like modern Ethiopians or Somalians than any modern Berber or Arab person (who are mostly Caucasian). The Carthaginians were not black but were "white" Mediterraneans (although they could’ve intermarried with native Africans). And if you look at the river Nile it goes all the way into Sub-Saharan Africa, past the equator. So Ancient Egypt could’ve been partially founded by people who came up the Nile from Africa‘s interior and not just by "white" folk from across the Red Sea (so Ancient Egypt was most likely a broad amalgamation of many different tribes from Africa and Eurasia).