And while the Greeks were building the Colossus of Rhodes, what were Africans doing? What were Indians doing? Nothing.
In that particular instance the Indian emperor Ashoka was building Amaravati Stupa at about the same time. Equally ostentatious and oversized, if not quite as technically impressive in the engineering because it's primarily a dome. I don't know of any comparable sub-saharan African monuments from that era, but if you ignore the kangz stuff and just go by continent and include Egypt, Libya, Morocco etc. there's plenty, although many are kind of entwined with ancient Greek/Roman culture, you can still say things like the sphinx and pyramids are distinctly their own.
It's funny because both black and white racialists are ignoring the rest of Africa, and treating Sub-Saharan Africa as the pinnacle of all African Civilizations.
Sub-Saharan Africa not having massive high-density cities and advanced civilizations makes sense considering the fact that Malaria kills off density, high-yield cash crops are hard to grow in those regions, they don't have many navigable waterways, and humans can be hunted by actual god damned predators.
If America is on Easy Mode; then Sub-Saharan Africa is set, by default, to Nigh-On-Impossible.
(a) they evolved natural resistance to malaria (sickle cells)
(b) malaria is less deadly than the diseases Europeans faced. The Renaissance happened after the black plague ravaged Europe.
high-yield cash crops are hard to grow
"high yield cash crops" don't just fall into your lap. They're created through artificial selection by farmers carefully and deliberately crossing lower-yield strains.
Other races did this. Wheat was created from, basically, grass. Rice too. And when you create a living thing through evolution, you by definition create it to prefer your own climate.
So other races put in the effort to create these crops, and now you're making an excuse for blacks - "dey wont gibs me no crops!"
All that said, the Bantu (arguably the most successful sub-saharan african race) actually did invent farming on their own, and that was instrumental to their success. As in most things, the difference between blacks and other races isn't one of kind (that is to say, it isn't that one had farming and the other did not) it's a difference of degree (other races just do it better).
they don't have many navigable waterways
Fair enough, but they still could have created civilizations along the waterways that they had. It's like if you have $100k and you waste it, and your excuse is, "well that other guy had a million" - that's true, but you still wasted what you had
humans can be hunted by actual god damned predators.
That's true everywhere that humans have ever lived. There used to be fucking lions in Europe. Why do you think so many kings have lions in their heraldry?
There are drawings of lions in the caves of Chauvet. Much later, the Greeks had lots of stories of lions because they still roamed asia minor.
...what most humans did, when they entered a new area, is hunt the mega-fauna too extinction. Europeans did it. Asians did it. Even the aboriginal australians did it 50k years ago!
Amazingly, you've never discovered that African trade with India and China was a regular occurrence, you've never heard of Egypt, and you've never known that African people have been fishing since forever.
So much of this is shockingly wrong. As in: absolute ahistorical nonsense. Where the hell did you get this crap?
(a) they evolved natural resistance to malaria (sickle cells)
Sickle Cell Anemia is a disease not a natural resistance. And no they didn't develop a natural resistance, they still die from it like everybody does. It isn't an immunity.
(b) malaria is less deadly than the diseases Europeans faced. The Renaissance happened after the black plague ravaged Europe.
Holy shit no. Not even close. Europe had been in contact with the coastline of Africa since at least the Carthaginians who brought back a fucking Gorilla to Carthage. In that time, any Europeans travelling more than basically 20 miles inland into Africa lead to their deaths from disease. It's called The Dark Continent not because of the people, but because it's utterly inaccessible to European civilizations. The Portuguese traders had the same problem, it's why they needed African kingdoms to actually get slaves. The Portugese had colonies in almost every continent and they never had the inability to survive exploring those continents like they did in Africa.
Once a rudimentary drug was invented in order to fight off the effects of Malaria, colonies finally began to take root in Africa, and the people themselves ended up having to biologically adapt to the disease (Afrikans aren't Belgian, they're African). Even during the slow expansion into Africa, it was constantly noted by European generals that the attrition rate due to disease was absolutely extreme, and they would regularly lose more troops from disease than anything else even close, and it was never as bad in any other continent.
Malaria has been the most deadly disease that Europeans have ever faced. The Bubonic Plague only wiped out 30% of Europe in each wave. Malaria wiped out everyone until primitive medicines could be invented. Even now you still need drugs to deal with the likelihood of Malaria if you go to Africa. There's a reason blood banks won't even accept blood donations from you if you've traveled to Africa within 5 years.
And again, as for Africans, the deadliness of Malaria didn't come in waves every couple decades like the Bubonic Plauge did in Europe. It's permanent. Every year. Every day.
"high yield cash crops" don't just fall into your lap. They're created through artificial selection by farmers carefully and deliberately crossing lower-yield strains.
For god sakes, again you're completely wrong. You still need a basic crop to even work with. Wheat isn't just some random grass. It's an extremely high protein edible grass. There's not that many of those. The staple crops are wheat, barley, rye, maze, and fish/rice. Literally none of those grow naturally in sub-saharan Africa, and would be eaten by Zebra if they did. Instead, wheat, barely, and rye all grow in Europe. Maze is basically the shittiest of all the staple crop because it's the hardest to work with, has to be beaten into a powder to even cook, and is effectively inedible otherwise. It also has very low protein.
The asians invented the rice paddy, that's a lot different. Heavy and reliable rains allow for rice paddies to actually help feed fish at the same time because rice has basically no protein, but the fish who do like have high concentrations of protein. Asia took millennia to develop this technique, and again, it just so happens that this can be done in the unique circumstances of Asia's tropical geography.
Sub-Saharan Africa has none of this. Humans were actively competing with other grazing animals. Wheat had to be imported into Africa because it doesn't naturally grow there, but they need it to live with even the paltry populations they currently have. The rains and soil are not that good for growing such temperate crops, especially since temperate regions go from total drought for most of the months out of the year, to heavy flooding for a few weeks, then back to drought.
No one was going to naturally build strong agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. You needed technology to get it.
Fair enough, but they still could have created civilizations along the waterways that they had. It's like if you have $100k and you waste it, and your excuse is, "well that other guy had a million" - that's true, but you still wasted what you had
No, they couldn't. Sub-Saharan Africa's waterways are absolute shit. Not only are they only navigable with even small boats for only a few weeks out of the year, but the have a ridiculous number of waterfalls and terrain challenges. The Left claims that European colonies building roads and rail lines were trying to "steal resources" from Africa, but the reason they spent most of their time on infrastructure building is because no navigable infrastructure existed naturally in Sub-Saharan Africa.
That's true everywhere that humans have ever lived. There used to be fucking lions in Europe. Why do you think so many kings have lions in their heraldry?
I erased part of this comment so I wouldn't be so insulting to you, but the shit you just said blew my fucking mind. They knew of lions. There wasn't any lions in England and France. The English also have heraldry of dragons and unicorns. Yet, for some reason, Birmingham isn't beset by magical ponies endlessly droning on about friendship.
In any case, eradicating mega fauna is still a hell of a task, considering how much mega fauna we're talking about. It's not just the predators, but the "prey" too. And yet still, we have to talk about the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa is still isolated, still doesn't have navigable waterways, still doesn't have cash crops, and still doesn't give immunity from Malaria to Africans. You don't build dense cities, because you can't support them, maintain them, or feed them.
Nope. Everything I've said is correct. You're the one who's wrong. Let's keep score, shall we?
Sickle Cell Anemia is a disease not a natural resistance.
I didn't say "sickle cell anemia" I said "sickle cells" - do you understand the difference? Sickle cells is an adaptation that reduces the mortality from malaria. In a region where malaria is endemic, sickle cells are a huge advantage. A little anemia is a small price to pay. (source)
So, I'm right. They developed resistance to the disease. That's one point for me. Your reply fails, so that's negative 1 point for you.
Malaria has been the most deadly disease that Europeans have ever faced.
How is mortality to Europeans at all relevant to this conversation?? Holy shit! You're way off track. Here, let me help you. You claimed that malaria prevented blacks from developing technology. I compared malaria's effect on blacks to the black plague's effect on whites.
That is the comparison being made. How deadly is malaria to blacks (who have some protection due to the sickle cell trait) vs. how deadly is the black plague to whites.
Here are two things that are irrelevant: (1) how deadly is the black plague to blacks (2) how deadly is malaria to whites
Once again, -1 points to you for raising an irrelevant objection.
Wheat isn't just some random grass.
I didn't say that wheat was "just some random grass" - I said that wheat was created by our ancestors through selective breeding. And what our ancestors started with is no poorer than what Africans have available to them.
The score is now 2 to -3
Sub-Saharan Africa's waterways are absolute shit.
Given your performance in this thread so far (literally everything up to this point has been irrelevant), I'm reticent to believe you here, but I actually don't know much about the geology so, I'll throw you a bone and grant you one point. The score is 2 to -2
There wasn't any lions in England and France.
I literally mentioned the name of the gave IN FUCKING FRANCE where our ancestors drew lions that they saw with their own two eyes.
The people who lived in those caves and drew those lions were at approximately the same state of development as must africans today. So what's different between these two groups? The presence of lions is not the difference.
The ancestors of the europeans killed off or tamed the megafauna, then developed a great civilization that flew to the moon. The ancestors of the first australian aborigines also killed off their megafauna, but then failed to develop a great civilization. Meanwhile, the africans did absolutely nothing.
Another point for me, and another point taken away from you for raising a faulty objection. Final score, me: 3, you: -4
You being ignorant doesn't mean my comment doesn't make sense.
Sub-Saharan Africa is one of the most temperate climates on the planet.
The Congo is fucking Temperate to you, is it? Why are you all like this? How do you know literally nothing about the places you hate.
Blacks not understanding agriculture and how to work the land does not = "It's hard to farm here". It's a HUGE distinction.
Correct, because it's not about blacks not understanding agriculture. They do. Agriculture has existed in Africa for many millennia. What they don't have is cash crops that can naturally survive in Sub-Saharan Africa's environmental conditions.
America has freezing cold winters in huge swaths of the country and deserts that will kill the population too. You think there were not animal predators in the US killing settlers and natives alike?
Not anywhere to the extent that such a thing takes place in Africa. There's a reason Mustangs basically exploded in North America as a horse population. Horses weren't being hunted by much larger predators. The biggest predators horses have in North America are humans. In Africa, Zebra evolved as horses to have massive camouflage patterns that exist in no other horse breed in the world, specifically because they hunted so aggressively by predators. They also happen to be extremely violent, aggressive, and paranoid as equines.
Europeans had all but eradicated the only real predators they had to compete with: wolves. I terrified the shit out of them when they came to North America, and again, it was basically all they had to deal with. Even bears don't actively hunt humans as prey.
Africa has to deal with not only predators that will hunt humans, and diseases that wipe out human concentrations, but also the prey species that will be happy to kill you too.
In that particular instance the Indian emperor Ashoka was building Amaravati Stupa at about the same time. Equally ostentatious and oversized, if not quite as technically impressive in the engineering because it's primarily a dome. I don't know of any comparable sub-saharan African monuments from that era, but if you ignore the kangz stuff and just go by continent and include Egypt, Libya, Morocco etc. there's plenty, although many are kind of entwined with ancient Greek/Roman culture, you can still say things like the sphinx and pyramids are distinctly their own.
It's funny because both black and white racialists are ignoring the rest of Africa, and treating Sub-Saharan Africa as the pinnacle of all African Civilizations.
Sub-Saharan Africa not having massive high-density cities and advanced civilizations makes sense considering the fact that Malaria kills off density, high-yield cash crops are hard to grow in those regions, they don't have many navigable waterways, and humans can be hunted by actual god damned predators.
If America is on Easy Mode; then Sub-Saharan Africa is set, by default, to Nigh-On-Impossible.
(a) they evolved natural resistance to malaria (sickle cells)
(b) malaria is less deadly than the diseases Europeans faced. The Renaissance happened after the black plague ravaged Europe.
"high yield cash crops" don't just fall into your lap. They're created through artificial selection by farmers carefully and deliberately crossing lower-yield strains.
Other races did this. Wheat was created from, basically, grass. Rice too. And when you create a living thing through evolution, you by definition create it to prefer your own climate.
So other races put in the effort to create these crops, and now you're making an excuse for blacks - "dey wont gibs me no crops!"
All that said, the Bantu (arguably the most successful sub-saharan african race) actually did invent farming on their own, and that was instrumental to their success. As in most things, the difference between blacks and other races isn't one of kind (that is to say, it isn't that one had farming and the other did not) it's a difference of degree (other races just do it better).
Fair enough, but they still could have created civilizations along the waterways that they had. It's like if you have $100k and you waste it, and your excuse is, "well that other guy had a million" - that's true, but you still wasted what you had
That's true everywhere that humans have ever lived. There used to be fucking lions in Europe. Why do you think so many kings have lions in their heraldry?
There are drawings of lions in the caves of Chauvet. Much later, the Greeks had lots of stories of lions because they still roamed asia minor.
...what most humans did, when they entered a new area, is hunt the mega-fauna too extinction. Europeans did it. Asians did it. Even the aboriginal australians did it 50k years ago!
So again, this isn't a very good excuse.
Thousands of miles of coastline, from which not a single ship set sail.
Amazingly, you've never discovered that African trade with India and China was a regular occurrence, you've never heard of Egypt, and you've never known that African people have been fishing since forever.
So much of this is shockingly wrong. As in: absolute ahistorical nonsense. Where the hell did you get this crap?
Sickle Cell Anemia is a disease not a natural resistance. And no they didn't develop a natural resistance, they still die from it like everybody does. It isn't an immunity.
Holy shit no. Not even close. Europe had been in contact with the coastline of Africa since at least the Carthaginians who brought back a fucking Gorilla to Carthage. In that time, any Europeans travelling more than basically 20 miles inland into Africa lead to their deaths from disease. It's called The Dark Continent not because of the people, but because it's utterly inaccessible to European civilizations. The Portuguese traders had the same problem, it's why they needed African kingdoms to actually get slaves. The Portugese had colonies in almost every continent and they never had the inability to survive exploring those continents like they did in Africa.
Once a rudimentary drug was invented in order to fight off the effects of Malaria, colonies finally began to take root in Africa, and the people themselves ended up having to biologically adapt to the disease (Afrikans aren't Belgian, they're African). Even during the slow expansion into Africa, it was constantly noted by European generals that the attrition rate due to disease was absolutely extreme, and they would regularly lose more troops from disease than anything else even close, and it was never as bad in any other continent.
Malaria has been the most deadly disease that Europeans have ever faced. The Bubonic Plague only wiped out 30% of Europe in each wave. Malaria wiped out everyone until primitive medicines could be invented. Even now you still need drugs to deal with the likelihood of Malaria if you go to Africa. There's a reason blood banks won't even accept blood donations from you if you've traveled to Africa within 5 years.
And again, as for Africans, the deadliness of Malaria didn't come in waves every couple decades like the Bubonic Plauge did in Europe. It's permanent. Every year. Every day.
For god sakes, again you're completely wrong. You still need a basic crop to even work with. Wheat isn't just some random grass. It's an extremely high protein edible grass. There's not that many of those. The staple crops are wheat, barley, rye, maze, and fish/rice. Literally none of those grow naturally in sub-saharan Africa, and would be eaten by Zebra if they did. Instead, wheat, barely, and rye all grow in Europe. Maze is basically the shittiest of all the staple crop because it's the hardest to work with, has to be beaten into a powder to even cook, and is effectively inedible otherwise. It also has very low protein.
The asians invented the rice paddy, that's a lot different. Heavy and reliable rains allow for rice paddies to actually help feed fish at the same time because rice has basically no protein, but the fish who do like have high concentrations of protein. Asia took millennia to develop this technique, and again, it just so happens that this can be done in the unique circumstances of Asia's tropical geography.
Sub-Saharan Africa has none of this. Humans were actively competing with other grazing animals. Wheat had to be imported into Africa because it doesn't naturally grow there, but they need it to live with even the paltry populations they currently have. The rains and soil are not that good for growing such temperate crops, especially since temperate regions go from total drought for most of the months out of the year, to heavy flooding for a few weeks, then back to drought.
No one was going to naturally build strong agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa. You needed technology to get it.
No, they couldn't. Sub-Saharan Africa's waterways are absolute shit. Not only are they only navigable with even small boats for only a few weeks out of the year, but the have a ridiculous number of waterfalls and terrain challenges. The Left claims that European colonies building roads and rail lines were trying to "steal resources" from Africa, but the reason they spent most of their time on infrastructure building is because no navigable infrastructure existed naturally in Sub-Saharan Africa.
I erased part of this comment so I wouldn't be so insulting to you, but the shit you just said blew my fucking mind. They knew of lions. There wasn't any lions in England and France. The English also have heraldry of dragons and unicorns. Yet, for some reason, Birmingham isn't beset by magical ponies endlessly droning on about friendship.
In any case, eradicating mega fauna is still a hell of a task, considering how much mega fauna we're talking about. It's not just the predators, but the "prey" too. And yet still, we have to talk about the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa is still isolated, still doesn't have navigable waterways, still doesn't have cash crops, and still doesn't give immunity from Malaria to Africans. You don't build dense cities, because you can't support them, maintain them, or feed them.
Nope. Everything I've said is correct. You're the one who's wrong. Let's keep score, shall we?
I didn't say "sickle cell anemia" I said "sickle cells" - do you understand the difference? Sickle cells is an adaptation that reduces the mortality from malaria. In a region where malaria is endemic, sickle cells are a huge advantage. A little anemia is a small price to pay. (source)
So, I'm right. They developed resistance to the disease. That's one point for me. Your reply fails, so that's negative 1 point for you.
How is mortality to Europeans at all relevant to this conversation?? Holy shit! You're way off track. Here, let me help you. You claimed that malaria prevented blacks from developing technology. I compared malaria's effect on blacks to the black plague's effect on whites.
That is the comparison being made. How deadly is malaria to blacks (who have some protection due to the sickle cell trait) vs. how deadly is the black plague to whites.
Here are two things that are irrelevant: (1) how deadly is the black plague to blacks (2) how deadly is malaria to whites
Once again, -1 points to you for raising an irrelevant objection.
I didn't say that wheat was "just some random grass" - I said that wheat was created by our ancestors through selective breeding. And what our ancestors started with is no poorer than what Africans have available to them.
The score is now 2 to -3
Given your performance in this thread so far (literally everything up to this point has been irrelevant), I'm reticent to believe you here, but I actually don't know much about the geology so, I'll throw you a bone and grant you one point. The score is 2 to -2
I literally mentioned the name of the gave IN FUCKING FRANCE where our ancestors drew lions that they saw with their own two eyes.
The people who lived in those caves and drew those lions were at approximately the same state of development as must africans today. So what's different between these two groups? The presence of lions is not the difference.
The ancestors of the europeans killed off or tamed the megafauna, then developed a great civilization that flew to the moon. The ancestors of the first australian aborigines also killed off their megafauna, but then failed to develop a great civilization. Meanwhile, the africans did absolutely nothing.
Another point for me, and another point taken away from you for raising a faulty objection. Final score, me: 3, you: -4
You being ignorant doesn't mean my comment doesn't make sense.
The Congo is fucking Temperate to you, is it? Why are you all like this? How do you know literally nothing about the places you hate.
Correct, because it's not about blacks not understanding agriculture. They do. Agriculture has existed in Africa for many millennia. What they don't have is cash crops that can naturally survive in Sub-Saharan Africa's environmental conditions.
Not anywhere to the extent that such a thing takes place in Africa. There's a reason Mustangs basically exploded in North America as a horse population. Horses weren't being hunted by much larger predators. The biggest predators horses have in North America are humans. In Africa, Zebra evolved as horses to have massive camouflage patterns that exist in no other horse breed in the world, specifically because they hunted so aggressively by predators. They also happen to be extremely violent, aggressive, and paranoid as equines.
Europeans had all but eradicated the only real predators they had to compete with: wolves. I terrified the shit out of them when they came to North America, and again, it was basically all they had to deal with. Even bears don't actively hunt humans as prey.
Africa has to deal with not only predators that will hunt humans, and diseases that wipe out human concentrations, but also the prey species that will be happy to kill you too.