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[–]OblargagRead a Book[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (24 children)

Friendly reminder, bigotry is not tolerated here and will result in a ban.

If you see comments breaking rule 3, be sure to report offenders.

[–]EuterpeZonker 9009 points9010 points  (400 children)

One thing that never seems to get brought up in this discussion is that development of civilization happened on an exponential scale extremely quickly. Our oldest civilizations developed over the course of 6,000 years or so, maybe 12,000 if you’re really stretching it. Comparatively, Homo sapiens have been around for 315,000 years. The development of civilization has been a tiny blip on that timescale, and so any variation due to things like geography, climate, trade etc. would have huge consequences. The civilizations that developed earlier than others had a massive advantage from a small variation and the advancements compounded on each other very quickly.

[–]LoreChano 3104 points3105 points  (247 children)

There's also the fact that civilization did in fact started in hot weather, differently from what people are pointing out here. Not only is Mesopotamia hot, the indus valley civilization also started in a hot and tropical place. You could even say the same for China, although I believe the Yellow River, another cradle of civilization, tends to be more temperate. And then there's the new world civilizations such as the Maya. Civilization did not appear firstly in Europe, it was imported over time. Europe is in fact the only, single cold place where civilization de facto existed before the great navigations.

The reason Africa never did develop is complex. Varies from physical isolation, to hardship to travel in land, to disease and lack of cargo animals (horses die from disease), soil infertility, etc.

[–]TsuDhoNimh2 528 points529 points  (1 child)

the indus valley civilization also started in a hot and tropical place

With a good river system

[–]jwarper 262 points263 points  (0 children)

And with most river systems you have flooding. The environment exerting boom/bust cycles on a population forces it to adopt a sense of urgency. This in turn incentivizes a population to prioritize resourcefulness and productivity.

[–]RollinThundaga 117 points118 points  (3 children)

What you failed to mention is that those weren't just 'hot places', but specifically all were annual floodplains where agriculture was relatively easy. Egypt as well.

Subsaharan Africa really doesn't have such things besides maybe the Congo.

[–]No-Way7911 38 points39 points  (0 children)

The African geography is pretty awful for the most part. After the Saharan desert, there’s an impenetrable rainforest. It only gets better once you go down Congo

[–][deleted] 972 points973 points  (77 children)

Plenty of north / east asian civ in cold places (ie Japan). Andean civs also existed through the cold. Central asia also gets very, very cold. So I don't think that's a good assertion at all.

I'd wager that the biggest reason Africa didn't develop like Europe was a lack of competition in a very large continent. After the development of agriculture, it was relatively easy for people to migrate into empty space with little competitive pressure. It still happens today.

Europe, on the other hand, is small, was densely populated and the opportunity for entire communities to up and leave was comparatively limited. The same goes for the near east and presumably also the more amenable parts of China.

[–]A-Game-Of-Fate 248 points249 points  (2 children)

Another factor is the lack of natural harbors in Africa- the whole continent has only like 4 of them. Makes several things difficult- no boats means all trade is overland travel, no real deep water fishing (except for a few rivers and lakes), etc.

[–]HaoleInParadise 67 points68 points  (1 child)

There are some good natural harbors but they are not necessarily close together and the ocean between them I can’t imagine is as navigable as the Mediterranean, Yellow Sea, Baltic, Black Sea, Persian Gulf, etc.

[–]A-Game-Of-Fate 109 points110 points  (0 children)

Oh yeah, there’s a few- something like 4 or 5.

In a single country (of typical European size) that’d be pretty good.

In an entire continent? One as big as Africa? Entire civilizations could rise and fall, having never expanded far enough to reach more than a single one of those natural harbors.

It’s why colonialism fucked the African continent up extra hard- they didn’t really have an answer to sea-faring people showing up and killing/enslaving en masse because they never needed to expand into deeper waters.

[–]the_mighty_skeetadon 208 points209 points  (48 children)

I'd wager that the biggest reason Africa didn't develop like Europe was a lack of competition in a very large continent.

Why wouldn't that just lead to much larger populations, in the multi-century timescale?

[–][deleted] 589 points590 points  (45 children)

Competition for space and resources is what led to the intensification of agriculture and the development of large, concentrated populations.

If you don't need to intensify production in your fixed space because you can just move, the same pressure isn't there to populate or perish. Africa is a megadiverse continent with abundant life pretty much everywhere. Even without agriculture, humans found ways to live low intensity lifestyles, much like indigenous Australians. Why bother farming (intensifying and putting in all of your waking hours) when the natural world is already producing food all around you, there for the taking?

[–]lucrac200 169 points170 points  (0 children)

I remember a French guy complaining about how lazy the people in Seychelles are.

This is a place where you can pick up a few mango's from a tree, catch 3-4 fish in 20 min and have your lunch/dinner in 30 min.

Ffs, of course they are lazy, I would be lazy too. You don't have to work hard from 4 in the morning to 9 in the evening, 9 months / year so you don't starve & freeze to death in the other 3 months. Winter is brutal, and early spring or late autumn are not a lot friendlier to humans.

[–]Stupidrice 399 points400 points  (12 children)

You know what, I have a French friend who lived in Ghana for a while and he said just this. He said Ghana is the only place he’s lived that you can have no job and the land will feed you just fine. He said that’s why there’s no incentive to grow other sectors.

[–]Commercial_Poem_9214 268 points269 points  (5 children)

My wife, who is Jamaican, says the same thing. There isn't really a rush to get a job, when you can just walk along the street, or go to the beach for food. So people enjoy life, and focus on things like music and family more...

[–]aardy 152 points153 points  (2 children)

As long as we're living where we evolved (ie, where we are "supposed" to be living), there isn't a compelling reason to dump every waking hour into agriculture, you can just chill.

If we had some quality of life index that was biased towards "the fewest hours of work per day to have your basic needs met, leaving you the most time to fuck off and chill, and/or build penis horns," I suspect sub-saharan Africa would win out not only over ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt, but maybe even the 21st century.

If you added in things like life expectancy and infant mortality, it would be a different story.

[–]CoffeesCigarettes 25 points26 points  (1 child)

Build what-nows?

[–]aardy 54 points55 points  (0 children)

It's NSFW but google image search "penis gourd." They are not exclusive to sub-sahran Africa.

A not-fully-fleshed out idea/conjecture I've bounced around in my head is that they seem (anecdotally) to be found in pre-agricultural societies where it takes relatively little work to have your basic needs (food, shelter) met, leaving lots of free time for the men to decorate their penises like a christmas tree, compare, talk, gossip, put on epic helicopter shows, etc.

[–]Prior_Shepherd 144 points145 points  (0 children)

It was the same on Hawaii. Settlers thought they were lazy, but they had just developed their system with their land so well that they had all sorts of free time.

Put simply, certain places don't "develop" because they don't need to. That's why we see so much rich ancient culture and customs from these countries that a good bit of Europe just.. doesn't have. They have "modern" culture (ie Last few hundred years) but so much of it is "these people worked until they died to serve their lord" or "this revolution was held because people worked until they died to serve their lord".

(Not to say Europe has no ancient culture, just much less by comparison)

[–]the_mighty_skeetadon 83 points84 points  (19 children)

I'm confused, though -- if life was so easy, wouldn't people just have more children since there was no problem feeding them all, and then continue to reproduce until the resources were more constrained, causing expansion? That's essentially the way all other animals operate, as far as I know... they reach an equilibrium with the available resources + any predation.

[–]Rhowryn 124 points125 points  (3 children)

It's not that life was easy, it's that the obstacles were nature, not other humans. When referring to competition in the context of development, Europe was (relatively) easy to outcompete nature, and ran out of valuable land that wasn't developed by other humans - Africa, despite what the most popular map styles indicate, is enormous, and much more difficult to develop. Without easy agricultural development, technological progress is harder, which makes development slower, etc.

[–]yellowdots- 62 points63 points  (0 children)

People underestimate how big Africa is. The popular map most people are familiar with does a great disservice on how enormous Africa is. The fact that colonizers were shocked on how welcoming indigenous peoples were. But also this kind of question op is asking is also indicative of how little people know africas history. It had kingdoms and trade with the world. Africa wasn’t isolated like the America’s before the European invasion. Never developed? I know no question is stupid, but how odd to think an entire continent with such diversity never “developed”

[–]jaymoney1 8 points9 points  (1 child)

So it was the lions...I knew it.

[–][deleted] 148 points149 points  (5 children)

Life wasn't easy, not at all. Infant mortality was high due to insect-borne tropical disease, likewise for adulthood. People still had to go out and hunt or gather or herd or undertake subsistence farming. Year-round subsistence farming and HG are not conducive to the massive stored surpluses that lead to massive, concentrated populations. The natural carrying capacity for apex predators is quite low and only a bit higher when that predator learns to undertake subsistence farming but has no particular motivation to grow or store large surpluses.

I'd imagine time was the constraining resource, in that case.

[–]FaelingJester 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Human infants don't work the same way most other animals do. Our young are not capable of survival on their own for years. They can't walk, climb or hide themselves. They are completely dependent on adult caregivers and can't be left hidden or unattended for hours. Each human infant requires directed resources for upwards of a decade before it can really be useful as an asset to the community which is one of the reasons humans build social networks and bonds. Feeding them is just one small part of that.

[–][deleted] 74 points75 points  (7 children)

Here's a more local way to think about it. Imagine that your family needs more space because it has too many people and you only have two choices:

  1. Go fight your neighbor and his family to the death and take his space. You or family will almost certainly be maimed or killed in this process. 

  2. Move to the a few miles away where life will basically be the same as now and no risk of combat related injury or death. 

Which would you take? 

Europeans really only had option 1. Africa had either but 2 is a clear winner for survival. 

[–]worldchrisis 32 points33 points  (0 children)

Plenty of north / east asian civ in cold places (ie Japan)

The Native Japanese population was almost completely replaced by ethnic Chinese migrants between 300BC-300 AD.

[–]Chazzermondez 139 points140 points  (2 children)

Civilisation appeared in areas where there was an incentive to stop being nomadic and stay put in one place. This requires very fertile soil in the area you stop, it requires other areas surrounding to be inhospitable enough that you don't want to travel around them anymore and often the motivation for this is there not being enough edible plants that grow in the area to forage for.

[–]kdognhl411 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Did the Minoan civilization not start around 3000 BC just like several places you’re mentioning?

[–]Single_Exercise_1035 601 points602 points  (109 children)

The claim "Africa didn't develop" is misleading and inaccurate based on complete ignorance of African anthropology and archaeology.

West Africa is one of the 8 independent regions globally to innovate plant domestication and farming. The Sudano Sahelian architecture of the Sahel is also an architectural style that stretches across West Africa. The West African Empires were multiethnic and diverse evolving around the Niger River; Ancient Ghana, Mali, Songhai etc. The oldest ruins in West Africa are located in Mauritania at Tichit Walhata which was a settlement started by the Soninke.

Literacy is also 1500 years old in West Africa. Benin City featured the largest earth work in human history and the Benin Bronzes located in the British museum are just some of the artefacts produced by the Edo people of Benin City.

Northern Nigeria also featured city States United under Islam; Kanem Bornu, Sokoto etc.

Archaeological remains in Nigeria include the early Nok culture featuring art works made from terracotta. Igbo Ukwu was also a centre of metallurgy.

In the Nile Valley Ancient Nubia was Egypts elder and partner featuring largely Nilosaharan Speaking Sudanic people but there is also evidence of West African influences via the Sahel in Egyptian depictions of Ancient Nubians. There are 200+ pyramids located in Sudan, more than in Egypt and Nubian Kings like Taharqa are mentioned in the Bible. The 25th Dynasty of Egypt was a Kushitic dynasty of Nubian Kings who annexed Egypt before the late period ushering an era of Egyptian revival.

In North East Africa there was also the Kingdom of Aksum.

In East Africa on the coast was the Swahili city States who were part of trade network stretching to India and China. The Swahili city States also connected into the interior of South East Africa with the over 300 locations featuring Great Zimbabwe.

[–]GurthNada 210 points211 points  (8 children)

I think that when people ask this question in good faith, they wonder why civilizations similar to what existed in Europe, Asia and the Middle East around 1450 (so before colonization) in terms of technology weren't to be found in subsaharan Africa. If you look at the Great Mosque of Timbuktu, it just doesn't "look" as impressive or refined as a Gothic Cathedral, the Alhambra or the Himeji Castle.

[–]Tuxhorn 85 points86 points  (0 children)

If you look at the Great Mosque of Timbuktu, it just doesn't "look" as impressive or refined as a Gothic Cathedral, the Alhambra or the Himeji Castle.

Which is fair enough. The resources and equipment required to build these are not even close.

[–]Illustrious-Okra-524 69 points70 points  (1 child)

Those people should check out the relative status of civilizations in 2000 BC then

[–]Technical-Bit-4801 58 points59 points  (0 children)

THANK YOU. “Impressive” is both subjective and relative.

[–]Single_Exercise_1035 42 points43 points  (1 child)

In regards to Adobe architecture be aware mud brick was the most popular building material in Ancient Egypt. They reserved stone for their temples and pyramids everything else from forts to palaces were built in mud brick. Some in Egypt still live in mud brick Adobe buildings.

Mudbricks are also evident in Southern Morrocan Kasbahs as well as the city of Shibam in Yemen. Not to mention the Cob architecture of North Western Europe.

[–]FunChrisDogGuy 30 points31 points  (0 children)

I just like that autocorrect has no idea that adobe is anything other than a capitalized brand name.

[–]AlcoholicOwl 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Very interesting overview. Is the massive earthwork in Benin City a giant wall? Something like that rings a bell. Also interesting to hear about the further south east African connections to the silk road!

[–]Single_Exercise_1035 36 points37 points  (1 child)

It was a giant wall encircling Benin City, the buildings in the city being built from Clay and Adobe too. The Wall also featured fortifications for protection & it's documented that it wasn't easy for the British finally invade, annex and destroy the city out right in part because of how well fortified it was.

[–]6am7am8am10pm 92 points93 points  (14 children)

how did it take this long to get to the right post 😭😭😭 

[–]mafklap 88 points89 points  (27 children)

The things you mention are all admirable achievements and developments in their own right.

But they're nowhere near the scale and complexity of comparable developments of the other historical civilizations, which is what OP is referring too.

As an example, the Benin Bronzes were made from the 1500s onwards. While surely beautiful, they are hardly any more impressive than - often centuries older - comparable art from Mezoamericans, Ancient Egyptians, or Greeks.

At the same time as the Benin Bronzes were crafted, Europeans were already constructing majestic cathedrals and tapestries for centuries, the Chinese extravagant vases, and the Mesoamericans intricate art from gold.

It just doesn't compare.

[–]9for9 35 points36 points  (5 children)

My favorite theory on this subject is that the geography of Africa itself simply doesn't support a certain level of complexity in civilization. This has to do with lack of animal power due to diseases, size of continent making travel more difficult and limiting cultural exchange therefore limiting technological development. The terrain also makes expansion of empires difficult because of challenges building roads.

Basically Africa was a good place to start civilization, humanity started there and thrived to a point but there were natural limiting factors that only allowed us to go so far on the continent.

[–]Mr-Logic101 20 points21 points  (2 children)

You would actually think it be the opposite. Usually hardships, such as the lack of animal power, force the civilization to progress and “invent” an alternative solution.

Unless there were no hardships with respect to these issues and thus didn’t need a solution to the problem.

[–]9for9 16 points17 points  (0 children)

People can invent all kinds of things but it takes a certain level of complexity to make those inventions worth investing limited. A society without animal power never becomes complex enough to need roads or invest the energy into building them. If I never need to go any further than I can walk in a day and can carry everything on my back why take the time to cut down trees, dig up grass and pave roads to where exactly???

There are example of all kinds of inventions being used as toys because the society wasn't complex enough for them to be a necessity in the first place.

[–][deleted] 152 points153 points  (11 children)

I know the book Guns, Germs and Steel has a lot of issues - but one takeaway I took from it is that any little factor can end up compounding, big time.

Ex, having an easily farmable and versatile crop such as wheat, rice, barley etc. is a huge help when trying to support large populations of people.

[–]goburnham 64 points65 points  (2 children)

Also, didn’t the book mention beasts of burden play a big role. Animals that can be easily domesticated to help plow crops, etc.

[–]RedBloodedHiker 23 points24 points  (0 children)

The book also goes over how Africa is a north south continent. That gives it a disadvantage with the spread of seeds. What works well in Northern Africa could work well in Southern Africa. But doesn’t grow in central Africa. Making it tough to spread useful crops across the continent. Central Africa acted as a barrier to crops.

The americas has similar problems with getting crops to grow in different climates. Europe/Asia is more east/west which makes it somewhat easier to move seeds to where they can grow.

It’s not easy to find wild plants/animals that can be domesticated for human use. Europe lucked into getting the right climates, domesticated crops, and animals.

[–]pmmlordraven 34 points35 points  (1 child)

Exactly. The book has it's issues but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater so to speak. Being able to just make landfall, in a climate not terribly different from your own, and successfully grow crops sets you with a big advantage.

And people don't really get how big disease was. It was so common to lose members of expeditions to Malaria or infection, that something like 1/4 to 1/3 of group dying wasn't outside the norm.

[–]Darkmagosan 30 points31 points  (0 children)

And in the Americas, there were extensive north/south trade networks running along the coasts, Rockies, and down into the Andes. Problem is that the Indigenous people had never seen diseases like smallpox before, and therefore had absolutely no resistance to any of them. Estimates say that >95% of the native population in the Americas died out within 50 years of Columbus landing on Hispaniola. Someone got sick, they didn't know they were sick because it was the prodromal stage which is usually the most contagious, and these diseases just spread like wildfire along the trade networks through pretty much the whole hemisphere.

The Spanish explorers found ruins of towns and other cities all over what is now northern Mexico and the SW US. The people who lived there died out so fast that the other people in the area literally knew nothing about these structures beyond 'Someone built them, duh.' That's how fast these plagues spread. It was like The Stand lite from how I understood it.

[–]Karzdowmel 14 points15 points  (0 children)

It's been decades since I've read it, and I know it's fallen out of favor, but the book examines so many things that could have affected the present outcomes. Geography is so huge. I remember how it looked at the East-West positioning of Eurasia and how that latitudinal enormousness ultimately affected present outcomes of wealth versus the longitudinal position of Africa.

And then when civilization and technological achievements happened to certain peoples, the great apes pillaged the other great apes in modern times. Africa became a resource bank for Europe.

[–]Etzello 169 points170 points  (6 children)

Afroeurasia had horses which increased productivity massively, although Africa less so. The Americas had horses thousands of years ago but not really in the colonial era until Europeans brought them back.

Africa is one really big blob of land with comparatively few rivers and so their geography is disadvantageous as sailing along the coast or rivers was the best way to move any goods extremely efficiently. You could move literal tons of stuff via ship, or you could haul a few kilograms yourself and with horses, not tons but many times more than one person could.

The Mediterranean had its fair share of empires, as did China because the terrain was so favourable. The Mediterranean is a circle of sea with decent coastline all around and is great geography for productivity and if there was civil unrest or a war that needed more soldiers, it was comparatively easy to send an army there. The mainland part of China was based around the yellow river and there were rivers all over the place with very favourable terrain

[–]YoursTrulyKindly 27 points28 points  (0 children)

Besides "horsepower" Eurasia also had domesticated animals like cows / oxen, sheep, donkeys, goats. Not sure how much of that Africa had. America had none of that.

But the simplest explanation is a short time difference before industrialization, ships, guns and then the power dynamic if imperialism which is still going on - while all western countries had protectionism, trade regulation and "state capitalism" to plan economic growth at crucial stages.

[–]Alimbiquated 256 points257 points  (24 children)

A big problem is that you high school history book never talks about Africa.

It's also common to project present woes onto the past. This poster ignores the civilizations of Egypt, Sudan an and Ethiopia because they are poor now.

Afghanistan is like this too. The internet is full of experts saying the country has always been a backwards desert, though it has 5000 years of high culture and is one of the earliest areas of cultivation of a lot of the plants we use for food on a daily basis. Or you hear that it is the graveyards of empires, never having been conquered since Alexander the Great, ignoring the Abbasid Caliphate and the Mongols and the Qing and the fact that it was the center of the Moghul empire.

[–]47Ronin 105 points106 points  (4 children)

There's so much that people just don't discuss in history because of what came after. Not enough people consider how Islamic states were the scientific, cultural, and economic center of the old world for 500+ years because of the European Renaissance and subsequent colonialism. How many people know that Turkmenistan of all places had the largest city in the world at one time? The Mongols literally wiped it off the map, and so we don't hear about it much.

[–]Sanchez_U-SOB 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Merv was said city in present day Turkmenistan.

[–]juwisan 139 points140 points  (14 children)

But it did. It had rich kingdoms, even power projection at some point in time. Karthage was in Africa, Egypt is african, Nubia, Mauretania.

There were plenty of developed nd powerful civilizations on the continent over time.

The kingdoms in Northern Africa managed to project power into Europe until around the 17th century.

At different points in time the continents had different conditions for population development. When Europes became significantly higher, European nations were technically able to start exploring the oceans. They bought territory all over Africa and other parts of the world to establish trade settlements, then established colonies by force, destroying the states that had been there.

The real developmental cutoff point was industrialization though I believe.

I believe industrialization could only have happened in the temperate climate zone and just a subset of that even, which is exactly where it happened. Imagine sitting in a weaving shop, everything is powered by steam. Besides noise and dust it must’ve been incredibly humid and warm in these places, and that is, in a place where you could easily cool the place with outside air. Imagine that factory in a place where you can’t significantly cool it down with outside air.

Even the Mediterranean areas in Europe struggled with this. Genua became the first industrial center in Italy a good 40 years after it had kicked off in England even though it was further away from resource rich Sardegna than other costal cities further south. It had a comparatively mild climate though.

[–]Mountainweaver 179 points180 points  (32 children)

Also, Egypt is a part of Africa... And Nubia had a civ at the same time...

And during euro middle ages there were also empires in Africa...

The entire question is wrong - Africa did develop. And it currently is developed. It's just that it's a really big place and some areas are drought prone, and it's been fought over and colonized by different civs for thousands of years.

[–]Alone_Contract_2354 7600 points7601 points  (306 children)

Sub saharan you probably mean. Because Egypt was one of the first high cultures there were.

Sub Saharan i think a big factor is tropical diseases. There is a reason african colonisation started super late when more modern medicine was developed

[–]Suitable-Comedian425 2051 points2052 points  (186 children)

Isolation is also part of it trade routes like the silk road had massive impact on development. The Mediteranian sea played a big part in ancient Greece and Rome, the Ottoman empire, Egypt and other norther African countries.

The US became developed so fast because it was part of the British empire. England was the first country to go through industrialisation this easily adopted in America. They also had a very modern constitution when they became independent.

[–]DrNopeMD 187 points188 points  (10 children)

Well America was also founded right as the industrial revolution was kicking off which definitely helped its rapid growth. Not to mention being physically isolated and having lots of natural resources definitely helped.

The US became the defacto super power post WW2 precisely because it was one of the few industrialized nations that wasn't ravaged by war.

[–]AshingKushner 120 points121 points  (7 children)

I think we forget that so much of the economic prosperity/good manufacturing jobs post war was because the rest of the industrialized world had basically been bombed into rubble and had to rebuild a lot of basic infrastructure. I was just mentioning how it used to be “Made In Japan” stamped on the bottom of cheap plastic crap up until the late 1970’s at least… Then they suddenly started dominating the electronic entertainment industry (stereo equipment, game consoles, etc).

[–]solomons-mom 21 points22 points  (2 children)

the reckoning david halberstam summary https://g.co/kgs/ve5BdAf

This is the story of the rise of Japan's manufacturing. It was concurrent with US car buyers learning to avoid lemon cars built on Monday or Friday --days the UAW had more absenteeism. (There are reasons no longer discussed behind the decline of unions.)

[–]theadamie 7 points8 points  (1 child)

The guy who gave Japan their manufacturing method that lead to high precision manufacturing in cars and stuff has a grandson who’s on Reddit.

Maybe someone can post his username bc I can’t remember it, but it’s cool.

[–]solomons-mom 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I don't know the grandson, but his grandpa was Dr. W. Edwards Deming. I almost included is name in my earlier comment :)

https://deming.org/learn/about-dr-deming/

[–]Alone_Contract_2354 65 points66 points  (7 children)

Definitely. But those were mentioned in other comments. So i just wanted to add the disease factor as it seemed omitted.

For the US the Great lakes played a similar factor as you mention witth the mediteranian. The frontier only really got going with trains.

[–]No-Eye-6806 38 points39 points  (3 children)

There's also the Mississippi which provides a huge path to the sea for a ton of different industries to set up shop right nearby and cheaply export down into the Gulf of Mexico, and vice versa for imports i'd imagine.

[–]SnooCompliments3781 203 points204 points  (20 children)

The question was probably focusing on the time post industrial revolution. Plenty of metal age kingdoms in Africa, but no sizable capitalist equivalents.

[–]Alone_Contract_2354 115 points116 points  (12 children)

Ok but post Industrial Revolution is kind of unfair comparison. The changes were so fast that basically the only ones outside europe that could keep up were Japan basically. And that kept on until around after WW2. Also the IR or victorian Age was the time the African Colonisation started. Which also held on until around after WW2 (for west Africa in the French regions one could argue it kept on until this decade.)

[–]goodmobileyes 80 points81 points  (2 children)

Ok but post Industrial Revolution is kind of unfair comparison. The changes were so fast that basically the only ones outside europe that could keep up were Japan basically.

I think this is an important point to note. The Industrial Revolution was only around 200 years ago, yet the technological and geopolitical landscape has been changing at an exponential rate. When we look back at historical periods I think we tend to forget the scale of time. Some of the great kingdoms, not just of Africa but across Asia and the Americas, prospered for centuries. At the peak of the Egyptian kingdoms I'm sure some scholars would have pondered why the barbaric tribes to the north of the Mediterranean just couldn't develop the same way.

But yes, the Industrial Revolution was a complete game changer, and the marginal gains that Europe had over the rest of the world grew exponentially, and coupled with improvements to oceanic travel it allowed them to colonise other continents with their technological advantage. There are incredibly many factors that collectively resulted in the Industrial Revolution happening in those clusture of European countries, but ultimately I think it is fortuitous timing that allowed those countries to springboard from a few key inventions to the industrial capitalist world conquering juggernaut they became.

[–]TellThemISaidHi 8 points9 points  (0 children)

At the peak of the Egyptian kingdoms

Exactly!

Cleopatra was born over 500 years closer to a man on the moon and the age of internet than the construction of the great pyramids.

Great Pyramids - 2600 BC

Cleopatra - 70 BC to 10 August 30 BC

Neil Armstrong walks on the moon - 21 July 1969

Internet - Jan 1, 1983

[–]karlnite 52 points53 points  (8 children)

African Nubians (I believe?) conquered ancient Egypt at one point, held it for a while and took over, becoming Egyptians themselves basically (Egyptian culture and religion had already heavily influenced and changed their own original culture at that point) and they had to stay in the geographical region of the Nile. They ruled Egypt, basically became Egyptians, and basically abandoned their home lands because the geographical location simply could not be built up and developed the same as the fertile Nile deltas. So I think location is the big thing here. Africa as a location was just harder to work, and to establish trade routes.

[–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It was the kushites and it happened in a very rough time in Egyptian history

[–]aphilosopherofsex 22 points23 points  (2 children)

There’s evidence of sub Saharan and people in contact with some other civilization that had the wheel but the tech never stuck because they had something that worked better in their own climate. I think they used sleighs in the sand or something.

[–]thrownededawayed 2928 points2929 points  (143 children)

You'll find that areas that are harder to survive in tend to be catalysts for invention, not only for weather or temperature reasons but areas that are low in certain natural resources. Certain areas like the cradle of civilization don't want for much. If food is plentiful, space is plenty, and conflict is low there isn't much reason to change how you're doing things. Think of the Polynesian islanders, idyllic lives lived on tropical paradises, plenty of space for their lifestyle, plenty of food from the sea and meager subsistence farming, there isn't much need to reinvent the wheel when life is good.

[–][deleted] 1226 points1227 points  (42 children)

[I grew up in West Africa, spent 17.5 years in varying countries over there before returning to the US]

My long-standing theory is that interaction with other cultures spurs innovation, and the majority of Africa simply didn’t have that interaction until it was too late (arrival of the Age of Exploration).

There were (and are) are TONS of different people groups/cultures/customs across Africa, but there were very few instances of two cultures meeting that come close to the likes of the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians all intermingling.

Even war is a major catalyst for innovation - there's a reason China was so good at seigecraft, for example. The Mongols even used Chinese engineers & technology in their armies.

I could list more empires/large kingdoms, but you get the idea.

The point is: a large portion of Sub-Saharan Africa had very little, if any, contact with people groups that were wildly different than their own. Name any center of technological innovation, warfare innovation, study, or art in the Ancient World through the early Middle Ages and you’ll see they all had had a ton of outside influence and interaction.

Imo, governments siphoning money away from where it is needed most (infrastructure, education) is still the biggest problem today. They’re keeping the vast majority of their own populations down.

Here’s one example: Ghana is, by all accounts, one of Africa’s most peaceful and prosperous countries. When I lived there, the government was literally selling its own electricity to neighboring countries while its own people were going without power. 24 hours of electrcity, 24 hours without. This would go on for long periods of time.

It was such a meme that ECG, the “Electricty Company of Ghana” was known as “Electricity Come and Go”.

This was recent, mid to late 2000s.

[–][deleted] 231 points232 points  (13 children)

That is such a awesome and interesting theory that makes so much sense I'm frankly annoyed its not talked bout more itll also explain the native Americans staying a hunter gather tribes (not all but a good lot of them)

[–]Mister_Way 86 points87 points  (2 children)

The native American civilizations collapsed dramatically when the doomsday event of multiple new plagues were introduced from Europe all at once.

When colonists came to North America, they were dealing with the post apocalyptic remnants of what used to exist there.

[–]RoutineBanana4289 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Where can I find out more about this?

[–]Alternative_Chart121 18 points19 points  (0 children)

The book 1491 is pretty interesting. Or whatever the year was before Columbus, that's the title. 

[–]Sassy_Weatherwax 58 points59 points  (0 children)

The majority of North American Indigenous tribes were farmers and had been practicing successful agriculture for thousands of years. One of the reasons the white settlers were so successful is that they moved into areas that had already been cleared and cultivated for crops.

[–]raznov1 47 points48 points  (0 children)

it's not talked about more because it's the default assumption. War, and by extension any conflict, drives innovation. This is known.

[–]GreedyPride4565 27 points28 points  (2 children)

Native Americans were not even close to all or most hunter gatherers IIRC. Painting millions and millions of people with a very long brush

[–]omnesilere 8 points9 points  (0 children)

I'd say that's a wide brush, long brushes are used for oil painting.

[–]ocean_flan 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Complex cultural and political shit happening, plus a trade route that might as well have been the silk road of the Americas. It's like, offensive to be like "they were just hunting and picking berries and living in tents"

[–]Alone_Contract_2354 31 points32 points  (1 child)

Even sub saharan i can think of a few examples that i would call developed for their time. Ethiopia was a high culture. Mali super rich and Kilwa too with tradin at the east coast of Africa

[–]sbprasad 111 points112 points  (27 children)

Uhhhh India and China are dead easy to live in, especially India, it’s so fertile in the plains. Yet look at them throughout history. I think your theory needs tweaking.

[–]HirokoKueh 82 points83 points  (6 children)

China has always been in constant civil wars, there's even a cycle of purging half of it's population every 200 years

[–]nd1online 53 points54 points  (2 children)

In China, we had over 4000 years history of creatively killing each other in warfare and in relative peace. Also, the environment is fertile but also quite deadly with one of the major river liked to changed course and flood large part of the country on the whim. so there were plenty of reason to invent new tech and stuff to combat the environment and your neighbour who look might look at you funny.

[–]sbprasad 18 points19 points  (0 children)

This and the reply by u/HirokoKueh are very fair points! I guess I answered with India in mind more than China (my parents are Indian). India had civil wars aplenty but definitely not in the same league as China, and Indian history till 1750-1800 can basically be summed up as “every few hundred years someone invades via modern-day Afghanistan; they settle and become Indian”.

[–]ebinWaitee 65 points66 points  (9 children)

It's likely only one piece of the puzzle. Africa is hard to navigate so the civilizations that formed there didn't interact much.

India and China interacted with each other and even Europe a lot over thousands of years and this exchange seems to be quite important for the development

[–]Assonfire 16 points17 points  (2 children)

Africa is hard to navigate so the civilizations that formed there didn't interact much.

But they actually did. Islam reached the outskirts of the western part of Africa. The Bantu people reached the southern tip of the continent. The Malagasy people traded with India. In fact, that language is Austronasian.

[–]Several-Age1984 85 points86 points  (38 children)

This explanation doesn't resonate with me. It's a nice story, but it doesn't match my observations of civilizations through history. Abundance leads to increasing complexity and innovation, scarcity leads to winner take all, zero sum games of survival. This is why agriculture leads to abundance leads to specialization leads to innovation. 

At this point we're all speculating, but in my opinion, more likely explanations are:

  1. Hotter climates tend to have lower productivity because working in heat is very inefficient. Energy conservation becomes key to lifestyle and strategy at every level. From basic organisms and animals all the way up to social norms in complex societies. Per capita gdp is lower the closer you get to the equator, which I would assume is part of the same trend.

  2. I'm not a biologist, but my guess would be that agriculture is harder in sub saharan Africa, not easier.

[–]Various_Mobile4767 27 points28 points  (6 children)

The climate point has several mechanisms. Tropical countries actually have less agricultural productivity than temperate countries.

A third major correlate of geography and productivity is the link of climate and agricultural output. Our own estimates of agricultural productivity suggest a strong adverse effect of tropical ecozones on the market value of agricultural output, after controlling for inputs such as labor, tractors, fertilizer, irrigation and other inputs. Our estimates in Gallup (1998) suggest that tropical agriculture suffers a productivity decrement of between 30 and 50 percent compared with temperate-zone agriculture, after controlling as well as possible for factor inputs.

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/publications/faculty-working-papers/001.pdf

Also tropical diseases are a killer as well. Particularly malaria.

[–]Sad_Technician8124 24 points25 points  (3 children)

The Black death Killed upwards of 40% of Europe on multiple separate occasions. Cold climates do not lack killer disease.

[–]Fictional-Hero 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I think the point is moderate climates are best for humans.

Hot climate means permanently exposed to insect related disease and potentially waterborne illness (drinking more water) while cold climate means excess energy used to keep warm, can compromise immune systems, and give less time to find or cultivate food.

A temperate region you have a period of food cultivation and a period of reflection and invention.

[–]Ridenberg 4556 points4557 points  (293 children)

One thing I've heard from an anthropologist is actually not that they have it hard, but the complete opposite - they have a great life there.

While europeans had to struggle to survive and adapt to relatively harsh environment, africans always lived in perfect conditions with plentiful food and warm temperature and didn't need to progress in technology.

[–]PageSuitable6036 1884 points1885 points  (77 children)

I think probably a more complete picture here is that after the adoption (editing invention to adoption as u/Artharis pointed out) of the heavy plow, food production in colder climates paradoxically far exceeds the food production in warmer climates. Back then, this meant that more labor could be diverted away from farming and into other professions which propelled these countries towards the industrial era

[–]Ed_Durr 815 points816 points  (67 children)

Right, the hardships of living in a harsher climate spurred the development of more advanced agricultural technologies, which steadily increased crop yields and decreased the number of people engaged in subsistence farming. Once those people were free to specialize and innovate in other fields, technological and social progress snowballed.

There’s also the less scientific theory that colder climates force communities to better organize themselves, in order to ensure that everyone’s food will last the winter.

[–]coderedmountaindewd 234 points235 points  (15 children)

This sounds a lot like the reason homosapiens became the dominant group instead of Neanderthals. homosapiens were slightly weaker which forced them to develop more sophisticated hunting techniques like the atlatl spear throwing device which almost doubled their deadly range and helped reduce the collateral damage injuries in the process, allowing them to outperform their stronger cousins

[–]Fischerking92 114 points115 points  (11 children)

Outperform and/or kill.

Hard to fight an enemy, when he pierces you with a throwing spear before he comes into your fighting range.

[–]coderedmountaindewd 63 points64 points  (0 children)

Exactly! The example given when I first heard of this theory was a Neanderthal charging a woolly rhino and getting tossed aside like a football, while the homosapiens ambushed it from so far away that it didn’t see them coming. It would help in warfare too.

[–]CreatingAcc4ThisSh-- 12 points13 points  (3 children)

No,, the killing theory is extremely outdated, and wrong. It's from a time of western imperialism and a belief in human supremacy. It has all but been debunked. Obviously humans fight, no matter the species, but that wasn't a reason for the eventual extinction of the Neanderthals

The main reasons are being outperformed, species- species offspring, or problems in physical differences (the rib structure of neanderthals led to a body proportion that was way less suited to more volatile changes in tempurature, which is how the climate changed around the time their presence waned)

[–]BestBoogerBugger 31 points32 points  (7 children)

in order to ensure that everyone’s food will last the winter.

And in arrid climates, communities have to organize, so that food lasts droughts and other natural events

[–]Joh-Kat 13 points14 points  (4 children)

Casual reminder that not all deserts are hot.

[–]Ready-Feeling9258 147 points148 points  (36 children)

I think resource scarcity in Europe vs resource abundance in Africa is one of the basic reasons, it's very similar to the larger problems of developing countries struggling to escape being stuck as a resource extraction economy.

But I'm not so certain you can say Africans lived in a comfortable environment so they never really had the need to develop.

Tropical climates come with their very own problems and there are quite a lot of things that are hostile to human habitation there.

Maybe it's because parts of Africa swing too much to the other side of being too hostile for habitation while regions like Europe are temperate enough to encourage human development even with resource scarcity?

[–]slide_into_my_BM 128 points129 points  (27 children)

Tropical climates do have their own problems. However, the temperature being lethal for months on end while food doesn’t grow, is not one of those problems.

At the very least, people in colder climates had to be more advanced with food preservation, resource storage, clothing, and shelter building.

You starve to death in weeks, die of thirst in days, but exposure to cold without adequate clothing/shelter and you can be dead mere hours.

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Just to add to your comment, particularily :

after the invention of the heavy plow, food production in colder climates paradoxically far exceeds the food production in warmer climates.

That`s a great point, but I have to point out that it wasn`t the invention of the heavy plow, it was the adaption of the heavy plow. The Romans were the first who independently invented the heavy plow in Europe ( China did it before but it didn`t spread ), however two things ...

  1. The Roman Empire was so massive it included the breadbasket of Tunisia and Egypt, which back then had the perfect climate and conditions for agriculture, they rather shipped the produce of North Africa to the rest of their provinces, rather than invest into local agriculture.
  2. The Romans had slavery which made them far less incentivised to use technology and far less incentivised to allow peasant/farmer communities to exist. Roman agriculture was dominated by a rich elite and slaves, when agricultural production was low, they simply utilized more slaves, rather than use technology. A proper class of free farmers/peasants never really existed in the Roman Empire ( it did in the Republic, it was the main class from where soldiers came from ) because they could not possible compete with massive estates and their slaves which could and did undercut any free farmer.

... and therefore the heavy plow did not spread to Europe.

Only after the Roman Empire fell, and slavery declined ( and died out when it comes to fellow christians ) would the heavy plow be adopted in Europe and result in a massive population boom and agricultural revolution in Europe.

So adoption of technology is far, far more important than inventing ( or having ) it. Rome`s system kept Europe down.

And it`s not necessarily paradoxically that food production in colder climates became better than in warmer ones, since utilizing technology or better techniques, you mention the heavy plow, but also the 2-field rotation and later 3-field rotation which was developed & widely used in the early middle Ages in Europe allowed European farmers to basically grow and harvest a crop in any season, even Winter, while the fields become far more healthier as they have time to heal and regenerate nutrients. Therefore the farmers had far more money and Europe also increased it`s the population, as crop failures weren`t as devastating as they were before while far more produce is available to eat or feed animals.

Incentives are important.

Any good system/environment should incentivise good behaviour. A bit colder climates with harsher ground, incentivised better technology and techniques.

Whereas warmer climates with great & fertile ground, disincentives development, technology and good systems. Why develop any good technique when you can just throw more manpower, particularily slaves at the problem to increase output ? This is also why the Resource Curse exists and countries like Germany and Japan with barely any natural resources, are rich and have a great manufacturing sector, while most countries that are resource rich tend to be corrupt and poor. Resource extraction is easy, you can get money quickly, cheaply and with no major effort. Naturally nothing is set in stone and even resource rich countries like the USA can benefit from their resources, but the incentive structure is simply not there and has to be created from the ground up ( and the USA was also lucky they discovered plenty of resources later than other countries, when their economy already functioned perfectly without extracting their own resources ).

I think the best example is the Great Bullion Famine. Since the Roman Republic, European countries sold metals such as gold and silver for "Eastern" ( Middle Eastern and especially Chinese ) goods, such as silk and spices, both are renewable/growable, aswell as porcelain while metals are not. Over 1500 years of this unequal trade ( especially in the High Middle Ages where trade with the East increased due to Europe becoming far richer ), Europe ran out of metals, hence the Great Bullion Famine. Such a major problem is a major incentive and we can see how Europe coped : Portugal and Spain wanted to create a direct western route to India in order to massively lower the cost of trade. "Germany" created new systems in mining and metallurgy in order to increase output ( Georgius Agricola is considered the father of mineralogy and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline because of his work that only started due to the Bullion Famine ). "Italy" created much better ships that greatly extended their range ( which allowed to voyage to America in the first place ) because they wanted to find other trade routes aswell. France, England and Germany also developed different barter systems in order to deal with it, so that usually spices were used instead of metals.

So having a problem incentivises solutions that will make you improve. That improvement can be varied, whether it`s a political, technological, societal, cultural or other solution, it`s usually always an improvement, even if the solution has some problem, it will be fixed over time. So I really wouldn`t call it paradoxial, but rather a logical consequence.

[–]TobiTheSnowman 154 points155 points  (6 children)

It's also not just food, but space as well. Europe is smaller and more dense population wise when compared with Africa, so you constantly had small nations bordering each other and competing with one another over the land that they hold. This lead to technological development in things like weapons or in devices that increased the yield from what little land that you had. At the same time, constant warfare at least partially played a role in social mobility, allowing soldiers and merchants to rise in status or accumulate wealth more easily, and in political centralization, since more centralized structures could wage war, trade with neighbors and distribute resources more efficiently/on a larger scale.

Africa was still influenced by such things, but because its geography is simply different when compared to ours, they developed in a different way. Smaller, more decentralized, and slightly more isolated states that didn't constantly need to expand, trade or centralize was simply what Africa's conditions lead to.

[–]kelldricked 124 points125 points  (1 child)

I would argue that you cant even look at africa as a single thing. Africa is vast, has a shitton of diffrent climates, cultures and people.

And africa certianly did have a few big developed empires, more than just the egyptians.

[–]Independent-Ice-40 98 points99 points  (7 children)

Exactly this - and it is not only about pleasant environment, but about abundance of resources and wastnes of land - there was no need to fight over them that much, and war always was main driver of new technology, and of need to better organize society. 

[–]Hamburger123445 99 points100 points  (55 children)

I really think this is a gross oversimplification. Africa includes the Sahara desert, is the largest continent on Earth, and includes multiple human predators, but you're saying that Africa is comfortable with perfect conditions to live. Like really, Europe, France, Spain area is relatively harsh to the African environment? And this comment and post completely dismisses Egypt and the Islamic Golden Age

[–]slide_into_my_BM 73 points74 points  (9 children)

Of course it’s an oversimplification, OP asked an absurdly complex question that probably requires an entire college curriculum to properly explain.

[–]Tydeeeee 25 points26 points  (38 children)

Africa includes the Sahara desert,

Which is completely uninhabitable which is different from harsh

but you're saying that Africa is comfortable with perfect conditions to live.

When it comes to food production? yes, certainly.

And this comment and post completely dismisses Egypt and the Islamic Golden Age

It doesn't? The Egyptians and Islamic golden age were certainly times of great development for their times. The current status quo would still completely eclipse whatever they had at that time. The comment doesn't imply that Africa didn't develop at all, some of the most important inventions came from the place, but it's a fact that they simply didn't need to develop things like complex agricultural solutions.

Having to come up with solutions for such difficult problems in order to simply survive, requires immense mental progress, which didn't come immediately, but rather over a looooooooooooong time of trial and error, which is probably why we didn't see an overpopulated europe untill fairly recently. And if you scale said improvements up to entire populations and not just the einsteins among us, you'll end up with a very powerful group of humans, that consequently bring their newfound problem solving skills to many other fields, resulting in the developped nations we see in Europe.

[–]alwaysbringatowel41 612 points613 points  (15 children)

Many reasons, one is the availability of domesticatable animals. Horses made a big difference.

[–]papuadn 210 points211 points  (6 children)

Navigable inland waters as well. Some people suspect that Eurasia being more confined between fewer latitudes meant its domestic animal and farmed plants could also be traded and used more readily while other continents had climate challenges.

Basically slightly better trading opportunities led to multiplied advantages that eventually hit critical mass.

Other continents' populations of clever inventors had no trouble making advancements and world-first discoveries, it may just be that Eurasian discoveries were traded more quickly. More inventors saw the product more often and out of its cultural context, leading to creative uses.

It is probably just a bunch of lucky breaks to industrialize first, and European geography offers more chances to get lucky.

[–]Malarkey44 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Exactly this. There is a reason nearly every major early civilization was founded on a river. Others like the Aztecs, Inca, and Mali are unique, but their technological advancements where still decades behind those civilizations that originally flourish along the rivers. The luck of geography plays a huge part. And while most of his conclusions have been debunked, Peter Zeihan's The Accidental Superpower does offer very thought provoking questions into how geography plays into a civilization's success

[–]advancedscurvy 6 points7 points  (0 children)

notably the aztec and inca also still worked along specific bodies of water; mexico has a navigable river system in the central part of the country through the mountains and the aztec absolutely utilized it. also, lake texcoco, which spaniards emptied out and turned into mexico city, had multiple tributaries and used to be the center of aztec agriculture and power. we also have well documented oceanic boat use from the inca, in the pacific, and they grew high altitude crops that used terraced irrigation instead of active watering because that meant they could avoid river dependence. i really also find it important to add that in many ways the agricultural and engineering innovation of both the aztec and inca were ahead of or on par with europeans, to the point where we still have a limited understanding of how they did certain things (particularly the inca, they had a penchance for building large things with big stones in high places) but neither civilization had substantial metalworking, and thus their weapons had a stopping point as far as that went. latin america’s mineral wealth isn’t in iron or anything hard and easily worked; it is mostly in copper and silver and gold, which many of the latin american civilizations worked ornamentally only (since all of these metals are extremely soft comparatively and really no good for weapons).

[–]donkeyboats 48 points49 points  (0 children)

This. From Portugal to Iran (and sometimes beyond) you can largely have the same crops, animals, housing, clothing. So an advance in any key sector spreads, thanks also to Meditteranean maritime routes which were easier to navigate with primitive ships. While establishing trading routes from e.g. modern-day Ghana to South Africa was close to impossible, and not as useful due to different environment.

[–]clairbearology 144 points145 points  (0 children)

I’m indigenous to Kenya and it’s because there was no need. My people lived near the equator where it’s literally garden of Eden vibes. We had everything we needed and because our culture and religion is closely tied to the land, there wasn’t an itch to “evolve” away from that. We are not a monolith so some cultures did seek to establish empire and expand while others stayed close to home and had some skirmishes with other close by groups. I’m obviously oversimplifying it but yeah.

[–]Optimal_Web4442 397 points398 points  (20 children)

Lack of larger settlements, disconnect from rest of world due to sahara and absence from major trade routes like silk road. You can't do much if you are in that position.

However they did had a few big empires like Mali, Ghana, Aksum.

[–]StrangelyBrown 98 points99 points  (7 children)

On the disconnect point, I think in 'Guns, Germs and Steel' it's pointed out that in areas that are east-west so the climate is relatively the same, trade and communication flourished (e.g. silk road and Europe, across north America) whereas where it's North-South like in Africa, it was a problem due to regions of very different climate like the Sahara.

Basically there are lots of reasons though, and that book pretty much lists all of them.

[–][deleted] 27 points28 points  (3 children)

Africa is so big that it is bith north-south and west-east though.

[–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (2 children)

North Africa (the fertile crescent) was basically part of the Eurasian East/West axis mentioned. Edit: it was pointed out to me that this was poorly worded. I was not trying to say that North Africa is the fertile crescent, but I was trying to say "for instance". However, it turns out not everybody considers the Nile and Egypt to be part of the fertile crescent, so this may have simply been a bad example.

West Africa pretty much had a monopoly on Gold before Europe plundered the new world. "Indian Givers" by Jeremy Witherspoon fills in some of the gaps left by Guns, Germs and Steel.

A lot of it comes down to luck, but it the random dice roll was probably loaded a little bit in some regions favor (at least that's how it appears based on how things turned out).

[–]Komirade666 589 points590 points  (90 children)

African here and here are my own opinion. My country is Madagascar. We have uranium, oil, and other ressources that could make us rich or at least developped. And the reason why we do not develop is definitely because education. Someone that know how the market works will have an edge to develop. And most entrepreneur here in my country the few 1percent know how the market works, how to manipulate it. They know which one to contact etc...

The majority here in my country do not have this type of knowledge, I will definitely say that they are still stuck to a mindset from the very old times. Waiting for the messiah to help them or that type of thing. Destroying everything to just have the everyday bread. Yeah, I blame also religion for our non development.

So the people that have the knowledge will easily, like SUPER easily manipulate the people. People here in my country do not know about worker rights, even tho it's a right. Unionizing is alien to us, and protecting our ressources is something that they do not know the importance of it.

Here the majority of people are so poor that they would kill for just 2 euros. And I am not even fucking joking.

If we had better education, we would have a better mindset and invest in our future. But my people are dumb and colonisers managed to made us dumber.

[–][deleted] 184 points185 points  (49 children)

He’s asking about pre colonial Africa… what you’re describing is literally a result of colonialism.

[–]HoFattoScaloAGrado 145 points146 points  (44 children)

It is pretty tough reading a lot of the responses here. From the 1500s onwards European empires spread, covering 80% of the planet by 1914. And they weren't dropping in just to check the locals were ok -- they took away resources, they took the profit of any labour undertaken, they even stole away tens of millions of Africa's youth for centuries for the slave trade. 10 million died in the Belgian congo in barely thirty years. The labour Africa lost to make Europeans and Americans rich! The colonising project was intense, with excesses as bad as Nazi Germany -- European imperialism was a society-destroying project. To this day, world trade, extracted resources and wealth, flows in torrents exactly the same as in the imperial heyday, from the global south to the global north. The story isn't even over. Modern institutions like the IMF impose unmanageable debt on the losers of imperialism -- loans that come with pressure to cut public spending on things like welfare, education and healthycare. This resulted in maybe USD160 trillion in lost growth, and losses to unequal (unfair) exchange between the wealthy global north and poor global south between 1960 and 2018. & the extremist-looking christianity that flourishes in Africa is a Western import, especially in the modern era by American evangelicals.

Africa had its own intellectual traditions --- Timbuktu is fairytale famous as a place of wonders and knowledge with good reason, and the quality of goods from Africa was better than a lot of stuff available in Europe into the 1500s, as was the case with China and India too. (China had worked out porcelain by the 8th century -- Britain worked it out barely 250 years ago, Indian cloth was so competitive deep into the industrial revolution that the Brits had to break the fingers and looms of weavers to outcompete.) Agriculture might have been a bit behind technologically but only because it was meeting community needs in Africa. In Europe a much stronger class society resulted in heavier exploitation that drove innovation to meet the excess demands of the ruling class there.

Anybody curious about OP's question can refer to a solid and never-refuted masterpiece of history: How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney, PDF widely available online.

https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/788-how-europe-underdeveloped-africa

Africa didn't forget to develop itself, it was pushed back and then held back, to serve the economies of distant countries. Europe industrialised first and took the world with mass produced guns, then told us it was smartest. Are we so much better of for industrialised exploitation, industrialised overproduction, industrialised wasting of resources and bodies?

[–][deleted] 29 points30 points  (6 children)

Being from Brazil, I can tell you that our economy still works as if we were a colony. The difference is that we're not exclusively trading with Portugal, and the ones selling our resources only care about adding more dollars and euros to their pocket.

The global south is explored so the north can keep being rich.

[–]geopede 8 points9 points  (1 child)

Brazil could really be a force to be reckoned with if the ruling class got their shit together and stopped acting like the country is just a raw materials colony.

[–]SuddenXxdeathxx 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Here's a map from 1913 to help further illustrate your point.

[–]thatmariohead 70 points71 points  (0 children)

It depends on how you define "never develop." In 1700, West Africa's population density was about 25 people per square mile or 10 per square kilometer per Patrick Manning and my own math. During this time frame, this would have made them about half as dense as 1700s Poland and more dense than Ottoman-controlled Bulgaria. Which is to say, rural, but still containing kingdoms and cities. Plus, I assume the region of West Africa used in the study includes the Sahara such as parts of Mali or most of Mauritania. I bring up West Africa in particular to eliminate ambiguity. Africa is about four times the size of Europe and is similarly culturally, topographically/geographically, and climatically diverse. There are some common features, but still.

With that in mind, modern (1600s onward) Sub-Saharan Africa's lack of development is mostly due to colonialism and the slave trade. West, Central, and Southern Africa's population declined throughout the 1700s and 1800s and only recovered to pre-colonial levels in the 1900s. East Africa (arguably one of the most developed regions in Sub-Saharan Africa) did see a population increase by about .15% per year on average. Which is on par with High Medieval Europe's growth rate, but pales in comparison to Europe's growth rate of .56% per year on average in the same timeframe.

Which really brings me to what I think you're asking - "Why didn't Africa develop to be as advanced or more advanced than Europe in the first place?" Climate and Geography played a role in this. Much of Africa's population lived in a region with high variation in precipitation or low precipitation to begin with. For example, on average, Timbuktu gets only 182mm (7.1 inches) of rain a year. However, this number can double or half in a given year, making climate a lot more volatile. Understanding just how bonkers European development was is also something to keep in mind. European mercantile thalassocracies like the Hanseatic League or Venice heavily competed with European nobility after the Black Death. Similar such states have appeared across the world. But Europe's proximity to the Americas, combined with the naval advances from the Thalassocracies, allowed them colonize the New World. To put how tremendous of an event that was into perspective, inflation increased by 1.2% compounded every year during the Price revolution (1520s-1640s), which was during a time when .5% was considered "unusually high" in England and most decades averaged at less than .01%.

I say all of this to point out that Africa was developed. Not as developed as, say, Modern Europe - but still developed. And yes, there were climatic factors that played into how much food one could produce in a given year. However, a lot of it is also because Europe's rapid development was a historic anomaly that makes Africa, Asia, and the Americas look Neolithic by comparison. And Europe's development was often at the detriment of Africans.

[–]Space_Socialist 16 points17 points  (0 children)

This is more the fact you just don't know about the developed states in Africa. North, East, West Africa have all had prominent empires that have influenced history. North Africa you have the Mamluks, Fatamids, Almoravids, Egypt under Pasha Ali. For West Africa you had Mali, Ghana, Benin, Sokoto. For East Africa you have Ephiopia. South and Central Africa are historically more underdeveloped simply because agriculture is more difficult their and so many natural barriers exist between the regions and the rest of the world. Even then Zimbabwe is a prominent empire that existed in the region.

[–]Party_Broccoli_702 230 points231 points  (25 children)

Ancient Egypt was pretty developed, then became Greek, then Roman, then Byzantine, then Ottoman.

Carthage was also very developed, it became Roman, then Vandal, then Arab, then Ottoman.

Abissinia (Ethiopia) was a developed Christian kingdom, that was impacted by Arabic expansion in the XVI century, but was independent until Italy invaded in the XX Century.

Great Zimbabwe, Butua, Rozvi and other kingdoms were developed cultures in southern Africa that got heavily impacted by Portuguese expansion in the XVI and XVII centuries.

So I would say your premise is incorrect, Africa had many developed cultures and nations throughout the centuries.

Edit: removed biased wording.

[–]Found_Your_Keys 54 points55 points  (1 child)

Was gonna make a similar comment, but decided to see If someone already had. Took far too long to find one. OP didn't really define his meaning of "developed," but much of African history would fit many definitions. There's a lot of African history that isn't taught or well known in the west, since there's literally no reason for it to be, and it's not as popularized or romanticized in the media and video games like European or east Asian cultures are.

[–]Yweain 39 points40 points  (2 children)

Yeah, the answer to the question - Africa did develop. Like in Middle Ages, let’s say 10th century, Sub-Saharan Africa wasn’t really that much behind Europe. Western Africa had pretty powerful and developed kingdoms, Eastern Africa had an assortment of trading states with extensive trade with India and China.

Africa started falling behind in 15-16th century, but everyone started falling behind compared to Europe by that time.

And if the question is why Africa never really had Industrial Revolution and fallen behind that hard - well the answer is European colonialism mostly, which wrecked the demography, governments, societies, cultures, stole resources, spread diseases. And if that wasn’t enough - completely stupid borders that basically ensured half a century worse of civil and not civil wars.

The only place that was hit harder than Africa is both Americas, but it was hit so hard we basically completely demolished locals and replaced them with Europeans.

[–][deleted] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

There are a few separate things to look at:

1) what drives development

  • for most of the world, people change how they do things when they have to. humans started wearing clothing vs being naked due to the ice age (or rather, global climate cooling), as an example.

  • Africa is a big continent, and has a number of different climate zones, cultures, and such, but overall, what people think of when they think of africal is tropical savannahs. and in that zone, it is basically nature's paradise. You don't need all the accoutraments of development when your habitat is already perfectly suited to your needs.

  • but the other areas, like the norther zones and the southern ones? they absolutely developed, at the pace that the environment prescribed, until interrupted by invaders from other continents, plural.

2) what counts as development

  • generally we see things like organized farming, housing structures, technology. but we know these to be flawed when we look at historical mis-understandings

  • an easy example to my mind is my own (native american) heritage. the climate in the usa is not suited to monoculture planting, which is what big ag is. it is perfect for food forests, which is what natives did and still do. Plants were grown all together, instead of in rows and plots, so that they could contribute to each other's survival. the most famous example being the Three Sisters, Corn, which grew tall and sturdy to support Bean climbers, which enriched the soil for Squash, which shielded the roots for all three, allowing them to grow with far less water than if grown alone. This method also utilized the space far more efficiently, so that crops could be planted more densly and grown on less land.

3) who gets to decide that

  • historically speaking, the people deciding what counted as development were whoever won the war in that space. so, the romans decided the picts were primative, but the picts considered the vikings primative, and the vikings considered the saxons primative, etc

[–]into-resting 319 points320 points  (65 children)

Some of you need to brush up on the history of Africa.

[–]jellyrat24 78 points79 points  (3 children)

I've read multiple books on the history of various African countries, and the misinformation in this thread is... something

[–]DapperHamster1 43 points44 points  (1 child)

I once mentioned on here how Somalia used to be a major trading partner with areas as far as Rome and India during ancient times and the dude I was debating acted as if I was suggesting Wakanda was real or some shit. His only response was with the 4chan meme “we wuz kings n’ shit” which is funny since people who use that line try to take credit for Rome and other European achievements they have nothing to do with without a sense of irony lol

[–]it_wasnt_me2 52 points53 points  (1 child)

The History Channel professors would have an aneurism if they stumbled across this thread

[–][deleted] 39 points40 points  (0 children)

History Channel Professors would be upset because nobody said "Aliens". History Channel hasn't been real History for decades.

[–]Mythosaurus 59 points60 points  (1 child)

They wouldn’t like the answers if they asked
r/africa.

Best to just ask the simple question in this sub and not lose the rose tinted glasses…

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

More like most people here.

[–]nelejts 73 points74 points  (5 children)

SOME?! this entire thread is one of the most racist, ignorant and misinformed things I've seen in a while. Abhorrent.

[–]Various_Mobile4767 154 points155 points  (11 children)

I actually own a book covering this. There are multiple explanations, you can pick your poison. From the sub-saharan africa chapter of a history of the global economy edited by joerg baten(that specific chapter was written by gareth austin)

1- Dependency theory. The development of the west resulted in the under development of the rest. This theory argues that Africa’s relative poverty was a result of choices made by european nations during the slave trade and then after during colonial rule. For example, colonial governments would create extractive institutions that benefited the colonizers but which were not good for self sustaiming economic growth

2- the type of institutions and organization systems that naturally developed(as opposed to imposed by external parties) in africa were simply not good for economic growth. For instance, it has been observed that for a lot rulers of african states, it was particularly beneficial for them to maintain policies that rewarded themselves and their followers over general prosperity, economic growth and public welfare.

3-Africa had low population density but is land abundant. Furthermore, much of this land was unable to be used most efficiently for various reasons from diseases to extreme seasonality. Lastly, precolonial africa had uniquely diverging rather than converging inheritance systems. The combination of all these factors meant that it was difficult for potential rulers to extract large revenues from farmers and create strong states. The main exception being Ethiopia which is located in a relatively fertile region, which perhaps explain the longevity of their state and their ability to resist colonization.

[–]ellyr8 8 points9 points  (4 children)

Thank you, this was very interesting! Could you please expand upon what you mean by inheritance systems? Is this on a family level?

[–]dreamrpg 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There is abundance theory.

Why would you need to develop when you got all the food just hanging around? There was no pressure that led to need of developing heavy tools.

On other side is Scandinavia, where climate was too harsh to have time to develop. You better go hunt or freeze, no time for fancy toys.

Egypt, as example, or Sumers had super fertile lands which still needed working on. But when worked on led to population boom. Population boom led to need of improving land.

Just right combination of resources available and need for innovation.

[–]Alert-Extreme1139 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Lemme tell you about this place called Egypt

[–]astromorphica 52 points53 points  (0 children)

Define the definition of “developed”.

[–]young_arkas 60 points61 points  (1 child)

Africa had empires that were as developed as medieval european states, on par with Asian states. The Songhay, the Mali, the Ethiopian, the Kongo empires would rival any european state before 1400 and most asian states (bar China) in organisation and complexity.

[–]markedasred 5 points6 points  (0 children)

There were some early civilisations that existed that we have archaeology to support, the biggest of course being Egypt, but also ancient Nigeria, the Aksumite North east corner of the continent, Malians, and Zimbabwe for starters. None of the rivers are navigable, they all have waterfalls in them, which kills trade by early means of mass transport, and there are few natural harbours on top of that. In modern times the plague of Africa has been corrupt leaders.

[–]Pewward 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It very much did, but a good chunk of areas are not really suited for development. There are a ton of developed countries in africa, and they reflect the condition of the land it sits on, similar to pretty much any other place.

[–]LordLaz1985 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Google “empire of Mali” and “Zimbabwe name origin.” There were castles in Africa. They just never industrialized.

[–]PRAISE_ASSAD 6 points7 points  (0 children)

My lawyers advised me not to answer this question

[–]apex13m 12 points13 points  (0 children)

The locations nearest the equator, where supposedly natural resources are more abundant and you don't have to plan ahead for the seasons (there are availabilities all year round) are least likely to develop quickly. Necessity drives advancement, so when there are enough resources to go out and hunt and gather year-round, you don't have to find ways to advance and plan ahead. You don't have to innovate as much food storage for the winter, etc.

So it has been a long believed study that gatherings in locations with less resources and harder to survive weather/seasons will advance faster due to the necessity of planning ahead for future survival. Best guess I got, though it's still just a guess. I would propose it still isn't a solution this simple, much more complex, but I do believe this is a large impact.

[–]DeadBornWolf 32 points33 points  (10 children)

The reasons are multifaceted. Africa is much bigger than it looks on maps, and a large part of the land has never been populated, for various reasons. The population density is low, a big part of the land is either desert or Rainforest, which makes agriculture nearly impossible. The climate tends to be extreme, which makes it even harder. And then, there was europe. The colonization of Africa from Europe had devastating effects on the economy there. They stole as many resources as they could get, exploited the people there, and when they left, they left a minefield of economical and political problems, that lead to bad conflicts that we still see today.

Edit: But let’s not forget that africa spawned one of the biggest civilizations with ancient Egypt, that was very developed for the time it was there and that still influences society today in various ways

[–]bamboobrown 65 points66 points  (16 children)

Everyone’s basing their idea of development from a european standard lol.

[–]Snoo-61811 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I'm seeing a lot of comments but most of them are missing some serious context.

Tsetse Fly transmitting sleeping sickness, Malaria (still one of the greatest killers of men), Sickle Cell Anemia (a defense to malaria that often ends up killing the host), Ebola.  This isnt an exhaustive list

No other tropical environment had these issues.  Partially because humans were in Africa first, many of these plagues grew up with us.

That being said, this post does ignore Ethiopiа, Zimbabwe, and the muslim empires of north africa.  Egypt too.

[–]Killmonger23 5 points6 points  (0 children)

They did, Axum was considered a top four power of the world. Mali empire was a geographical powerhouse. Ghana was rich in gold and trade. Kush rulers ruled Egypt for a bit. If you talking about in the modern times, you have to remember most African countries didn't gain independence until 1960s, so essentially they been around less than 100 years. To us it seems like they are underdeveloped, but to history this is the average learning curve

[–]CautiousLandscape907 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Civilization did develop in Africa before Europe. Long before. Different kind of civilization, but there were cities on that giant and not homogeneous continent when Europe was still hunter-gathering.

[–]Ok_Television9820 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Egypt was pretty darn developed well before most Europeans were doing much more than thatching huts.

Depends what you mean by develop, also. There were several extensive empires in West Africa, the Ghana, Sosso, and Mali for example. Big trade networks and agricultural base and so on. While Europeans were doing Dark Ages stuff and then the Renaissance.

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (1 child)

RIVERS AND SEAS. Africa did not have the same access to safe, smooth rivers as Europe and Asia. Rapids, waterfalls, crocodiles were all big factors in making long travel very difficult. Egyptian culture goes on and on about the Nile because it was incredibly important for both agriculture, transport and travel. Sea travel is also a massive factor. Africa is mind-bendingly huge and so much of the continent is land-locked or hundreds of miles from the sea.

Africa did develop, but their achievements were also diminished - they had safe cesarean births while Europe was still delivering babies with corpse covered hands. They had stunning art and architecture that was dismissed and ignored. When people say aliens built the pyramids,  this is of the most bizarre expressions of white supremacy because it dismisses the idea that Africans are capable of such architecture. 

Colonialism definitely played a factor because Africans were not greeted as equals to exchange knowledge with and develop, but as subhuman creatures to be enslaved.