Why did traditional Africa not develop technology ?

[Az]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
Carthage was Phoenician. Them boys related to hebrews?

Brothers, practically.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

Those Romans... I wander why don't you nuke Rome now you have nukes... to end the whole thing once and for all

well they sacked Carthage... they sacked Jerusalem, they displaced you all over the world... Italians ... who would have thought

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
and what technology are we talking about? Ancient Africans developed/used technology that Ancient Americans never did. Like the wheel, or various weaponry.

Incorrect. Mesoamericans understood the concept of the wheel - it appears in children's toys. Due to the terrain, it wasn't of much practical use, so it was never developed further than toys, but the principle was well understood.

[Az]

You know, I've developed this theory, that every nation, or vague plot of land can only once in it's history achieve immense power. think about it. The great nations are those who hold for it for the longest time, and make that power truely immense.

[Ecthy]

so Muammar is your friend, too?

[Az]

As much as Hitler is yours.

ok, sorry.

[lightblue]

I always thought that a large part of it was that the local environment was far more supportive of human life, so there was no pressure to develop new technology to survive local weather conditions or to grow more food.

Another reason, which could be completely wrong, is that there was enough Lebensraum (nasty word, does the trick), and as such there was not such a large pressure on an armsrace, whereas most of european history is punctuated by wars and military developments that were later used for more productive ends.

[Az]

I don't think so, lightblue.

You can see that Rome, that had little military innovation, was very innovative in social and governmental organizations. Unless by technology we only mean pure technology and not social developement as well.

[Sandman]

Perhaps the Africans suffered because a lack of a naval tradition?

Africa has a relatively short coastline, despite being the second largest continent. Most of the African nations, if I remember correctly, were some distance inland, and they did most of their trade by camel over the Sahara.

Compare this with Europe/the Middle East, where we have many, many successful seafaring civilizations: The Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings, the Portuguese, the Spanish etc.

There's no benefit to having a technological edge when your trade is done across the Sahara. The only thing that matters is carrying enough water to stay alive. There's not much that can be done to upgrade a camel. Compare this with a ship, which can be improved constantly with technological innovation; better sails, better design, better carpentry, better metallurgy, better glassmaking, better pottery, and so on.

Improving naval technology also has a direct benefit in improving fish catches.

Ships also have a far wider range, even a modestly designed ship can range from the Arctic to the equator without serious trouble. Look at the wide ranging explorations of the Phoenicians, Vikings and Portuguese. Camels and other animals are slower, favour certain ecosystems, and have inherently less range than a ship, since the Earth is almost 3/4 ocean.

Ships have a lot more room than camels, so there are much greater opportunities for trade goods, gifts, trinkets, supplies and passengers. This allows much more technological transfer than crossing the Sahara, where every kilo counts.

Of course, there were other factors as well as this, but I think this could be quite important.

[Az]

This is an interesting Theory, Sandman, but AFAIK, Chinese didn't have their faboulous naval tradition until much after they have evolved as a glorious civilization.

[GePap]

People "develop" if they have to. There is no innate drive towars better and better tech: yo do what you need to survive vs the elements and fellow human competitors, and of course you are hemmed in by the environment you live in.

I agree with lightblue and Osweld that human band sin Africa did not have to deal with (and thus made no sense to spend their energies on figuring new way to deal with) very harsh climates that are dangerous to human life, nor even that many human competitors. Africa is huge, allows for moevment, and more improtantly, nature has had much more time to figure out how to keep the human population in check. Think of people outside of Africa like rabbits in Australia: nature outside of Africa was simply not equiped to exploit man as it can in Africa, so man was able to go nuts, population exploding, and so forth. Plus, there were better resources to exploit outside of Africa, like animals easier to domesticate, and plants that are simpler to farm with.

IN a way, the same evironmanet that maks apes and men come into being in Africa also means they don;t have to develop intrecate tech to make a successful life there (which man has, if we go back to the race threads and remmebr human genetic diversity in Africa is greater than among other human pops.)

If then, many of the more advanced "civlized" principles came to Aricans from outside is that one of the first real rpessures to come to humans in Africa, thus making it worthwhile to innovate, was pressure from human bands outside of Africa trying to come back in.

[Dis]

I think a large combination of factors have to occur for a society to "progress". Obviously that happened in Europe, and the middle east during certain time frames. Some societies like China were very advanced, yet didn't progress past a certain point.

There are many factors involved. and nearly all conditions have to be right for a society to progress.

[Spiffor]

Well, Ge, I fear your theory is contradictory:
- on the one hand, you explain nature is easier in Africa, and thus it is useless to develop new technologies to tame it.
- on the other hand, you explain that nature had more time to keep the human population (the human parasite ?) in check.

It seems the Africans had developed what they needed to win over nature : they were agricultural and semi-sedentary (i.e, they could move to another spot after a few generations) for the most part, which allowed a relatively stable food production, in comparison with hunting-gathering.

Many here think the Africans didn't battle for the land as much as the Europeans. While it is true competition for land was extremely high in Europe, one should not believe Africa was a peaceful continent.
The lineage political system divided Africa into countless small tribes which were often at war (to the point that war had a ritualistic value). Migrations were as bloody as in Europe, since the migrating population simply wanted to utterly replace the inhabitants of a fertile patch of land, etc. My point is, Africans did wage war to each other, bigtime.

In the Niger Delta, the Ghana empire spanned over two centuries before being overthrown by the Mali (a small tribe rising to power thanks to Ghana's decay), which was then replaced by the Songhai. The Songhai were then replaced by a bunch of short-lived kingdoms, including the recently migrated Peuls.
This is one of the few examples where we know precisely about intra-African warfare, thanks to the Arab scholars in contact with these Civs. This examples shows that African hisory is far from being peaceful. Yet these very rich empires hardly developed techs on their own, and depended to a huge extent of the Arab technology, weaponry, and ideas (Muslim empires).

[CorpusScorpius]

Extended Isolation + (Extended Colonialism + Lines on a Map)+ Traditional Issues = Africa"s current situation

[Cruddy]

It depends how you define progress really.

Given the choice, I think more people would rather live with a sub-Saharan African climate than most others - if they didn't have to give up mod cons.

Given a sub-Saharan African climate - why go to the bother of making mod cons?

Lots of given factors already, but a biggy that definitely helped the Zulu was national unity. If you have a common language, and a large population, you'll start to encounter problems.

If, on the other hand, you are dealing with a small tribe where mortality rate is pretty close to birth rate, then problems of a large community don't need to be overcome.

Maybe it's a scale thing, combined with the climate and resources.

Sure, written language and mathematics are biggies too - but if the problems never crop up, what's the point of looking for solutions?