Why did traditional Africa not develop technology ?

[Az]

Originally posted by Kramerman


I thought it was chinese? or were the just the first to smelt pig iron? yeah, come to htink of it, i think the hitites were the first, but it was very impure and not much to note. Greeks didnt do it till much later... they loved their bronze

Hittite Ironmaking knowledge was still hot stuff in the beginning of the first millenium BC. It was certainly stronger than bronze.

[Al B. Sure!]

god damn... what is this? no one bothers reading my posts? i broke down what was going on with iron working...

[Kramerman]

Originally posted by Azazel


Hittite Ironmaking knowledge was still hot stuff in the beginning of the first millenium BC. It was certainly stronger than bronze.

definately, im just saying the greeks didnt adopt iron on the large scale until much later (if they ever did... i never recall them using iron extensively)... not to say that iron, even poor quality iron (at least by todays standards) isnt stronger than bronze

[molly bloom]

Contrary to Albert Speer’s contention, beans and peas (excepting black-eyed peas) are a Near East/Asiatic contribution to Northern Africa, as are domesticated sheep and cattle: the cattle and sheep consumed by early Africans were Barbary sheep and wild cattle. The domesticated varieties were brought in by the pastoralists settling in and along the Nile Valley and the Maghreb.
Flour and porridge made from wild cereal grasses were consumed, however, especially by communities living near rivers.

Unlike large settled communities in the Near East (in the Fertile Crescent, and at Catal Huyuk) there was for several thousand years no need for African communities to grow crops, excepting for those living on the desert margins, where game was less plentiful. The variety and large numbers of game and fish meant a continuous nutritious food supply.

It is often thought that growing crops such as wheat, barley and lentils is a necessary or desirable advancement, yet it can be more labour intensive than hunter gathering . Also, the climate in many parts of Africa was not conducive to growing the kind of crops seen at early large human settlement sites such as Jericho and Catal Huyuk.

In parts of Africa, they went directly from a non-pastoralist Stone Age to an Iron Age settled farming culture. It seems most likely that it was iron smelting in Northern Africa that spread through various routes to the West and East of Africa and south of the Sahel - African iron smelting possesses enough purely African characteristics to not have to assume outside transmission. The iron produced by the African smelting method is more of a high bloom carbon steel than the wrought iron used by the Near East cultures. Also, iron smelting would not necessarily be a one off discovery, disseminated from a single source- in cultures using and producing copper and bronze artefacts, iron would have been used as flux.

What did hold back trading and aggrandizement of settlements in sub-Saharan Africa were the tsetse fly, and the almost entire lack of indigenous food plants in the Equatorial jungle belt. The tsetse fly’s range has changed over centuries as rainfall varied and climate fluctuation has taken place, occasionally meaning penetration of the fly pest in more northerly latitudes than today. This meant that beasts of burden could not be used by communities living any distance from either the West or East coasts south of the Equator, and meant that relatively few commodities (salt, ivory, gold, ostrich plumes) made the transportation by human carriers financially worthwhile. The tsetse fly transmits trypanosomiasis to domesticated breeds of horse, cattle, mules and donkeys, which is almost invariably fatal. The range of this fly has greatly affected African history, and cultures, from the Atlantic Coast in the West, to the Nile, and down south of the Equator, with few exceptions (such as the Ethiopian highlands).

The jungle also meant a mainly unprofitable foodless (in terms of plants) barrier- coco yams come from Asia, as do bananas, and manioc, cassava, maize and sweet potatoes from the Americas. The only African food plants that could be grown would have been transplanted from neighbouring woodland/savannah regions, and only after painstaking clearance of lush jungle growth, into soil that would soon lose its fertility.

[Sikander]

Fun thread idea Albert. If it means anything to you, I agree with your basic thesis which I take to say that Sub-Saharan Africans have every reason to be proud of the accomplishments of their civilizations and cultures. One of the reasons that I think they shouldn be proud is the extremely difficult row they have had to hoe. Measuring one group against another by their current lot in life is a very difficult means of trying to decide which group has made more "progress". Every group has made a seperate journey to the present, and qualitative comparisons are very difficult to make, especially when the scope of such comparisons is a wide one.

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by C0ckney
. . . also no african people (except ethiopians) developed writing . . . so no records could be kept, no knowledge stored in book, everything had to be handed down orally.

I saw a documentary advancing this idea. It blamed the African termite, which is very voracious and eats any wood product...like paper. It's hard to have a civilization when there's no writing.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


I saw a documentary advancing this idea. It blamed the African termite, which is very voracious and eats any wood product...like paper. It's hard to have a civilization when there's no writing.

That wouldn't necessarily mean that they didn't write, but merely that we have no evidence of them writing .. since the whole lot was eaten by termites centuries ago.

[Al B. Sure!]

africans had to have writing... what did all the scholars and poets in Timbuktu and Jenne do?

[Az]

grunted, and hit each other on the head with large sticks?

[Ecthy]

I just found the mediterranean peoples had iron working by 1200-1000 BC, so it does make sense in a way different from the chance of Africans developing iron working on their own, which is of course still possible.

[C0ckney]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet


That wouldn't necessarily mean that they didn't write, but merely that we have no evidence of them writing .. since the whole lot was eaten by termites centuries ago.

well they could have carved it into stone or whatever, also you would expect a few examples of writting to survive, if there was a lot of it. basically they didn't have writting, i don't think any historian has claimed they had(?).

[Al B. Sure!]

but logically they need to have had writing even if it was just arabic... what good were the academies and mosques in Timbuktu without writing?

[C0ckney]

yes, but how late on are you talking? writting may well have been (and was) introduced to timbuktu, but it was very late in the day and it didn't penetrate much of africa.

[Spiffor]

BTW, I think this thread is the right place to shamelessly advertise my new Mali Civ for Civ3.
Since yall are very knowledgeable about traditional African kingdoms, could you please help me making the best possible Mali Civ, by giving suggestions (and getting +1s for them )
Thanks