East Africans more "civilized" than West Africans?

[orcenio]

In reading BrainGlutton’s old thread, it seems that Tamerlane beat me to the punch by ~9 years (that’s “skillz”).

@Tamerlane

But that aside, my understanding is that at least a few languages were being written in Arabic script by the time of the European conquest. The Hausa were literate in Arabic from the 15th century and by at least the early 19th Hausa itself was being written in Ajami, an adaptation of Arabic script ( remember they weren’t brought under European control until the late 19th ). I believe Swahili literature dates back even further, to the early 18th.

@orcenio

This was neither unique or limited to Africa as Arabic based scripts were the norm for the entire Islamic world from Turkey to Northern India.

That should probably be Turkey to Indonesia, but like Turkey (and most of Africa) Indonesia currently uses a Latin based script.