# East Africans more "civilized" than West Africans?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/east-africans-more-civilized-than-west-africans/649107>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 2, 2013, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/east-africans-more-civilized-than-west-africans/649107 "2013-02-02T07:09:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 40

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**Author:** ![orcenio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/orcenio/32/1036_2.png) [@orcenio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/orcenio)\
**Post date:** [February 4, 2013, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/east-africans-more-civilized-than-west-africans/649107/40 "2013-02-04T15:13:31Z")

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

> [@Why did most pre-colonial nations of sub-Saharan Africa have no written language?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-most-pre-colonial-nations-of-sub-saharan-africa-have-no-written-language/253407/37):
>
> 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](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_alphabet) to [Northern India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urdu).

That should probably be [Turkey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Turkish_alphabet) to [Indonesia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jawi_alphabet), but like Turkey (and most of Africa) Indonesia currently uses a [Latin based script](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malay_alphabet).

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