# Is Subsaharan Africa lagging behind New Guinea? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 10, 2011, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865 "2011-04-10T13:25:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/121 "2011-04-12T19:00:34Z")
Could you list them? I didn’t see any. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/122 "2011-04-12T19:06:55Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > No, simply not true. There were sizable cities in Ganha, for example, 3,500 year ago. This is a lie. Otherwise, show evidence. Besides, there were cities in NG as well, and advanced culture like Austronesians. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/123 "2011-04-12T19:11:18Z")
> [@Simplicio](#): > > Were the largest masses of people tribal, “Tarzan style” in pre-colonial Africa? Agriculture had reached pretty much all of the continent by 1 A.D, and given that agricultural societies usually have much larger population densities then hunter-gatherer ones, I’d be pretty surprised if the less technologically advanced peoples in the interior outnumbered the ones living in politically organized, agricultural states in the rest of the region. Irrelevant point. New Guineans of the upper mountains were also agricultural societies. Even more, they invented agriculture independently and earlier than other peoples. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/124 "2011-04-12T19:14:31Z")
> [@Sri\_Theo](#): > > See here’s the thing, everybody could tell your OP was heading down this route and I think its kind of lame to make people jump through hoops. Cheap retorical trick > [@Sri\_Theo](#): > > Secondly - just posting that graph proves nothing! You haven’t made an argument, just an assertion and some data. Now you have to compare that to Sub-Saharan Africa - don’t just do one part of the work if you have an argument you want to make 🙂 Another retorical trick. Graphs and data means nothing. Come on. See the graph. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/125 "2011-04-12T19:19:19Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > So you wanted to point out that sub-Sharan Africa and New Guinea had a similar level of development. > > Except for the wheel. > And metal working. > And kingdoms. > And cities. > And monumental architecture > And animal agriculture. > And literacy. > And excluding those regions of sub-Saharan Africa such as Tumbuctu [sic]. > > But apart from kingdoms, cities, metalwork, the wheel, monumental architecture, animal agriculture and literacy… > > . Show me the map of the spread of the Wheel, cities, monumental architecture, etc. And you are going to go back,as usual, to the limits and frontiers of Subsaharan Africa, where that region acquired those things from the external world. New Guinea also had posts of foreign influences and foreign people in the Island since centuries ago. They also had animals, that brought from the Austronesians, in the same way SS Africans brought theirs from the external world. So, your point it is irrelavant. The masses of SS Africa weren’t literate, didn’t live in large cities and had monumental bridges. Theirs standard of living hardly was better than most tribal peoples worldwide. I bet Tarzan movies are more realistic than yourself. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/126 "2011-04-12T19:37:17Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > This is a lie. Otherwise, show evidence. I believe **Blake** is referring to what is widely assumed to be the likely precursor culture of the [Ghana Empire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire), not the modern country of Ghana. The stone buildings at Tichitt-Oulata have been dated back to ~1,600 B.C or older. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/127 "2011-04-12T19:47:20Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > This is a lie. [You will not make accusations of lying againast other posters in Great Debates.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448632) [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/128 "2011-04-12T19:49:40Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > The masses of SS Africa weren’t literate, didn’t live in large cities and had monumental bridges. Well, that was largely true of Europeans in 1500 as well 😉 ( the bridges excepted ). There are other cities you are missing like M’banza-Kongo, the later Sao Salvador which pre-dated European contact. The Portuguese who encountered it in 1491 compared it favorably to Evora, which may not sound like much now, but at the time Evora was the second city of Portugal and something of a cultural center. Or Musumba, the capital of the Lunda in the modern Katanga region. Or a few others. As you noted there were a fair number of exceptions to a lack of urbanization, particularly in the West African Sahel. Much like your discussion of population on the Chinese in the Americas thread, I can sympathize with your resistance to overblown notions of the level of sophistication _throughout_ pre-colonial Africa. But much like in that thread I think you are really overselling and veering too far towards the other extreme. New Guinea was overwhelmingly neolithic, whereas Africa ( a much, much larger place ) was not and boasted a plethora of considerably more advanced societies scattered throughout the continent in areas that favored such development ( and many areas simply did not, for whatever geographic reasons ). I just can’t see much of a comparison. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/129 "2011-04-12T19:50:42Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Theirs standard of living hardly was better than most tribal peoples worldwide. Most scholars would note that the indigenous tribal peoples of the Americas had a standard of living that was roughly equal to, (superior in a couple of points), than the Europeans that invaded these lands. Afghanistan is “tribal” to this day, yet supported a civilization for several thousand years. Your use of the word “tribal” in this discussion is neither pertinent nor accurate. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/130 "2011-04-12T20:33:30Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Most scholars would note that the indigenous tribal peoples of the Americas had a standard of living that was roughly equal to, (superior in a couple of points), than the Europeans that invaded these lands. Incas and Aztecs weren’t tribal societies but large states, and they had superb agriculture. I doubt Indigenous from the Amazon, the Great plains or Patagonia enjoyed the same standard of living. > [@tomndebb](#): > > Afghanistan is “tribal” to this day, yet supported a civilization for several thousand years. Your use of the word “tribal” in this discussion is neither pertinent nor accurate. What term would you use then, to describe people that live in small villages? ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/131 "2011-04-12T20:43:30Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Well, that was largely true of Europeans in 1500 as well 😉 ( the bridges excepted ). There are other cities you are missing like M’banza-Kongo, the later Sao Salvador which pre-dated European contact. > The Portuguese who encountered it in 1491 compared it favorably to Evora, which may not sound like much now, but at the time Evora was the second city of Portugal and something of a cultural center. Or Musumba, the capital of the Lunda in the modern Katanga region. Or a few others. As you noted there were a fair number of exceptions to a lack of urbanization, particularly in the West African Sahel. So, your conclusion is that SS Africa was an highly urbanized place, plenty of high technology? If so, more merit for Guineans 😃 > [@Tamerlane](#): > > New Guinea was overwhelmingly neolithic, whereas Africa ( a much, much larger place ) was not and boasted a plethora of considerably more advanced societies scattered throughout the continent in areas that favored such development ( and many areas simply did not, for whatever geographic reasons ). I just can’t see much of a comparison. Why you insist in talking about Africa when we the topic is SS Africa? In any case, I open this thread to compare SS Africa with a relatively backwards place and analize how backwards societies can develop. If Africa was so advanced, then, we shouldn’t compare to New Guinea, but instead let compare it with China, India, Japan, Korea, Britain or Germany, all peoples that had the supposedly African level of development when European arrived. ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2011, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/132 "2011-04-12T23:33:17Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > So, your conclusion is that SS Africa was an highly urbanized place, plenty of high technology? Nope :). Just that _some_ areas had _some_ urbanization and more advanced technology than what was standard in New Guinea. > [@](#): > > Why you insist in talking about Africa when we the topic is SS Africa? I am, actually. The Sahel is certainly sub-Saharan, definitionally. “Africa” is just shorthand, like certain other posters are prone to use… > [@](#): > > If **Africa** was so advanced, then, we shouldn’t compare to New Guinea, but instead let compare it with China, India, Japan, Korea, Britain or Germany, all peoples that had the supposedly African level of development when European arrived. Bolding added ;). At any rate, no we shouldn’t be comparing “Africa” to various states, because it is a huge, highly heterogenous continent rather than a country. Of course sub-Saharan African states _for the most part_ weren’t particularly competitive with Eurasian counterparts for any of a variety of oft-argued reasons ( one of which, the innate intelligence argument, I remain quite unconvinced about ). There were a few exceptions with areas with more regular contact with the outside world ( i.e. probably the Sahelian empires at their height relative to other states of equivalent size/population, some of the Ethiopian highland kingdoms ditto ), but very generally the meme of sub-Saharan African technological/military inferiority is correct. But again, that’s a far cry from comparing, say, the Kongo kingdom to highland New Guineans. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/133 "2011-04-13T00:33:45Z")
> [@Tamerlane](#): > > Nope :). Just that _some_ areas had _some_ urbanization and more advanced technology than what was standard in New Guinea. I don’t argue about that. I know there were advanced places in SS Africa, particularly in those that trade in gold, salt and ivory in Medioeval times, but also along the East Coast of Africa and Zimbabwe. > [@Tamerlane](#): > > Of course sub-Saharan African states _for the most part_ weren’t particularly competitive with Eurasian counterparts for any of a variety of oft-argued reasons ( one of which, the innate intelligence argument, I remain quite unconvinced about ). The more rational explanation for SS Africa lagging behind the rest in the Old World is so simple, nobody mentions it: isolation. Just by watching the map of Eurasia it is easy to see that the trading routes were mainle east-west rather than north-south. SS Africa was a very difficult place to cross and to survive, up to modern times, when medicine has controlled the diseases somehow. Diseases also explain the problem in building large cities, where a plage could erradicate everybody easier than if people lived spread in a larger area. > [@Tamerlane](#): > > But again, that’s a far cry from comparing, say, the Kongo kingdom to highland New Guineans. New Guineans had agriculture. Not too bad for such a downplayed society. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/134 "2011-04-13T01:52:55Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > Could you list them? I didn’t see any. I don’t know if this list is exhaustive but I think I covered most of the bases here. And as a word to the wise, this “I was not paying attention, where was I wrong?” tactic gets old instantly. I wouldn’t use it more than once. > [@pinguin](#): > > Two regions where civilization (culture of large urban cities) came late in history > [@Blake](#): > > No, simply not true. There were sizable cities in Ganha, for example, 3, 500 year ago. > [@Tamerlane](#): > > Just as a piece of information a decent [map](http://qed.princeton.edu/getfile.php?f=Trade_and_empire_in_Africa,_1500-1800.jpg) of pre-Scramble Africa and its more centralized states. I’ll note that it isn’t exhaustive. > [@pinguin](#): > > But I am comparing the largest masses of people, that were tribal, Tarzan style, in both places. > [@Simplicio](#): > > Were the largest masses of people tribal, “Tarzan style” in pre-colonial Africa? Agriculture had reached pretty much all of the continent by 1 A.D > [@pinguin](#): > > I don’t think so. I can see that New Guinea has done a lot better than SS Africa. While the first region is progressing, the second has decreased its indicators in everything, from life expectancy to income per capita. > [@Simplicio](#): > > Several sub-sahran African states had higher life-expectancies then New Guinea until the late 90’s when life-expectancy [plumeted](http://www.google.com/publicdata?ds=wb-wdi&met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:PNG&dl=en&hl=en&q=papua+new+guinea+life+expectancy#met=sp_dyn_le00_in&idim=country:PNG:KEN:ZWE:ZAF:NAM). The reason is pretty clearly due to Africa being the center of the AIDS epidemic. > [@Blake](#): > > In what way exactly is a group of almost entirely late-iron-age people technologically similar to a group of almost entirely neolithic people? What exactly is this technological similarity? > […] > Most people in Africa lived under village level kingships within a regional clan-level kingdom. In contrast most people in New Guinea lived in independent villages with several “Big Men” as both religious and spiritual leaders. Such villages were as likely as not to have no individual ruler. > […] > GDP per capita has indisputably [increased in Africa](http://plancksconstant.org/blog1/iamges/sub2/afrinc.jpg) over the 60 years since colonisation ended. It hit a high point n the 80s, declined through the 90s and has since begun to climb again. In fact almost identical to the trend in [New Guinea](http://www.unescap.org/drpad/publication/integra/volume3/png/3pngfig1.jpg). > […] > Beyond both having some regions populated by black people I can’t think of a single thing that all the parts of Sub-Saharan Africa have in common, much less anything that they have in common with New Guinea. Not ecology, language, climate, history, politics, agriculture, or technology. > [@pinguin](#): > > Again. Please don’t try to convince me SS Africa was very advanced technologically while New Guinea wasn’t. Yes, SS Africa had iron, cows and goats, but the lifestyle of peoples like the Tutsies were similar. They were traditional tribal peoples without much “progress” at all. > [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > The same was true of much of 18th century Scotland. They were also a tribal people. But you can’t compare the way Zulus lived precolonization to the way highland New Guineans lived. The New Guineans were a stone age people who lived primarily in little villages that didn’t have much contact with one another. The Zulu were iron age, and a tribal confederation until Shaka, and after him a kingdom. New Guinean society was relatively egalitarian, Zulu society stratified. New Guineans isolated and withdrawn, Zulu connected and aggressive, New Guineans charismatic, Zulu bureaucratic. And frankly, if you lined up some Zulu warriors on one side and New Guinean tribesmen on the other, the Zulu would slice through them like a knife through butter. > [@pinguin](#): > > both groups lagged behind the rest of the world in science and technology. > [@MrDibble](#): > > Bullshit. Nubians had chariots when most of Europe was still in the Neolithic. > [@MrDibble](#): > > I exaggerated a teeny bit. Europe would mostly have been in the early Bronze Age. I’d put chariot adoption in Nubia at ~1500BCE (see pg 116 [here](http://books.google.com/books?id=VvkQ8lZbAugC&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=nubian+chariot&source=bl&ots=WfvU0JSr4X&sig=ul9HVGRStDgVABIjF8NX0ev7WVo&hl=en&ei=VQmjTaS9HM218QPjicmoAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&sqi=2&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=nubian%20chariot&f=false)), while the usual date for the end of the Neolithic even in Britain is 2500 BCE. My bad, let the rhetoric get away from the facts. Then there are all the exceptions to your statements: > [@pinguin](#): > > I said no Wheels existed in SS Africa. With exceptions, that is true for most of the region, except for its borders. > [@pinguin](#): > > Nubia was just an exception rather than a rule. > [@pinguin](#): > > Urban sites in SS Africa were very few, with some exceptions. > [@pinguin](#): > > I know there was some urban development in SS Africa, in Nigeria, Ghana, Mali and in places like Mozanbique and Zimbabwe, and I don’t include in the equation states like Ethiopia. I don’t deny those achievements at all. But for the most part SS Africa was tribal up to the arrival of Europeans. > [@MrDibble](#): > > “Most” of Africa was _not_ tribal by colonization (if you count population, which seems the sensible way to do it). \*Most \*of Africa was kingdoms and empires. Even the Tutsis that were (mis)spoken about earlier [weren’t tribal before colonization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Rwanda#Early_history). > > And it really doesn’t help when you define “most” to exclude something like a thrid of Africa… ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/135 "2011-04-13T02:05:17Z")
Just to show an example that I am not wrong I said: Two regions where civilization (culture of large urban cities) came late in history I was contradicted with this: No, simply not true. There were sizable cities in Ganha, for example, 3, 500 year ago. Quote: What are the cities of Ghana that existed 3,500 years ago? There was any. The city discovered in the desert was located in Mauritania, not Ghana. Besides, I never said there weren’t some cities in SS Africa, particularly in the frontiers with the external world. But that wasn’t the reality of the larger extensions of the interior. Another example is the following were agriculture is mentioned, forgetting that New Guinea has agriculture thousand of years before Africa. In short, they were playing rethorical games, knowing that most the interior of Africa was backwords. But why that should be so bad? After all most of the world was in a similar stage up to recent centuries. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 2:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/136 "2011-04-13T02:11:35Z")
The mention of Nubian charriots is specially pathetic, knowing the technology came from the north, and that never spread to the interior of the continent, where writing, the wheel and many other techniques were unknown. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/137 "2011-04-13T02:28:06Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > What are the cities of Ghana that existed 3,500 years ago? There was any. The city discovered in the desert was located in Mauritania, not Ghana. > [@Tamerlane](#): > > I believe **Blake** is referring to what is widely assumed to be the likely precursor culture of the [Ghana Empire](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghana_Empire), not the modern country of Ghana. The stone buildings at Tichitt-Oulata have been dated back to ~1,600 B.C or older. > [@pinguin](#): > > Besides, I never said there weren’t some cities in SS Africa, particularly in the frontiers with the external world. But that wasn’t the reality of the larger extensions of the interior. If you have to keep changing your statement like this - “OK, there were some cities and some large organizations, and some writing, and they did have the wheel in some places” - then your generalization is probably wrong. If your thesis was that Sub-Saharan Africa lagged and you have to exclude a bunch of places and developments to show how it lagged, then you probably can’t say it lagged as a whole. > [@](#): > > In short, they were playing rethorical games, knowing that most the interior of Africa was backwords. But why that should be so bad? This is where I came in earlier. They were not playing games, _they were scrutinizing what you said._ You’ve tried to rebut some of the counterarguments, but a lot of what you are doing at this point is criticizing your opponents (by saying they’re nitpicking or playing games) or insisting they should just accept your conclusion (and saying they know you’re right and won’t admit it). If you want to make a real argument, you can’t just assume the conclusion is true and go from there. ---
**Author:** ![pinguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ac8455/32.png) [@pinguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinguin)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/138 "2011-04-13T02:34:23Z")
My point was simply that most people in Subsaharan Africa (South of the Sahara, please) lived in small villages and had a tribal lifestyle. And that is true, regardless the trading posts and cities that connected Africa with the external world. Africa was never fully isolated, it is true, but the interior of Africa lived in a very basic lifestyle, with iron weapons, but basic anyways. In the interior of Africa you didn’t find the wheel at all. Why? Because horses didn’t survive there! (I saw it in a Jared Diamond film). You didn’t find paved routes or bridges to cross rivers. You didn’t find large cities of hundred of thousands like in other continents. And even when Africans had iron they didn’t have steel or machinery at all. What was there is a large number of tribes that lives independent lives. So what is the problem with it? ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/139 "2011-04-13T03:36:43Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > And even when Africans had iron they didn’t have steel… [Wellllll…](http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912179,00.html) 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2011, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865/140 "2011-04-13T05:58:17Z")
> [@pinguin](#): > > And even when Africans had iron they didn’t have steel .. at all I await Mr. Dibble’s response to this with great anticipation. An blatantly incorrect assertion about metalworking and African history. And this is a blanket statement,They did not have steel at all. Notjust did not have it, they did not have it at all. Should be good. > [@](#): > > ..or machinery at all. So they have chariots and they have the capacity to cut and move huge stone blocks. Yet they have no machinery. Intriguing. :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-subsaharan-africa-lagging-behind-new-guinea/577865.md?page=8)