Ironworking is a technology. You’re setting up a false dichotomy here. There aren’t “technologically advanced” peoples and “non-technologically advanced” peoples. There are a whole bunch of technologies that cultures either learn or not. And, of course, modern Africa has pretty much the same technology as any other continent. There are MRI machines in Abuja, and there’s wifi in Nairobi.
And when you say “tribal peoples”, what do you mean? Do the ancient Romans count as tribal? I think you need to make sure to define your terms, because you can call highlander New Guineans “tribal”, the Sioux “tribal”, and the Zulu “tribal”, but the three groups have a very different societal structure and way of life.
Tribal peoples= peoples that lived in small societies, either nomadic or settled in a place. Theirs numbers usually didn’t exceed the thousand individuals. It was not unknown among tribal peoples to have networks of tribes connected together in case of external agression.
This is in contrast to peoples living in large societies and states based on urban development.
Yes, 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.
Now, when I remark the relative backwardness of the origin of Africa I am just justifying how hard it was, and it is, for that continent to catch up the rest of the world, that started with advantage.
Do you have a cite that the majority of people in SS Africa lived in political units of less then a thousand? Given the much higher densities of organized agricultural societies, I’d be pretty surprised if they were outnumbered by hunter gatherers or small isolated agricultural groups.
My understanding is that there may actually have been two different forms of “chariot” involved - the first a heavy cart-like structure with solid wooden wheels used as a platform for guys wielding hand weapons, and developed in Mesepotamia; and the other, a much lighter vehicle with spoked wheels, used as a platform for archers. The latter was by far the more revolutionary of the two, used tactically much as the (later) steppe light cavalry, and initially used by much the same sort of folks - steppe nomads.
The former type of vehicle predated the chariot, but made much less impact on warfare - whereas the early chariot cavalry proper was, at least initially, unstoppable.
See the Standard of Ur for mesopotamian “chariots” (more like armed farm-carts):
I’m told English isn’t your native language, but FFS, could you at least pretend to know what “most” means? “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.
And it really doesn’t help when you define “most” to exclude something like a thrid of Africa…
Urban sites in SS Africa were very few, with some exceptions. SS Africa was not a region of cities, highways, bridges, paved roads, dams, civil architecture and infrastructure in the scale of contemporary civilizations in Eurasia or the Americas. Even in those famous trading posts of Zimbabwe and Timbuctu, the urban infrastructure was minimal. The exceptions are cities in the East coast, but the interior still had a tribal lifestyle, as they have even today in some places. We aren’t talking about civilizations here (civilizations=cities, citizen=man of the city) but confederations of tribes under a single chief; tribes that lived in small villages.
What’s the problem with that?
I suspect some people here believe SS Africans were “superior” to Guineans only because they had iron. :rolleyes:
So you wanted to point out that sub-Saharan Africa never had the wheel, except for those parts of the region where wheels existed.
Where did those goalposts go? :dubious:
So you wanted to establish that sub-Saharan Africa was uniformly a tribal region, by pointing out that almost none of the regions outside the interior of Africa were tribal.
Where did those goalposts go? :dubious:
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…
what have the Romans ever done for us?
Err, I mean, aside from all those things sub-Saharan Africa and New Guinea had a similar level of development.
Where did those goalposts go? :dubious:
The original question has been answered. We are now trying to dispel some ignorance pertaining the assumptions underlying that question.
Kings. A class of Nobles. A standing Army. An agriculturasl tax base. That sort of thing. Pretty much the same as feudal Europe.
The African ethnographic community, apparently. Did you actually read that citation?
Weasel on, pinguin, weasel on.
Never said it was on that scale. But that wasn’t what you said. “No highways and dams” =/= “tribal”
Tommyrot.
“tribal” is not the antonym of “urban”.
At least you agree with me on that. I didn’t say “civilization”, I said “kingdoms”
I’ve already showed how this is bullshit, with chapter and verse. “Tribes” do not have a multi-layer social hierarchy, with kings, armies and an entire noble caste. It’s kind of definitional for tribes (as a social organizational type, not a kinship structure) to be fairly unhierarchical. tribes have a “Big man”, not a king who tours the entire damn country by moving from one plantation estate to another.
That it runs counter to the facts.
I don’t. I don’t believe SSAs are superior to NGs in any way. I *do *believe SSAs were in general way more culturally & technologically advanced than NGs. But that’s not superiority (I take it you meant some flavour of moral superiority)
pinguin, these people are pointing out mistakes and problems in your premise and the posts you’ve made to support it. They’re not nitpicking you or pulling any tricks. Your attitude at this stage seems to be “You know I’m right, don’t bother me with the facts.” If you want to prove your point, you need to listen to the facts, choose your words and construct your arguments more carefully, and not roll your eyes at people who disagree with you.
I wasn’t being optimistic, I was just trying to illustrate why your argument doesn’t work.
I’m aware that africa has significant challenges, perhaps more than any other continent at this time.
A book that I frequently recommend here – “The Bottom Billion” by Paul Collier, largely focuses on Africa as the home of many of the suffering billion.
I’d love to take part in a serious thread discussing the causes and potential solutions to various african problems, and have done so in the past.
But, to be honest, I also enjoy picking apart the arguments in the (many) ignorant/prejudiced SS Africa threads.
Open a thread on how to fix Subsaharan Africa. I have some ideas about the topic, as well.
I just get upset when some people want to describe the Subsaharan African past as if it was a superb civilization, when it wasn’t. reinventing history to save “egos” is not the way to go.
Of courtse, your straw man claim is also something one should avoid.
No one in this thread has made any claims for “superb civilizations”; they have simply pointed out the errors of your dismissive comments. This board is hardly a bastion of Afro-centrism and overreacting to corrections to your errors is not the same thing as pretending that some African mariners turned into the Olmecs or that Cleopatra was black.
I thought I had falled in another bastion of Black Olmec historians… :smack:
With respect to “my errors”, just list them to clarify. However, the cacophonic chorus I have heared here make me quite difficult to deffend anything. I usually get bored with weird crowds, you know.
