At least one significant medical breakthrough had it origins in South Africa. I trust this meets with your standards.
Sorry, but just on the history of calculus and gravity we do know that Newton was an asshole to Leibniz and Hook, as James Burke can tell you most inventions and discoveries have precursors or concurrent inventors, individuals deserve recognitions, but it is silly to pretend that they alone made an advancement of civilization.
Ok. There’s some really good evidence that cattle were first domesticated in Nabta Playa around 9000 BC. If that’s true, Africans were the first people to have domesticated cattle. You’ve got to admit cattle domestication is a pretty big thing.
Pffl on manned flight. No fire, no nothing, is what I say. Manned flight is just a nice-to-have. Fire is what makes us not animals.
Anyway, all this is just a smokescreen. Of course there are not too many famous scientists coming from SSA - *because *SSA was totally fucked over by the West and is still recovering. And those parts that are recovering best, like South Africa, are indeed already producing world-class scientists, doctors and engineers.
Look, here’s a game: name me a famous Afghani engineer. Or a famous Cambodian scientist. No? Name a groundbreaking modern Mongolian invention. OK, then, some amazing computer firsts from Kosovo recently? Any Tibetan science Nobels? Nothing?
Get my point?
I have no interest in discussing this issue any further until you write a lengthy (>300 words) post clearly outlining:
- The expected differences between Major and Minor additions in scientific exploration/research.
- Examples of both Major and Minor additions to science.
- Explanations to how the examples given in point 2) match the expectations in point 1).
- A brief summery of the discoveries by the Dikika research project (links are in previous post).
- An explanation to why it doesn’t meet the criteria, of a major addition to science, set in point 1).
This should clearly outline what is expected and why this criteria hasn’t already been met. I look forward to your post.
It is tiresome to see how many achievements from the Fertile Crescent are associated to Subsaharan Africa. Come on. When people say “Africa” they aren’t thinking in North Africa, but in the Africa below the Sahara desert.
North Africa is a lot closer to the Middle East and the Western World from the beginning to be considered something different.
Quite.
The main reason that we still achieve so much in science in the west is because we’ve invested so much in that area that we’ve become the hub for such ideas.
When I was based at a neuroscience / neurology hospital last year there were plenty of people from Africa and other continents making exciting breakthroughs.
Any discoveries they made however would be stamped as British. And that’s not just because it took place in Britain but because, like most advances nowadays, they involve significant collaboration.
(Europe’s not going to produce the next Einstein any more than Africa is IMO; the scientific discipline has gone beyond that stage)
Africa certainly has its problems, but I don’t think marking them on scientific breakthroughs is fair.
The “blaming the West” game? Why don’t we compare SSA with New Guinea and see who is developing faster¡ Africa don’t achive as much as the West simply because it started from very backwards tribal societies, and it take a lot of time to develop.
Fortunately you didn’t mention Latin American brilliant minds, because in that case I would quote a hundred people. 
Tough one, but the Cambodians did have the Khmer empire which judging from the civil engineering thats been discovered was pretty impressive.
I’ll have to think about the other ones.
Yes, Ankor Vat was amazing.
With respect to Afgans, Al-Kwarismi was Afgan if I am not wrong. And without that guy, Isaac Newton wouldn’t have discovered Calculus.
I think it’s a bit presumptuous to just chunk off a huge part of a continent for dubious reasons. People in northern climates do indeed tend to develop lighter skin, and Africa does have indigenous light skinned populations. Does living in a climate that favors light skin make you somehow not African? As for culture, why do you cite Arab influence as a reason to exclude some groups (let’s say, Berbers) and not others who (let’s say the thoroughly sub-Saharan Hausa)? Arab and European influence are all over the continent, and I image African influence is all over Europe and the Middle East. And tell me, is Europe also influenced by the Middle East- I mean, we practice a Middle Eastern religion, right? Islam came to Africa basically the moment it emerged- how is it not African?
And why do you assume that cultural influence is a one-way street? Why would you think that all similarities between African and Middle Eastern cultures is Middle Eastern in origin? Egypt is a major center of the Arab world. In a sense, you might as well call non-African Arabs the ones who are the odd man out.You may well say that Africa is the center of that cultural universe, and that it’s influence has spread outwards to the Middle East.
Why do you accept Bantu expansionists in traditionally San land as a totally authentic African thing, but you look at people who have been on their land a lot longer than Bantu groups have been on most of their land and say they are not African?
You can’t just split the continent in two because it is convenient for you.
Why to chunk off a continent? Because you don’t study Lebanese history with Chinese. Considering them in the same study, because they are “Asian” would be ridiculous. As ridiculous as considering Africa as a single entity. Only in political dreams. And the main division in Africa is between the Afroasiatic from the North with respect to the Bantues and other people of the south. They are different worlds and people.
So North Africa and the parts of North-East Africa that you like don’t count. Africa can keep the extremely poor and messy states of Niger, Sudan and Chad (but wait…don’t they speak Arabic in Chad…oh well) but I assume you want to be able to pick out specific populations when convenient. Do you want Ethiopia or not? It sure seemed really African in 1985, but maybe now it’s on better feet and we can better understand that it’s not really that African.
The western Sahel didn’t count when it was thriving in medieval times, but it counts now that is super poor.
I assume South Africa is too white to count. We might as well include all of the Southern African states because really they are outliers, right? Except Zimbabwe. Africa can keep Zimbabwe. And the nice parts of Kenya and Tanzania? I bet those don’t really count either…Arabs, white people, South Asians…whatever. Let’s not count it.
Nigeria got lucky with the oil, so we’ll count them if we are talking about crime or political violence, but not if we are talking about economic power or international influence.
Great. Now that Africa is defined as the Central African conflict zone, some dusty scraps of the Sahel and West Africa on a bad day, we can get started talking about what Africa is really like!
I won’t talk about Africa anymore, as I said in another link.
There are too many fanatics around to continue such debate. Bye.
Yeah - from Brazil and Argentina Mexico, no doubt. Not so much from El Salvador, or Colombia, or Dominican Republic.
My point stands.
Not very modern, though, is it?:dubious:
The Fertile Crescent doesn’t include Egypt. And Nabta Playa is on the opposite end of the country from its connection with Asia.
When racists say “Africa”, you mean. When I say “Africa”, I mean all of it, a point I made right at the start of this thread.
Bullshit. Egypt was a thoroughly African civilization, right from its roots at Nabta, to the leopard skins its priests wore, to the Nile crocodiles and hippos in its rivers. To the black pharaohs it periodically had. Don’t confuse sitting at (and dominating) a crossroads of trade for a non-African origin.
I disagree (in my non-expert way) with some parts of Edward Said’s Orientalism, but it seems to me that our friend pinguin is kinda proving his point. Eurocentrists have absolutely no problem annexing the “good” parts of various continents, even if those places are not even remotely similar to Europe or the nebulously defined “West”.
[sarcasm]
Egypt is not on the African continent. Egypt’s most famous president looks like he could be pastor at the AME church down the street, but he is not African. No, he is kinda whitish. Just like this woman is kinda whitish too. And to be African, apparently you gotta be darker than asphalt and speak only an indigenous language. Them’s the rules…but remember they only apply to Africa. Europeans can speak languages that can be traced back all the way to the Indian subcontinent and be quite disparate in appearance. Some of them can even live on big-ass islands apart from the mainland, but they’re still all comfortably European, see? Them’s those rules. Makes sense to me!
[/sarcasm]
Seriously. If Egypt is not really African, what is the claim for making Greece “European”? Think about it. It is pretty hard to distinguish your Greek-on-the-street from your Lebanonese-on-the-street from your Palestinian-on-the-street. It’s hard for me anyways. So are we subsuming the Middle East into Europe, based on the similarities between these peoples, or are we subsuming Europe into the Middle East? I actually think the latter makes more sense than the former, since both cultures and peoples spread out of the Middle East waaaaay before they did in Europe. Ancient Romans were dealing with Persians, Arabs, and all of 'em swarthy types before they even knew what a Visigoth or a Celt was. Ancient Rome borrowed from the Greeks, which also borrowed from the rich mileu around them, including Africans. There was no “one-way” exchange.
Unless you think the world revolves around Europe.
Why you didn’t mention Costa Rica?
Your point lacks support. Intelligent minds require money, that’s the secret of Nobel Prizes. Our region has already several nobel prizes in science, and several achievements in science and technology. One of those nobel winners come from Venezuela, for instance.
So, you don’t have a point.
Baloney.
Egypt was an intellectual child of the Fertile Crescent, as much as Israel or the Arabs. In fact, Egypt is Afroasiatic rather than Niger-Congorian.