I remember seeing a show detailing all the points of Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” I remember finding most of the points salient.
One of the things Jared Diamond mentioned is that most societies in (sub-saharan) Africa developed away from the water and at higher elevations to avoid malaria. From what I know about Africa, this would seem true.
But on the other hand, ever since the Arabs introduced it, rice has been a traditional crop in a lot of African regions. But rice grows in water. So the farmers would be living nearby, near water.
So what gives? Is Jared Diamond’s point not universal across sub-saharan Africa? Did traditionally higher-up societies move down after rice was introduced because it was worth it with rice’s output?
And here’s another question that’s kinda related. Maybe part of the moving higher-up thing is/was also to avoid bugs, which can harm crops? From what I understand, once you get above certain elevations, there are fewer and fewer bugs because of the thinner air, the bugs have a harder time with the thin air, having passive respiration systems. I know at least people in the Lake Victoria/Uganda region are pretty high up there in some places. And the same would then hold true for the Andean societies as well.
So, did certain societies move higher up because there are fewer bugs higher up?
*let’s ignore any accidental inference of intention from the word “because”, i.e. we all understand that societies often don’t DELIBERATELY come up with systems and do things because they understand exactly how they work better, but rather evolve slowly, following habits that bring more success. We all get that point. Let’s stick to the scientific “why”'s
I am aware of dry-land rice cultivation in Madagascar. But surely in Africa they grow rice in paddies. Or not? Maybe that’s the answer to my question, thatthey don’t use paddies?
Rice paddies are usually full of predators - fish, frogs, dragonfly larvae, etc. They aren’t a big source of mosquitoes, at least not the ones I’ve been around in Japan. It’s generally small, temporary pockets of standing water that breed mosquitoes.
Also, they grow rice because they want to eat. Rice isn’t the only thing they could eat, of course, but it makes a very good staple crop, that gives you a lot of Calories for your land and effort. If they grew something else instead, it might mean some people would be dying of starvation instead of malaria.
This is known as the “paddies paradox.” For some reason Mosquitos in rice-growing areas tend to prefer to feed off cattle. I am not sure what the recent studies say, but it seems to be a complex phenomena influenced by both irrigation and human behavior.
That said, I think you are also forgetting the tsetse fly, which limits cattle production and is the main reason why many low lying areas never saw much population density.
Also note that rice has been cultivated in Africa for 3,000 years. Trade along the East Coast did bring in new species, but rice cultivation was well established before any Arab influence.
Rice, Oryza sativa, was domesticated about 10,000 years in China and from there spread to South and Southeast Asia and eventually the Middle East. African rice is a separate species, Oryza glaberrima, and was independently domesticated in what is now Mali about 3,000 years ago. Arab traders eventually brought O. sativa over to Africa and now both species are cultivated there. Yields of O. glaberrima are generally lower than O. sativa, but the former is more tolerant of adverse environmental conditions as well as diseases and pests.
Nope. But even if it was, so’s wheat, and sheep and goats, and those show up in Africa in the 1000s BCE too - sheep and goats made it all the way to the Southern tip by start of the Common Era. Wheat never crossed the equator pre-colonization AFAIK.
Africa, despite what some people believe, has never been isolated from the rest of the world for any extended period of time. There was regular back-and-forth with Asia. Africans regularly traded with the Harrapan civilization in the Indus Valley, for instance. Middle easterners speak languages that are part of an African-originating language family.
I seriously doubt that the abolition of rice-growing in Africa would make a significant impact on the incidence of malaria as a public health issue in those countries. So they might as well grow rice, which will reduce hunger and do no further malarial harm.
Whoops, my bad - on further reading, I’m seeing that Indus faience ware was probably autochthonous, whereas I was under the impression that all ancient faience indicated Egyptian linkages (as it does on Crete)
Possible, certainly. You mentioned Uganda: I lived in Kampala for a year and don’t remember mosquitoes being much of a problem, but we still had to take a prophylaxis and slept under netting. Outlying areas were likely worse. Looking at malaria maps for Africa, it would appear that the problem is more one of climate than altitude, as most of sub-Saharan Africa is moderate to high risk, whereas the dryer climate is low risk.
