# Why were African civilizations so technologically far behind? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 4, 2006, 7:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-african-civilizations-so-technologically-far-behind/351215 "2006-04-04T07:13:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 133
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 13, 2014, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-african-civilizations-so-technologically-far-behind/351215/133 "2014-08-13T11:22:16Z")
> [@fishandchips](#): > > How do you explain why Europe, the Middle East and Asia were already advanced in classical antiquity? And Africa wasn’t? Egypt. Kush. Nubia… > [@](#): > > Some tribes lacked metalworking skills, any sort of agriculture, or the ability to make woven cloth. In other words, they were living, technologically speaking, in the Palaeolithic. There were _no_ African tribes living in the Paleolithic at colonization, this is just your ignorance revealing itself yet again. Name _one_ tribe living in the Paleolithic. Just one. > [@](#): > > The gap in technology between Europe and Asia on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other, is so obvious that it’s simply insane to deny it. Please tell me, where was steel _first_ smelted using blast furnaces? There’s no denying that, at colonization, Western Europe enjoyed technological advances over Africans. There are several reasons for that. Inborn laziness on the part of Africans was not one of them. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-were-african-civilizations-so-technologically-far-behind/351215)._