Cool. Good stuff.
Of course one can, why do you say this? Only the marshes of the Sudd are a barrier to the trading.
This is a good point, but the Sahel band above the forests has a challenge more serious than the rain - but the rain instability is a big problem - and it is the fragility of the soil, which is geologically old and by its form is easily subject to degradation and compaction.
This is a modern problem even now in the intensification of production in agriculture now, that even can undermine the use of the modern fertilizers.
The European advantage in the accident of geology of having the deeper, newer and resistant soils must not be left out. Even look to the old Middle East where the old fertile crescent does not now seem to justify this name, but there has been great degradation of the soils over many thousands of years, and this impacts the economies and their potential greatly.
It is frequent that persons commenting on this overlook these geological constraints and their great impact over time. It is true the geology is not the ultimate destiny, but it is a great factor, particularly the soils, that most commentators overlook as they come from the climates and the geographies where the problem does not in present times pose pressingly.
Yes, degradation of the soil is a common problem - especially due to failed misguided attempts at intensive agriculture. People who experienced the robust fertile soil of Europe assume that any soil behaves as well. Diamond mentions destruction of the topsoil as a factor in Greenland, Iceland, Australia, and IIRC Easter Island. Western prairies are susceptible to salt leaching to the surface from far below due to excessive irrigation. Egypt had the opposite problem - the Aswan dams stopped the annual floods which kept the soil fresh (and replenished it with more deposits). Early irrigation would evaporate, leaving residual salts behind that would build up over time - the same problem that has heavily damaged much of Mesopotamia over the centuries. The solution was to overwater so the salts would leach off through the water table with the excess water.
Diamond also mentioned that the northern hemisphere had the advantage of airborne dust from the volcanic activity and erosion of Asian mountains, which over geological timespans replenished the trace elements needed for healthy crops; the southern hemisphere, especially Australia, does not have that rich a supply and is at more risk of soil depletion.
Plus, there’s no doubt the climate of the middle east, especially the fertile crescent, is much drier than previous millennia when Mesopotamia was the ideal place for growing wheat.
As for Africa, even their rainforest, if it is like the Amazon rainforest, is fragile - any cleared area will lose its fertility and many nutrients will leach away; in the Amazon, this requires the quasi-agricultural tribes or invading white man to abandon fields and slash-and-burn fresh fields every few years. It’s difficult to establish a civilization on the scale of Angor Wat or Egypt’s pyramids when the whole population must up and move every few years; and requires much more of the land to sit unused fallow or recovering, reducing the population density.
It’s also of interest that the abandonment of Angkor was likely because their canal system failed for a mixture of reasons - neglect and climate change. So even something supposedly advanced can be affected. Nothing remains at the peak forever.
See also: Mayans, Moche and Cahokia in the Americas. Zimbabwe in Africa. The Late Bronze Age Collapse. All the cultures in Diamond’s Collapse…
Yes, current thought is that canal failure and climate change did in the Mayans too.
Interestingly enough for the Zimbabwe culture, Rhodesia was the one place in Africa that I recall reading was most like Europe, crop-wise. Expanses of farms grew a large surplus of food for the whole nation, until Mugabe came along and confiscated those farms to give to his supporters. If this farmland is what the old civilization of Zimbabwe also had, no wonder it was the unique African culture that could progress to large stone buildings the OP asks about.
Sure they did. Do you know where Nubia is?
“Nubia is a region along the Nile river, which is located in northern Sudan and southern Egypt.”
And that’s exactly what I said, you can’t go further than Southern Sudan by using the Nile.
Which is what I said:
The Nile isnt really navigable into lower Africa. Sudan was about as far as they could go, and even to get there you had to cross many cataracts. Aswan was about as far south as you could go with ease, and that’s well within Egypt.
In response to :"Why would you have to cross the Sahara? There’s a little corridor that you can use to get from Egypt to the rest of Africa…it’s called “The Nile”, maybe you’ve heard of it?."
You can’t use the Nile to get from Egypt to “the rest of Africa”: best you can do is use it to get to Nubia, aka Sudan, which is hardly “the rest of Africa”.
Unique except for Egypt, Nubia, Ethiopia, the Soninke of Ghana, Somalia, the Muslim kingdoms of North Africa, the Empire of Ghana, the Hausa city states, whoever built Engaruka, and the fortified city the Oorlam built to protect themselves against the Dutch?
fishandchips–
Are you, by any chance, a member of the BNP?
Of course you can. From your same cite:
“Nubia is believed to have served as a trade corridor between Egypt and tropical Africa long before 3100 BC. Egyptian craftsmen of the period used ivory and ebony wood from tropical Africa which came through Nubia.”
What on Earth makes you think you can’t travel any further than Sudan on foot? Dugout canoe, too. Up until Murchinson Falls, at any rate, and even that is portagable.
The Nile Valley as a trade “corridor” doesn’t necessarily indicate using the river itself. The Platte River was a corridor for immigrants moving west across the Great Plains, but it wasn’t navigable.
It is strange to see aggressive wrong replies in geographic ignorance as yours.
The Sudd is in the South Sudan and by this it is well into the “rest of Africa” Once into the south you are below the Sahara and it is of no problem to follow the Sahel steppes to trade east and west.
The idea that the Nile is not a path to the ‘rest of africa’ into the Sahel and into the North East africa is completely, entirely wrong.