We live to serve. 
Egypt is African in Geography only. Ask any Egyptian (or North African for that matter) how they view themselves and relate to the world and it will most likely be anything from Arab/Muslim/Mediterranean. Even the late President Sadat was accused of ‘not looking Egyptian enough’.
Oh, as an aside where in Sub-Saharan Africa is the closest thing to the Pyramids of Giza? In fact, strike that, let’s use Angkor Wat in Cambodia, a country that went through war and poverty under the Khmer Rouge. Where is the equivalent built by native Africans, not conquering Arabs?
Name me an African UNESCO equivalent of monumental similarity to Angkor Wat. I’d be interested to know where it is…
Oh wow. I don’t even know where to start.
Here, go fill your boots..
And I’m struggling to think how on earth the Khmer Rouge could have affected the construction of Angkor Wat. Time travel maybe?
Of that list you’ve provided all the most spectacular sites that are comparable with something like Angkor Wat are in North Africa - Fail. I asked for a monument built without Islamic/Arab influence in Sub Saharan Africa.
The Sudan has numerous pyramids.
Considering that the Sudanese probably taught the Egyptians, that’s not surprising.
Dude, Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument in the world. There aren’t more than a handful of comparable monuments in the entire world, much less any particular continent.
There are plenty of amazing achievements from African civilizations – like the aforementioned invention of steel-smelting.
Wrong. There have been a number of writing systems (such as Tifinagh, Arabic, Ge’ez, etc.) in use in sub-Saharan Africa at various times dating back to antiquity. It’s utterly false to claim “there was no writing system.”
You’ll get sensible response. Unfortunately, you chose to pose something completely nonsensical in the first place.
Europe also had good natural harbors while Africa, especially among the west coast, has few or none. In Europe harbors like for London and Rotterdam which also connected with internal river systems helped push trade. In Africa ships were usually anchored offshore and they moved people and goods to and from them with rowboats.
Africa has rivers but except for the Nile, they do not tend to be very navigable for large ships. In contrast the Rhine and the Thames river which are.
Now personally I think North America was on the cusp of development when Europeans arrived. It would only have taken some small technological push, like learning how to use metals, to have pushed them along.
Bullshit.
Modern Egyptians have as much to do with the people who built the Pyramids as a modern resident of Bath has to do with the people who built Stonehenge.
And almost half the fucking Mediterranean coast is in Africa, so saying “Mediterranean” doesn’t cancel out “African”
And “Muslim” isn’t a population group.
The closest thing to the Giza pyramids would be…
the fucking Pyramids.
What does what happened under the Khmer Rouge (hundreds of years later) have to do with Angkor?
Anyway, the direct equivalent of Angkor would be the Lalibela churches. Same time period, same motivation for construction…same UNESCO World Heritage Site status. In fact, was a WHS years before Angkor ever was.
I’m sorry, was Angkor built without outside-Khmer influence? That’s a bullshit criterion. There are Classical Greek influences on the art of Angkor. Does that make Angkor European?
Definitely agree. They were already on the cuspof that, too.
Perhaps my information is out of date, but I was under the impression that iron (and steel) production began in Anatolia 3000 years ago.
Iron, yes. Accidental steel, in places, by bloomery methods, definitely. But the Haya were the first to run furnaces specifically for producing steel.
I should have said “Carbon Steel”. The Haya were the first people to smelt carbon steel.
While Jared Diamond has been recommended multiple times, I’m going to repeat some of his important points that have been briefly touched on or completely unmentioned, for the benefit of readers without access to Guns, Germs, and Steel.
First off, one needs to understand that agriculture is the basis for human civilization (with a few exceptions; for instance, the Pacific Northwest was fertile enough to support small, sedentary hunter/gatherer civilizations). Why? It allows sessile settlements, which allow people to own more than they can carry. It also greatly increases population density, which leads to more efficient methods of producing and distributing food to arise, which leads to the possibility of non-food-producing sections of the population who can lead, create art, make specialized tools and such, or even spend their time trying to advance their civilization’s understanding of the world.
With this in mind, consider that Europe (as well as Asia and the lands in between) was well-situated to receive a bounty of domesticable species. Eurasia has a massive number of excellent plant and animal species for farming, while other areas had much sparser selections (understanding why horses but not zebras are domesticable, or why wheat is a superior staple crop to maize, is beyond the scope of this post; again, read an actual book).
Egypt managed its famed civilization because North Africa (which includes Egypt) was close enough to the Middle East and Mediterranean civilizations to reap their benefits, while south of the Sahara almost might as well have been another continent as far as the rest of the world was concerned. The former is due to the similar latitude to and proximity of the “advanced” regions of the world, while the latter is due in no small part to a great difference in latitude and (perhaps primarily) to an intervening region of harsh climate frequently referred to as a giant expanse of burning sand.
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I seem to recall that steam power was used only for the ancient equivalent of ASIMO.
I’m sure there is such a theory. There’s also a theory that shapeshifting lizard people control the world.
Europe was dominant before Jesus was a twinkle in [remainder of comment pre-emptively deleted to avoid flame war]; there’s no way any such values could have been instriumental in European dominance, even if they existed.
Now, God and I have no love lost between us, but this statement is only partly true. For much of human history, religion has spurred investigation into the natural world. Heck, as recently as the 19th century, we have Mendel (a monk) deriving modern gene theory and Darwin switching his career goals from clergy member to biologist (a choice that admittedly turned him into a demonized figure among those he would have once considered peers). It’s only fairly recently, no earlier than the 15th century or so, that science and religion have even been somewhat at odds, and only the rather modern rise of fundamentalism among popular Muslim and Christian speakers (and maybe Hindu/Buddhist ones? I sadly don’t really pay attention to that half of the religious world…) really made the whole Science vs. Religion conflict a thing.
This isn’t saying that the Church made impossible research possible, any more than the Manhattan Project made the development of the nuclear bomb possible. Yes, it was the catalyst, but the reagents were already there for other reasons, and the reaction would have happened eventually without them.
In all fairness, Islam didn’t have much more than a foothold in Europe. With the exception of the Iberian peninsula, large groups of Muslims were only found in the Middle East, Africa, and other non-European places.
That’s more than a bit untrue. Secular scientists want to figure out how the universe came to be, but haven’t. Religious scientists accept that God created the universe, while fundamentalist “scientists” believe that God created the world several thousand years ago. “Christian” is in no way a firm dividing line between categories; some people follow the Christian faith but fall into the secular-scientist category of belief, while others put more trust in Genesis.
Anyways, I think there’s a lot of confusion between how Christianity is now and how Christianity was before fundamentalism. Fun fact: The Christians Darwin actually debated were more open to non-Biblical explanations of the creation of life, the universe, and everything than modern Christians who debate with Dawkins and the like.
True but misleading. The reason Christianity was thought to play a part in the collapse of the Roman empire was due more to the resulting increase in instability than anything having to do with Christianity.
As an American, I can confidently say that it’s not much to say you’re smarter than an average American.
The Mesoamerican and Andean civilizations were, if anything, more lacking in terms of paper. Aside from this, how would paper be a cause of civilization (rather than an affect)?
In a geographical sense? Yes. However, since it was easier to go from Egypt to Western Europe or China than it was to cross the Sahara, for most practical purposes, North African societies can be treated as part of the same “group” of societies as the rest of the Mediterranean civilizations, and hence most Eurasian peoples.
It’s all in the definition. Going geographically, the original question is nonsense, with an answer of “What are you talking about? Look at Egypt!”
Define “technological development”. If you mean simply “developing technology,” then they were well underway. If you mean “developing enough technology to contest European armies,” then heck no. No offense is intended to the Native Americans; it’s simply an impossibility for the Native American civilizations to have ever caught up to the European. Europe was advancing faster and faster; while the same would presumably be true in the Americas, their start was later (due to a poor selection of domesticable species) and their development was slower (due to a worse ability to trade between centers of civilization). If you switched the inhabitants of Mexico and Iberia some thousands of years ago, you’d find the former Zapotec/Aztec/etc conquering the former Castillan/Portuguese/etc.
No. In a real, cultural cand trade connection sense.
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?
In antiquity, Egyptians viwed themselves as distinctly different from Asiatic and other med peoples. They also viewed themselves as distinct from Nubians, and routinely represented themselves as something other than either. So why group them with the former, not the latter? It’s not like the roots of Egyptian civilization are Asian or European. They’re indigenous.
Sure, they may have gotten the basics of farming from the Natufians. Or not - see Nabta Playa culture for the real origins of Egypt.
'kay.
Sir, I do believe you are a little bit out of your depth here. Your knowledge of African history appears to be a bit skewed. Africa was not a continent full of stone-age pastoralists. Native crops existed in the form of various millets, sorghum, yams, cola, coffee, black-eyed peas and african rice. Guinea fowl were domesticated in Africa and it is likely cattle were as well ( one of three possible domestication events ). Pottery, iron-working, local textile production - none of that was at all alien to the continent.
Africa certainly lagged Eurasia after a certain point, with its relatively easier diffusion of culture across the east-west gradient. But it wasn’t exactly a wasteland either.
Where in Europe is there an equivalent of the Pyramids of Giza or Angkor Wat?
The Great Pyramid was taller than any structure in Europe for over 2,800 years, and Angkor Wat is the largest religious monument complex in the world. There’s really nothing anywhere that’s comparable to them. This clearly demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians and Cambodians were superior to Europeans.
Your lack of knowledge about sub-Saharan Africa appears to extend to Europe and Asia as well.