What happened to Africa?

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
But surely Africa had plenty of places like this,

No it doesn't. There is a flood plain in Zambia and various lakes and rivers that probably have fairly fertile surroundings but none are great successes agriculturally. I suspect that disease burden is a large factor - malaria loves standing water.
There are deltas in West Africa - which I believe do have a long history of civilization - but the area is also susceptible to drought.

I don't think there is anywhere in Africa that has the potential that the Nile does.

In the Middle east there are a number of places with good agricultural land an India and China have some large rivers and deltas.

Without a large river with seasonal flooding bringing nutrients, the soil gets degraded fairly quickly. The solution is to keep moving to new soil which leads to both conflict and the tendency not to build permanent structures. The ability to stay in one place and build permanent structures is one of the primary factors in civilization.

what other sufficiently advanced cultures arose?
A number in North and West Africa that others have mentioned, in the southern regions there is Great Zimbabwe and the Zulu empire as well as others.

Originally posted by Palynka
Interesting post, shame that so many seem to have read it diagonally. I'm not yet convinced, but if you have time I'd love to read more.

To some other comments: The rise of Europe began much sooner than the industrial revolution.

Yes, it began when Europa climbed onto the bull.

Europe's unquestioned material superiority (for a certain period) is unthinkable without the Industrial Revolution.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
First let's clear up why Europe suddenly shot ahead technologically, after being comparatively backward for a millenium.

Agreed!

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Yes, it began when Europa climbed onto the bull.

Europe's unquestioned material superiority (for a certain period) is unthinkable without the Industrial Revolution.

That's the Anglo-Saxon version. Protestant work ethic and all that.

Of course, the Industrial Revolution happened when European countries were already world powers. Trade is what led to the industrial revolution. Production on a large scale needs trade.

Originally posted by Palynka
That's the Anglo-Saxon version. Protestant work ethic and all that.

Of course, the Industrial Revolution happened when European countries were already world powers. Trade is what led to the industrial revolution. Production on a large scale needs trade.

Not really.

Yes, but they were still agrarian economies, subject to the same constraints as empires as diverse as the Roman and the Safavid. Industrial production overcomes those constraints.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Not really.

Yes, but they were still agrarian economies, subject to the same constraints as empires as diverse as the Roman and the Safavid. Industrial production overcomes those constraints.

Nope. Trade overcame those constraints. It's ridiculous to call these economies agrarian, when the vast wealth accumulation was coming from trade.

Originally posted by Palynka
Interesting post, shame that so many seem to have read it diagonally. I'm not yet convinced, but if you have time I'd love to read more.

To some other comments: The rise of Europe began much sooner than the industrial revolution.

I'm not yet convinced, but if you have time I'd love to read more.

Tell what are your doubts and we can discuss them. A lot of this isn't very clear cu in my mind but I'll do the best to explain it and try to find some good references.

The rise of Europe began much sooner than the industrial revolution.

It wasn't that much sooner. I hate pinpointing things like this but if I really had to I'd say things really started flourishing in Europe with Gutenberg's 1439 movable type printing. At this stage, intellectually speaking, Europe didn't just jump ahead of the rest of the world but one of the seeds that allowed it to do so was planted. Books (knowledge) could be now printed easier, quicker, and more.

One other thing that I think that mattered was birth of neo-platonic, neo-pythagoric, and even some florescent mechanical views of Nature. The Cosmos started being seen as something whose mysteries could be solved. Up until then the Aristotelic-Ptolemaic (a geo-centrical model with Christian/Catholic views) was the de facto paradigm of the thinking elites. The Cosmos was divided between two spheres: our own, and the celestial bodies one. Our was imperfect, decaying, and non-mathematical. The heavenly bodies spheres was perfect, eternal, and could be described by mathematical means (there were exceptions: we can cite Nicolas Oresme, Jean Buriden, John Philoponus just to name a few). Those two worlds were clearly very distinct and could never be identified, and were separated by the moon sphere.

But then something strange happened: new stars were appearing in the sky, asteroids were observed moving from the heavenly bodies sphere towards our own, the moon were found to have craters, the sun was shown to have spots, a lot of flaws in Aristotle metaphysics were being found (dogmas in the Catholic Church were being questioned), other planets were observed with their own satellites, some planets had rings around them, etc, etc, etc... So people started to think that if the heavenly bodies world was also susceptible of change, imperfections, and the like maybe our own world had some of the aspects of the heavens. Namely that it could be described in an mathematical way. More than that the separation of the Cosmos between two worlds started to feel like more and more artificial.

So after convincing themselves that the new unified Cosmos just had one set of rules Mathematical knowledge was sought more and more. Mathematical models were employed more and more. Mechanical models started to gain prominence. The desire to understand the cosmos, the desire to (even) mould the Cosmos started to appear more and more. People were not just trying to understand phenomena, they were trying to cause phenomena.

And this last point is what I think set up the Europeans apart from the rest of the world: "The willingness cause in Nature phenomena that don't naturally appear." As far as I know in the rest of the world (which in some parts had a greater knowledge of some areas) this didn't happen. People started in believing in laws of the Cosmos and everything that was according to those laws should happen. If people didn't see it happening naturally they just had to poke Nature to see if it indeed can happen.

In Africa things weren't (and in many parts of Africa still aren't) like that. There were a reverence of Nature. A fear even. In Islamic Africa (as opposed to those parts of Africa were indigenous religions were predominant) things weren't like that but I think that what failed here was the things were mostly seen as modelled and not understood or explained. So the final steps that led into the Industrial Revolutions didn't happen.

In Asia (and I can only speak of China when I say Asia and even then I don't know much about it) once again people normally cite the reverence people normally had to Nature. The Scientific Revolution (and in my mind this has to lead to the Industrial Revolution) was nearly, nearly happening but it didn't. China was so ahead of the pack that people don't why it didn't and point some factors that they think had something to do with it, but no one really know why it didn't happen.

I can tell you some literature on these issues but don't expect it to be what's more relevant to the issue or very extensive. it is just what I know and had to time to think about:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Experience-Reuben-Hersh/dp/0395929687 this one is marginally relevant to our question but it discusses mathematical evolution and the motivations for Mathematics to evolve
http://www.amazon.com/Copernican-Revolution-Planetary-Astronomy-Development/dp/0674171039 highly relevant I'd think
http://www.amazon.com/Birth-New-Physics-Bernard-Cohen/dp/0393300455

A review of the Mathematical Experience I totally agree with:

I was going to study history. Math? Who cared about math? Math was for those science-types. I had an image of mathematicians as bespectacled, socially-inept, hunch-shouldered gnomes who lived in universities and ventured out of their burrows for--well, maybe they didn't venture out at all.

The joke's on me. I'm a math major now. This book is one of the reasons.

I've always loved history: the march of events, the ebb and flow of cause and effect and unexpected accident. I didn't realize that math, too, had a history, an ebb and flow. If I'd ever thought about it, I would have realized that an angel didn't come down from the heavens bearing The Big Book of Math, complete with proofs. But that's what it seemed like, until I read about the almost architectural building of theorem upon theorem, idea upon idea. Math wasn't a Big Book; it evolved and grew. Grows still, I should say.

Did numbers exist? Well, of course they existed. Wait a second. What *is* a number anyway? How *does* one exist? Would they exist if there were no people?

And so I learned that math, too, has its philosophies.

Most of all, I learned that mathematicians were and are people, not gnomes in burrows who have nothing to do with the rest of the world. That math is important for more than the homework assignments that plagued my high school evening hours. That math is worth studying.

If you could convey this to heaven knows how many disgruntled and frustrated math students around the world, I wonder if they might like the subject better.

I sure did.


I wholeheartedly suggest the reading of this book to everyone.

Originally posted by Palynka
Nope. Trade overcame those constraints. It's ridiculous to call these economies agrarian, when the vast wealth accumulation was coming from trade.

What were most people in the economy doing?

According to the definition I'm familiar with, an industrial revolution is precisely the shift from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy, so pre-industrial economies are agrarian by definition.

Maybe that definition's junk. But it's obvious to me that the vast majority of labour in pre-industrial economies went towards producing food, which is why I call them agrarian economies (not my original idea of course, ich hab es in ein Buch gelesen).

The Roman economy collapsed because (among other things) the cities began to consume more food than could be produced in the country. Imagine what they could have done if they'd had tractors.

Originally posted by Thequ1ck
A very good point. But where did the original Egyptians come from?
Why was Egypt such a success and why didn't we see other, similar
cultures popping up regularly in Africa?

edit. A lot of Egyptian knowledge was reputed to have been brought
by Toth the Atlantean. Was Atlantis a real civilisation based in or
around Africa?

* Need or desire
* Psychology
* Co-operation
* Opportunity

Most people are content just eating, copulating and relaxing. We really
don't need anything more than that. There has to be a need or
desire that's somehow not fulfilled in us before we even begin to
think out of the box. Then we have the part where psychology
plays an important role. Some people will think about a problem
differently than others. Why? I would say the main factors being
intelligence and experience. So, just because the need or desire is
there, doesn't mean we can find a solution to the problem. It requires a
certain way of thinking, which surprisingly few humans are capable of.
Most people really only know how to use already invented tools and
methods to get by. If a completely new situation (completely new as in
not just a variation of an old problem) arises, most everybody stands
with their hands to the side and look fairly stupid. But then, all it takes is
for one person in the group to think out of the box and through co-
operation the group as a whole can accomplish something to
improve their situation. And then there's opportunity. Finding
solutions and co-operating to implement them won't really do much
good if the opportunity is lacking. Building a boat in the middle of dry
land to go fishing once the water might come is not a really good idea.
You must have the opportunity to utilise your solution or everything falls
right there.

Just think how many factors has to be right in order for civilisation to
take even one tiny step forward and you can easily see that it's not at all
strange that only cultures surrounding the middle-east has developed
more sophisticated technology. They're the only ones who's needed it,
through lack of natural resources and also through the hostility that
always arise between two groups of people, causing competition and a
definitive need for development. Without all these factors to play in,
we'd simply eat, pick our nose, copulate, sleep and sunbath (I'm
guessing).

So, what's extraordinary to me, is that similar civilisations seemingly
developed independently of each other in, on the one hand Asia/Europe
/northern Africa, and on the other hand central America. That's
extraordinary to me.

Addition: Actually, I'd like to add one crucial factor to the
development of technology. The thing is that when we solve one
problem which improves our lives, we most often create another
problem. Agriculture, for instance, made it easier for us to survive. We
could build walls around us and grow the food within those walls.
Predators would be left out and we would grow in numbers. Causing
problems later on as land was exhausted, so we spread. Different
people had different ideas and competition is started. As a result we
have conflicts and the spiral continues downward to where we are today.
So, the population of any given place would also play a big role in the
development of more sophisticated technology, I'd think.

With predators to eat us every once in a while we don't grow much in
number, and the resources are plenty for us to live on. No need or
desire, no thinking out of the box, no development.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
What were most people in the economy doing?

According to the definition I'm familiar with, an industrial revolution is precisely the shift from an agrarian to a manufacturing economy, so pre-industrial economies are agrarian by definition.

Maybe that definition's junk. But it's obvious to me that the vast majority of labour in pre-industrial econ ...[text shortened]... n ein Buch gelesen[/i]).

Imagine what the Romans could have done if they'd had tractors.

Yes, it's junk. It's true that "most" of the population was in agriculture. But the economic output of agriculture was almost irrelevant when compared with the economic output of trade.

You may argue all you want, but the fact is that world trade created several empires. If you want to call this empires "agrarian", go ahead. But you'd be completely missing their main characteristic.

You may also be disingenuous and believe that the advent of industrialization just coincidentally happened in a moment where power was being defined by economic trade. Sure, it's a coincidence. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that.

Do you think logistics was a problem to these empires? Logistics was their advantage. When was feeding a stretching empire a problem in their case?

Originally posted by adam warlock


In Asia (and I can only speak of China when I say Asia and even then I don't know much about it) once again people normally cite the reverence people normally had to Nature. The Scientific Revolution (and in my mind this has to lead to the Industrial Revolution) was nearly, nearly happening but it didn't. China was so ahead of the pack that people ...[text shortened]... s that they think had something to do with it, but no one really know why it didn't happen.

Naturally I lean towards this explanation ...

"More recent historians have questioned political and cultural explanations and have put greater focus on economic causes. Mark Elvin's high level equilibrium trap is one well-known example of this line of thought. It argues that the Chinese population was large enough, workers cheap enough, and agrarian productivity high enough to not require mechanization : thousands of Chinese workers were perfectly able to quickly perform any needed task."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_China#Scientific_and_technological_stagnation

Originally posted by Palynka
You may also be disingenuous and believe that the advent of industrialization just coincidentally happened in a moment where power was being defined by economic trade. Sure, it's a coincidence. Post hoc ergo propter hoc and all that.

Do you think logistics was a problem to these empires? Logistics was their advantage. When was feeding a stretching empire a problem in their case?

More likely ignorance than disingenuity, say more. Whenever was power divorced from trade? Trade powered the Phoenicians ages ago; their empire collapsed too.

I don't understand your logistics question.

The Romans would have produced more food so that their economy wouldn't have collapsed. There might be an Emperor still!

Originally posted by adam warlock
It wasn't that much sooner. I hate pinpointing things like this but if I really had to I'd say things really started flourishing in Europe with Gutenberg's 1439 movable type printing.

Another reason why China, and possibly others were at a disadvantage. With thousands of characters in their writing an effective printing system is much harder to design.
I suspect that the various Arabic and Asian scripts are also far less suited to printing than the roman alphabet.

It must be noted that nutrition has a massive impact on the development of a civilization. In general malnutrition results in significantly lower IQs. Once agriculture is sorted and children are getting adequate nutrition the IQ (and general health) of the population grows significantly.