Why was Central and Southern Africa so underdeveloped?

[Ghâzh]

The poster discussed IQ decrease due to diseases/parasites; and the diseases/parasites are more common in certain places - like tropical regions.

He also mentioned the hypothesis of average intelligence and it's correlation to the development of the civilization. Disease and parasites isn't the only part that affect an individuals IQ. There's also other factors like nutrition, education, environment, and to a lesser extent, genes.

Everyone has something to trade. Some more than others. Its just a question of "What is the most efficient route to bring trading partners together?" There's only one answer for that. In the old world, it is the middle east. No matter how trading materials are distributed in the Old World, they will eventually ALL flow in the highest concentrations thru the middle east because that is the most efficient path. So civilization will probably ALWAYS begin in the middle east no matter what.

I disagree. It's almost certainly not just "about the route". If the society that has the leverage to trade with an opponent is not developed and strong enough the trading turns in to colonization and robbery. When your people are struggling to make the living the first idea is not to start trade with anyone. And when you don't initialize the deal it only becomes a matter of time before someone stronger comes along and takes the resources you are not using away from you.

[sarahtasher]

You do realize that a lot of the stuff that is currently of high value was not really tradable well unto the 19th century ?

Like oïl, coltan, uranium...

[Forogil]

He also mentioned the hypothesis of average intelligence and it's correlation to the development of the civilization. Disease and parasites isn't the only part that affect an individuals IQ. There's also other factors like nutrition, education, environment, and to a lesser extent, genes.

Yes, but the poster didn't add those other factors - at least I viewed it as argument along these lines:
1. Sub-Saharan Africa has more diseases/parasites
2. Diseases/parasites decrease IQ,
3. Lower IQ leads to lesser development.

Using nutrition/education/environment/genes as an alternative would need some additional information to explain the difference between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa; such as Jared's explanation about animals and plants that could be domesticated.

[unbound]

Many civilizations existed throughout Africa. North African Berber Kingdoms, Islamic West African Empires and East African Kingdoms that advanced due to their trade with other African nations as well as the Arabian Peninsula, Indian Subcontinent as well as China and by extension Europe.

However, Central and Southern Africa have never had significant empires. I would imagine this is due to geography and a lack of agriculture.

Even when bananas made it to those parts and states started to form, they were thousands of years behind the rest of Afro-Eurasia.

What do you think?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8215083.stm

Good article on the subject

[Deleted]

You do realize that a lot of the stuff that is currently of high value was not really tradable well unto the 19th century ?

Like oïl, coltan, uranium...

But copper, gold and iron ore have been used for a long time...

[Seani]

Let's talk about what this thread is really about, race, and not beat around the bush.

[sarahtasher]

Let's talk about what this thread is really about, race, and not beat around the bush.

Otherwise said, let's get it closed. But people are not genetically inferior because they can't develop beasts of burden in places without suitable animals.

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But copper, gold and iron ore have been used for a long time...

Gold was traded, via Timbuktu.

[Techno-Druid]

Let's talk about what this thread is really about, race, and not beat around the bush.

It has little to due with race, we're discussing why specific regions of Africa did not develop civilizations on par with the rest of Afro-Eurasia.

[Ghâzh]

Using nutrition/education/environment/genes as an alternative would need some additional information to explain the difference between Europe and sub-Saharan Africa; such as Jared's explanation about animals and plants that could be domesticated.

From how I understood it, that's not really what the poster asked. He asked are the IQ differences about genetics. And the simple answer to that is yes, somewhat. But the bigger part of the differences, in my opinion, are due to environmental factors.

The further information to explain the other causes is mostly already on this thread. Generally lackluster land to live in causes poor nutrition and the difficulty in forming larger societies which in turn leads to most of the other problems like the lack of education. It's an endless wheel, who can say what caused what and which is the major factor.

Also, a small nitpick about your summary. Parasites don't lower your IQ, they interfere with the brain development which causes the lower IQ.

[Deleted]

Evolution. The white man took it to the next step.


[Infracted]

[Techno-Druid]

Otherwise said, let's get it closed. But people are not genetically inferior because they can't develop beasts of burden in places without suitable animals.

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Gold was traded, via Timbuktu.

I'm more or less focusing on Central and Southern Africa not West or East Africa, we all know that civilizations like Ghana, Mali, Songhai, the Swahili City-states, the Congolese and Somalia all thrived and were on par with most of the rest of the world.

Basically why everything south of the Congo was so underdeveloped for such a long time.

[Forogil]

From how I understood it, that's not really what the poster asked. He asked are the IQ differences about genetics.

Someone posted that diseases/parasites decrease IQ, and then someone else asked if the IQ differences were based on genetics.
To me it seems like someone who don't know what diseases/parasites are - or is trolling to get racist responses.

[sarahtasher]

Question for the dudes trying very hard to imply ''lul, that's because Africans are stupid''.

Why, then, natives of various parts of the world usually adopted with enthusiasm useful animals (and plants) as soon as they were introduced ? The proverbial case being Native Americans with the horse ?

[Zoldor]

Aliens didn't visit it in the past and enlighten the people, duh. Aliens were like nah, that place seems wack.

[Ghâzh]

Question for the dudes trying very hard to imply ''lul, that's because Africans are stupid''.

Why, then, natives of various parts of the world usually adopted with enthusiasm useful animals (and plants) as soon as they were introduced ? The proverbial case being Native Americans with the horse ?

Because no one is saying that the Africans are so stupid that they cannot ride a horse. Can you deny that the lower IQ in the southern areas has absolutely no effect on their problems with developing larger and more advanced societies?

[Deleted]

Because most of African people were always divided into warring tribes and there has never been a leader who would conquer the whole of Africa, like there were in Europe, China and Japan. Thus civilization was never forced upon the uncivilized.

Also the African continent is a poor and inhospitable one, where a lot of people struggle with famine. Hard to build civilization when you worry about what you're gonna eat tomorrow.

Also warlords and the Islam infestation don't exactly contribute to building a civilization.


[Infracted]

[Paranoid Android]

I have a African girlfriend, she is the reason why I learned about African culture. The main reason why they are underdeveloped is simple, they don't have a work culture like Azia and the Western countries. Also Africans often don't see the benefits in trade and working together.

Amazing your "girlfriend" from Africa gave the stereotypical "no work ethic".

[hrugner]

Because no one is saying that the Africans are so stupid that they cannot ride a horse. Can you deny that the lower IQ in the southern areas has absolutely no effect on their problems with developing larger and more advanced societies?

Easily. IQ can largely be attributed to environment, health and exposure to complex icon frameworks. Without those things, your brain does other stuff, mostly juggle less simplified idea structures. It's like asking someone if they can deny that ocean water finds it so hard to be clean because it lacks the spherical shape of a fish bowl.

[Ghâzh]

Easily. IQ can largely be attributed to environment, health and exposure to complex icon frameworks. Without those things, your brain does other stuff, mostly juggle less simplified idea structures. It's like asking someone if they can deny that ocean water finds it so hard to be clean because it lacks the spherical shape of a fish bowl.

Yes but it doesn't change the fact that it's a part of the problem. If the question was "why isn't the ocean as developed as a fish bowl?" a part of the answer would be "because it's not as spherical shaped". Then if we wanted to go about to finding solutions on making the sea more like a fish bowl we'd maybe think on how to make it more spherical and not complaining because someone blamed the sea for not being "the right shape".

[Spectral]

This is almost a texas sharpshooter problem. Our IQ tests are based around mental tasks most required for industrial labor and engineering tasks, so it wouldn't make sense for IQ to be higher in places where those tasks are much less relevant. The correlation isn't so much a discovery of latent intelligence as evidence that IQ is trainable.

This isn't uniformly true for IQ tests. Tests have been developed to accommodate less written/sophisticated cultures, focused more heavily on spatial orientation and other tasks that are heavily g-loaded without relying as much on the abstract concepts that we're more familiar with. The findings are basically about the same as those found from more standard IQ tests. In any case, IQ testing tells us something meaningful about cognition.

Your point that it's almost axiomatically true that people from advanced societies will tend to exhibit the traits that are valued in advanced societies is well taken though.

It's much simpler to look at the amount of land required to support one person in an inhospitable environment and look at the speed of communication required to govern over long distances and come up with a decent idea of the level of tech required to create an empire in places that don't accommodate people. Pox Americana has a good description of how the introduction of the horse to America changed the reach of several Native cultures changing their hunting and raiding practices into something more unsustainably imperialistic. The book is looking at the spread of disease by horse, but it touches on the spread of other terrors by horse well enough to get the meaning across. You can't govern without force and communication, and the amount of force and speed of communication need to increase with the size of your holdings.

So, with P being population, A being area needed to sustain an individual and D being distance of communication and use of force, you need

PA/πD ≤ D

I think, math isn't my strong suit.

This seems like a good hypothesis for the roots of advanced civilizations and helps explain why the first real nation-states cropped up in the Fertile Crescent and other areas that had great conditions for supporting humanity. What it doesn't do (I think) is inform us about how places that aren't particularly hospitable have wound up fantastically successful after that initial stage of civilizational development. I think the Jones-style emphasis on society-wide intelligence is relevant here.

I wouldn't reject either hypothesis though - these both seem to have explanatory power, in my view.

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IQ difference you are talking about, is it due to genetics?

Hard to know with any reasonable level of certainty. When comparing individuals from similar societies, there's pretty strong evidence for genetic and other innate factors explaining something like ~.5-.7 of the difference between individuals. Once we start comparing across radically different societies, this gets a lot harder. Factors like parasitic burden and basic nutrition have huge effects, as seen in the recent bounds forward that India's taken as sanitation, medicine, and food access improve (and the struggles that people without those things are stuck with).

In sum, I would be very surprised to find no relevant genetic differences, but I think stories that have strong explanatory power for the development of civiliations are more likely to be based on looking at local factors other than genetics.