>>12543926Except most of this is false. You'd have to ignore most of the history of northern Africa to claim that there were never any great civilizations, but even if subsaharian Africa is what's meant, you would still be ignoring many civilizations like Axum or Ghana. It cant also refer to South Africa either, when we have evidence of many polities such as Great Zimbabwe, with technology way past the Iron Age by the 16th century, when European colonialism arrived. No, what this claims is that there were no civilizations in the Equatorial parts of Africa, a much smaller part of the continent. The reason is simple: before modern medicine, sustaining population growth in the illness-infested equatorial jungle was basically impossible, which relegated most human settlement, even hardy locals, to tribes and small cities. With the continent divided in many difficult terrains, trade between the regions was minimal, and except for northern Africa they didn't have the benefit of inner-sea trade routes like the civilized parts of Europe and Asia did.
They did trade with gold and diamonds though. Like, the best well known story about an african king is about his extreme wealth in gold. In the very paragraph mentioning that "he never dreamed a harness or plough" you can see the damn cows behind the text. The "land of stone and timber", he says, while he shows clay shrubland. Did you know that there were still tribal societies in Europe while colonialism spread its wings? (And to a point, you could say they werent removed until the industrial revolution) Can you guess where, and why they didnt develop beyond? Its almost like societies are conditioned by the material realities of their enviroment, not the shape of their skull. Fuck off
