US and China move a bit closer . . .

[Rogie]

A fascinating reminder just how huge the so-called dark continent really is:

 

 

[Guest fountainhall]

Cute though that map is, though, in terms of relative size the UK can't be that large. It's a pimple in comparison as China's land mass which is 39 times larger!

 

http://www.mongabay.com/igapo/world_statistics_by_area.htm

[Bob]

Somewhat hijacking the topic (well, maybe I'm not sure what it is!), I'd have to admit that I've always been puzzled by Africa and yet am largely ignorant of it.  What I still can't quite grasp is why this continent, the cradle of all human civilization, has lagged so far behind (economically, politically, etc.) than other populated continents.

 

A year or two ago, I read a fascinating and yet depressing book by Keith Richburg titled Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.  Richburg, an African-American journalist working for the Washington Post, wrote this book to detail his experiences as a correspondent in Africa and as a black man who initially was "proud" of his African ancestry; however, his ultimate conclusion (having witnessed the on-going civil wars, massive tribalism, disease outbreaks, etc.) was that he was happy that his immediate ancestors had escaped from the violent, chaotic, and depressing history that he witnessed.

 

Reading Richburg's book left me in even more of a quandary.  Why, with all the natural resources that Africa has and the thousands and thousands of years of additional "evolution" (isn't this the scientific theory that's generally accepted and generall states that we humans ultimately advance and improve ourselves through natural selection over time?), has Africa done so poorly.  Why haven't they graduated beyond massive tribalism?  Presuming any race of humans would or should take others as slaves, why weren't they positioned to take "whites" as slaves versus the other way around.

 

I followed up that book with a somewhat interesting (although tedious) reading of a book by a father/son team of Italian geneticists (sorry, can't remember the name of the book or the authors) who traced the historical gene flow from Africa to the rest of the world. That book cemented in my mind the fact that all modern humans come from Africa and the studies of these geneticists only confirm the history and the time lines (thousands of years) that it took for modern man to expand from Africa to the middle east and then outwards from there.

 

To be honest, I actually felt a little guilty looking at the so-called "gene trail", thinking that it isn't very politically correct to even begin to wonder if even one of the underlying reasons for the generally poor success of the African model might be due to genetic reasons.  And I'd admit that I personally still don't have an answer as to why the African experiences have been so poor (comparatively speaking to other modern societies in the world) other than to continue to speculate that many factors are likely involved.  But, other than weather and genetics, I (in my small pea brain) can't think of any other important factors for the relatively long list of failures.  And I simply can't personally buy that weather alone is responsible (although the "better" weather of the north and south of Africa does somewhat correspond to what one might argue are more successful societal histories).  My thinking is probably borne of ignorance and is certainly not politically correct but, so far, the enigma of the big "why" remains with me as strong as ever.

[Guest fountainhall]

I know precious little about Africa and have read no books about the continent. But some of the causes of its continuing poverty and wars despite its immense wealth as a continent must surely be –

Slavery
Colonialism – for trade which benefited the coloniser, not the colonised
Corruption
War

I cannot imagine what the psychological impact of the first two must have had, but imagine they must still have some effect.

Yet despite that, I see in an article that, according to the Economist, between 2000 and 2010 “six African countries were listed as amongst the world’s fastest growing economies, with seven predicted to rank amongst the highest in the upcoming five years.” I suspect, though, that at least some of these countries were so dirt poor in 2000 that speedy rates of growth are not that difficult to achieve! I also suspect that we should no longer talk about Africa as a whole. Rather dirt poor Africa and the developing nations in Africa which are receiving vast amounts of investment, sometimes in cash but often, as in the case of China, the construction of major infrastructure projects in return for natural resources.

As many seem to point out: the problem with Africa is not that it is poor, but that it is poorly managed.

http://nupe.co.uk/africa-a-poor-continent-or-just-poorly-managed/

[Guest]

Colonlialism and slavery might have had an impact in the past.

However, former colonies in other parts of the world have generally advanced a lot more than African countries. In the case of Rhodesia living standards have deteriorated since independence.

Wars, corruption and incompetence seem to the the leading factors behind continuing African poverty.

[Bob]

There's probably little doubt that colonialism and slavery retarded the deveopment of some African countries but, in reality, you're talking about the last dozen centuries or so of time (a drop in the bucket of the scientific history of modern man). But, even then, most African populations were centuries older than anything that appeared in Western Europe or Eastern Asia let alone the Americas. Why hasn't there been the same (or higher) level of progress in Africa that came to be in those much younger societies?

 

Science seems to firmly believe that man originated in Africa and from there migrated over centuries to the middle east and then on to Eurasia and elsewhere.  Whatever precise type (homo erectus or homo sapiens, as two examples) of human that migrated anywhere certainly emanated from Africa and, at a minimum, one ought to be able to theoretically conclude that the African "man" who stayed in Africa was just as smart/capable as the African "man" who migrated elsewhere over those centuries. 

 

For example only, Japan was populated centuries (if not thousands of years) after Africa was populated.  Given the "head start" Africa had and given the general principles of evolution (there was a hell of a lot more evolution that had occurred in Africa given they had more time to do it), one would generally think that African nations would have progressed more than Japanese society or, at worst, at least as well as Japanese society.  However, one could obviously argue that Japanese society is generally way ahead (economically, politically, and maybe even culturally) of any group anywhere near central or northeastern Africa. My continuing quandary is simply "why." 

[Rogie]

Back in the bad ol' days of the Cold War, I sometimes pondered the awful consequences of MAD (mutually assured destruction) and bad dreams of missiles hidden deep below earth in silos being unleashed in an unwinnable war against the enemy. Then I would try and imagine a post-nuclear holocaust world in which mankind had to start all over again, assuming pockets of survivors being able to live through the so-called nuclear winter. Hopefully some libraries would have avoided destruction, maybe some technology and maybe the odd Nobel-prize winner or two, but how would we have managed? How many years would it have taken to get back to how we were before?

 

That kind of awful scenario came back as I was thinking about the fate of Africa. A continent that has really had its ups and downs. I think we have to be careful in our consideration of timescales. Being able to witness so many changes in the world even in our brief lifetimes surely is something unique in mankind's long chequered history. When we look back on past centuries and even millenia it must seem like not much happened, and inmany cases that's probably true, but there must be many other cases where plenty happened, but owing to the passage of time and the loss of racial memory and any written record we know next to nothing today.

 

A good example is Great Zimbabwe. I have never visited modern Zimbabwe but had vaguely heard of this old civilisation. I checked it out in wiki . . .

 

 

Great Zimbabwe . . . . was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe during the country’s Late Iron Age.
The monument first began to be constructed in the 11th century and
continued to be built until the 14th century, spanning an area of
722 hectares (1,780 acres) which, at its peak, could have housed up to
18,000 people. Great Zimbabwe acted as a royal palace
for the Zimbabwean monarch and would have been used as the seat of
their political power. One of its most prominent features were its
walls, some of which were over five metres high and which were
constructed without mortar. Eventually the city was abandoned and fell into ruin.

 

. . . but then it came as a nasty surprise to come across this unsavoury fact;
 

 

The official line in Rhodesia
during the 1960s and 1970s was that the structures were built by
non-blacks and the government censored archaeologists who disputed this.

According to Paul Sinclair, interviewed for None But Ourselves:

 

I was the archaeologist stationed at Great Zimbabwe. I was told by the
then-director of the Museums and Monuments organisation to be extremely
careful about talking to the press about the origins of the [Great]
Zimbabwe state. I was told that the museum service was in a difficult
situation, that the government was pressurising them to withhold the
correct information. Censorship of guidebooks, museum displays, school
textbooks, radio programmes, newspapers and films was a daily
occurrence. Once a member of the Museum Board of Trustees threatened me
with losing my job if I said publicly that blacks had built Zimbabwe. He
said it was okay to say the yellow people had built it, but I wasn't
allowed to mention radio carbon dates... It was the first time since
Germany in the thirties that archaeology has been so directly censored.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe

 

Here is an interesting map showing some pre-colonial African civilisations:

 

Sorry about the small print size on the legend, but you don't need to be able to read it as the names of the various civilisations are clearly marked on the map.

 

I haven't had the time to chase up any of the other ones shown on the map. I would expect there are history books devoted to Africa that would explore and explain these. I suspect it is a far bigger topic than any of us could ever imagine and maybe Bob touched on one of the reasons why they petered out when he said (my bold type) . . .:

 

 

I'd admit that I personally still don't have an answer as to why the
African experiences have been so poor (comparatively speaking to other
modern societies in the world) other than to continue to speculate that
many factors are likely involved.

 

. . .  as it's well known the industrial revolution really took off and thrived in places (towns!) such as Manchester where a critical mass of people worked and lived their whole lives. There must be countless other examples both pre and post industrial revolution. Bob mentions Japan. Then one thinks of 'ancient' Greece and Rome etc.

 

Perhaps African civilisations were not too successful in forming and keeping the kinds of societies that are often the cornerstones of progressive thinking, leading to discovery and innovation. I'll leave it at that as it's all conjecture on my part, but suffice to say I cannot believe it has anything to do with genetics.