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This is interesting.

I just watched a Thomas Sowell YouTube video about the continent of Africa.

Africa is NOTHING like Europe or North America.

For one, even though Africa is much larger than Europe it has much less total coastline. This is because while European coastline is full of inlets and outlets the African coastline is mostly smooth.

Keep that thought in your head… smooth.

Secondly, there are hundreds of miles of coastline that is basically on a cliff side, again making the land difficult to access from ships.

This limits the people in sub Saharan Africa from being accessed by traders.

There are no navigable rivers anywhere close to what Europe and America has. Their rivers all drop too quickly creating blockages for ships. This means shipping is naturally limited in Africa.

They even have a certain insect that kills lots of beasts of burden, making even overland caravans difficult to utilize.

The rains in Africa are not always consistent. So it’s difficult to develop a culture of permanent agriculture.

Basically, it’s hard to trade with Africa. It’s hard to move around inside Africa, it’s hard to establish and maintain agriculture in Africa. All these things make it hard to generate Civilization and the lack of Civilization makes human interaction (which helps develop IQ and smooth over some of the more “primal” human urges) much more rare in Africa than in Europe.

In short, if Europe and Africa were two overlayed brain images. And human interaction (where two humans come into contact with each other) was dignified by “sparking brain cells” then Europe, with its wide and navigable rivers, it’s countless inlets and bays and it’s wide roads and beasts of burden, is a very active brain. Lots of people are meeting and interacting with one another in Europe. There are large civilizations where big issues can manifest and be worked through.

Africa, on the other hand, hardly has two brain cells to rub together. It’s like the entire continent was created to make it extremely difficult to establish a large civilization, or even to establish much of any industry. Prior to the introduction of modern machinery it was hard to move ANYTHING in Africa because everything basically has to either be carried on someone’s back or move under its own power (SLAVE trade anyone?).

It’s like if someone told me about a fantasy land with the physical characteristics of Africa I would naturally deduce that land would create a people that were lacking in intelligence, that were lacking in preparation for the future, were likely very self focused and could get violent easily.

What if geography has more influence on human culture than we’ve given it credit for?

This is interesting. I just watched a Thomas Sowell YouTube video about the continent of Africa. Africa is NOTHING like Europe or North America. For one, even though Africa is much larger than Europe it has much less total coastline. This is because while European coastline is full of inlets and outlets the African coastline is mostly smooth. Keep that thought in your head… smooth. Secondly, there are hundreds of miles of coastline that is basically on a cliff side, again making the land difficult to access from ships. This limits the people in sub Saharan Africa from being accessed by traders. There are no navigable rivers anywhere close to what Europe and America has. Their rivers all drop too quickly creating blockages for ships. This means shipping is naturally limited in Africa. They even have a certain insect that kills lots of beasts of burden, making even overland caravans difficult to utilize. The rains in Africa are not always consistent. So it’s difficult to develop a culture of permanent agriculture. Basically, it’s hard to trade with Africa. It’s hard to move around inside Africa, it’s hard to establish and maintain agriculture in Africa. All these things make it hard to generate Civilization and the lack of Civilization makes human interaction (which helps develop IQ and smooth over some of the more “primal” human urges) much more rare in Africa than in Europe. In short, if Europe and Africa were two overlayed brain images. And human interaction (where two humans come into contact with each other) was dignified by “sparking brain cells” then Europe, with its wide and navigable rivers, it’s countless inlets and bays and it’s wide roads and beasts of burden, is a very active brain. Lots of people are meeting and interacting with one another in Europe. There are large civilizations where big issues can manifest and be worked through. Africa, on the other hand, hardly has two brain cells to rub together. It’s like the entire continent was created to make it extremely difficult to establish a large civilization, or even to establish much of any industry. Prior to the introduction of modern machinery it was hard to move ANYTHING in Africa because everything basically has to either be carried on someone’s back or move under its own power (SLAVE trade anyone?). It’s like if someone told me about a fantasy land with the physical characteristics of Africa I would naturally deduce that land would create a people that were lacking in intelligence, that were lacking in preparation for the future, were likely very self focused and could get violent easily. What if geography has more influence on human culture than we’ve given it credit for?

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[–] • 1 pt (edited )

European people and technology developed in a part of the world that experiences annual, no-growth freezing winters. That means you can’t grow or gather any food for five months at a time, every year.

Compared to many parts of Africa where you can grow, hunt or gather food year around, most of Europe faces a significant food supply challenge. Because Europeans did overcome this challenge we’ve lost our perspective on how difficult it was to overcome long winters. Technologies like food processing, food storage, winter shelter, heating systems etc. are not trivial technologies.

Additionally in terms of physical environment not every part of Europe was easy to live in. Much of Greece is mountainous which makes transportation or farming difficult. Do you think the ocean flooding that used to happen in the Netherlands was a trivial problem, yet they overcame it with a vast engineered system of dykes and dams.

Using their intelligence the Europeans were able to overcome various natural challenges in the environment. Africans were not.

If Europeans had developed in Africa they would’ve come up with ways to overcome Africa’s geographic limitations. You know with things like trains.

I like Thomas Sowell but in that video he kind of pussied out and tried to avoid the IQ issue.

If you exist in a culture without a written language how are you going to train any engineers to create sets of locks that might allow boats to navigate difficult sections of rivers. That’s not gonna happen and so African never developed or overcame its difficulties on its own.

[–] • 1 pt

I agree with this perspective fully. I think the seasons absolutely contributed to white development. I just also think geography itself also contributed.

It’s like all the world is broken into distinct geographical areas that are custom designed to produce distinct cultural peoples.

Africa is the land that produces people who generally can’t do much of anything but live in Africa.