How come some countrys are more developed......

The further away you get from where it all started?

Humans thought to have originated from africa and eventually migrated north east and west. The further away you get from Africa, specially north and West, the more developed countrys you will find. Why is this? Surely Africa as a continent should be the most developed region since thats where humans have been the longest? But its one of the least developed you will find on Earth.

Originally posted by Idonthaveabeard
Surely Africa as a continent should be the most developed region...

Pretty much any answer to this question will be shouted down with cries of "thats racist".
My prediction, anyway.

The funiest theory I heard was that all the locations of old civilizations have been turned into deserts. So people have to migrate. That this defines the great migration waves of right before history, or the last era of prehistory. Personally I use the "east" theory of civilization. My own smart aleck theory. It states, the further east one goes, the more repressive things become.


David Grouchy

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard

Three words:
World monetary system

Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet in terms of resources. Unfortunately the only developed parts were created by white men who no longer run things or live there, that's why everything is dilapidated. Even the north africans (mostly Arab) are far more advanced than their southern neighbors. I'm not going to say Blacks are less cerebral than everyone else but I will ask how many first world black countries there are and how many third world white countries there are.....?


Then you argue "well whites took advantage of native blacks" To which I respond what type of people get taken advantage of?


I do not believe everyone was created equally but I do believe everyone should be treated equally.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard
Read Guns, Germs, and Steel

Could it be that the first civilizations thousands of years ago progressed to today's technology and nuked each other ? Now it's barren land where little will grow ? They say that history always repeats itself , and were well on our way !!

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


Dear Idonthaveabeard,

It is a fair question to ask although it could be asked of South America to an extent also. The famous historian, Arnold Toybee in his ten volume "Study of History" looked at all known societies to chronicle their rise and fall. He concluded that a lot of it had to do with how hard it was to survive in the environment. If food was easy to obtain and minimal shelter was needed then there was less of a need to invest time in developing those resources. In the colder north, getting food, preserving it during the winter and making substantial places as homes required the learning of many skills that were not required in the warmer climates.

My personal favorite example of this is in Polynesia. The Polynesians were some of the most inventive people in history having learned how to sail 1/3 of the earth without a compass and know how to find islands thousands of miles away that they had never visited. At the same time they did not become more "developed" because there was no need to. I believe you say developed to refer to technologically advanced. Spiritually and inter-personally I would argue that these people were much more developed at least in regards to their own groups.

If I may offer a theory?

Look at where the developed countries are. In my opinion, the greatest civilization was the Roman, based on extent of influence, military power, and a bunch of other stuff.

Look at where they brought their culture. Through Europe and into England. They didn't bother to cross the mountains to get to Eastern Europe and Russia.

The US, Canada and Australia were settled by Europeans. Japan was rebuilt by the Americans 60 years ago.

China and the Far East? An old civilization but only becoming developed in the modern sense after colonization by Europe.

Sounds good?

Who came up with the term '3rd world' country?
What are the '2nd world' countries?

What if the Eden story is about advanced people being placed into the Garden of Eden (a place like someone mentioned above where life/climate was so 'easy' that not much ingenuity was required) and were told to leave the one 'fruit' alone (indigenous people) but they inter-mingled anyway, were cast out, and had to rough it elsewhere.

For the record, I believe there is a grain of truth within stories such as Adam and Eve. Historical fiction, if you will.

Originally posted by new_here
Who came up with the term '3rd world' country?
What are the '2nd world' countries?

What if the Eden story is about advanced people being placed into the Garden of Eden (a place like someone mentioned above where life/climate was so 'easy' that not much ingenuity was required) and were told to leave the one 'fruit' alone (indigenous people) but they inter-mingled anyway, were cast out, and had to rough it elsewhere.

For the record, I believe there is a grain of truth within stories such as Adam and Eve. Historical fiction, if you will.

I'll leave the philosophizing on Eden to the experts as I have no solid reason to go either way with it, but the 1st/3rd world countries seems to go back to the cold war.

2nd world would be states allied with/reliant on the superpowers like Russia & the US - Second World wiki page.

"Developed" eh?
Sorry, but I feel a rant coming on.

Some Westerners see a community without electricity, TV, factories, schools, toys, gadgets, etc. and think about how "poor" "underdeveloped" "uneducated" the people are. Why?

I remember seeing a world map and the continents were sized according to the amount of pollution they produced and guess what...Africa was a tiny little place. Not the second largest that it really is.

Oh yeah and funny how it never had a Nuke Meltdown like America, Russia, or Japan has.
Russia and Japan has literally miles and miles of NO-GO-TO land that will be that way for HUNDRED OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS!

I think most of us feel in our gut that a meltdown in the US is almost inevitable. They have run the numbers and the money is not good for the "nuclear industry" so why do the up keep? Just keep loosening the regulations, cut the losses and let the people pay for the "smart people's" gamble.

So who's really "developed"?

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


I don't think that this is the case at all. It's not that civilizations get more advanced the further you get from Africa. It's all cycles. Take the Nubians, for example, a very advanced civilization for there time. From Africa, no less. This was when we Europeans were still wallowing in the pre-dark of our history.

Civiliazations riase and fall all over the place, all through time. We live in a time when civilization is at, or nearing it's peak, in the West. Tomorrow, it will be elsewhere...

Originally posted by new_here
Who came up with the term '3rd world' country?
What are the '2nd world' countries?

As a comparatively old man, I remember where this came from.
In the Fifties, people divided the world into "the Communist world" and "the Capitalist west".
Once the old empires were dissolving, especially in Africa and Asia, it started becoming obvious that many of the newly independent countries didn't fit into either category.
Therefore a new category was invented for them; "the third world".
From the western viewpoint, the communist bloc was "the second world".

Have you ever heard of COLONIALISM?

Also, the majority of the Sub Saharan tribes and peoples didn't have a writing system until the 19th century, just like the the majority of tribes and peoples of the Americas before the arrival of the European colonizers, and just like the Australian aborigenes and the majority of the Melanesian and Polinesian tribes and peoples in the Pacific Ocean.

Back to the colonialism topic, Sub Saharan Africa was savagely raped by colonialism, and was one of the last places on Earth to be "decolonized". As recently as 1973, Angola and Mozambique were still colonies of Portugal.

After the "decolonization" process, the African countries were left with artificial borders, designed by the colonizers, creating ethnic conflicts and civil wars. The armamentist industry helped to foment those wars, to have a market to sell weapons, as is widely known.

Only in the last decade, some African countries started to experience PEACE, that is a fundamental step towards ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. And peaces is having great results in some of those countries. Angola, for example, that only has ended its civil war about 10 years ago, is now the FASTEST GROWING economy in the world, growing an average of 15% per year, faster than China.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard

Think back to school history.
Civilisations drew up in river valleys which could be intensively farmed- the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates basin, the Yangtze and Hwang Ho in China. Intensive farming means population growth, which makes it posible to develop other resources. So development started in the river valleys and spread from there. The Congo basin is not one that can be intensively farmed.

Also consider the importance of cheap food. Cheap food means that people can afford to spend money on other things, which means that it becomes worth while developing and making other things. So it's been argued that the Industrial Revolution in Britain depended on the Agricultural Revolution. If a region can provide food cheaply, then it can be developed in other ways.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard

reply to post by Fitch303

 

Originally posted by Fitch303
Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet in terms of resources. Unfortunately the only developed parts were created by white men who no longer run things or live there, that's why everything is dilapidated. Even the north africans (mostly Arab) are far more advanced than their southern neighbors. I'm not going to say Blacks are less cerebral than everyone else but I will ask how many first world black countries there are and how many third world white countries there are.....?


Then you argue "well whites took advantage of native blacks" To which I respond what type of people get taken advantage of?

edit on 12-12-2011 by Fitch303 because: (no reason given)

I do not believe everyone was created equally but I do believe everyone should be treated equally.

edit on 12-12-2011 by Fitch303 because: (no reason given)

blame the west for that 1st it was colonialism since at least the 70's it's genocide

Kissinger plan to transform North Africa and Middle East into Turkmenistan forum.prisonplanet.com...
depopulation_linked_merck_pharma_announces_africa_plan www.infowars.com...

www.schillerinstitute.org...

wlym.com...


the last thing the West wants is a United Africa, no more cheap or nearly free resources and no more toxic waste dump[Somalia] and no more bio-warfare testing on the continent of the greatest human genetic variability if that should happen.

reply to post by Idonthaveabeard


en.wikipedia.org...

The twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt, known as the Nubian Dynasty or the Ku#e Empire, was the last dynasty of the Third Intermediate Period of Egypt, a line of rulers originating in the Nubian Kingdom of Kush.

They reigned in part or all of Ancient Egypt from 760 BC to 656 BC.[1] The dynasty began with Kashta's invasion of Upper Egypt and culminated in several years of war with the Assyrians

After Assyrian king Esarhaddon invaded Egypt and defeated the Nubians, they were succeeded by the Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt, the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest.

and in the interests of denying the ignorance of the " africans never put 2 rocks together, until white man taught him" crowd:

just a small sample, taking account small attention spans for anything but race-baiting and similar mental games:
Empire_of_Ghana
en.wikipedia.org...

Land_of_Punt
en.wikipedia.org...

Axum
en.wikipedia.org...

Meroe
en.wikipedia.org...

Nubia
en.wikipedia.org...

for the OP's and others further "edjication"

Pre-colonial_African_kingdoms
en.wikipedia.org...

African civilizations. An archaeological perspective. SECOND EDITION. Graham Connah. Australian National University. Canberra. Drawings by Douglas Hobbs catdir.loc.gov...

history-world.org...

Geographic, Ethnic, And Historical Backgrounds

Geographic factors help explain sub-Sahara Africa's relatively late
state-building. Climatic changes between 5000 and 1500 B.C., which produced
the Sahara Desert, limited cultural contacts with the Middle East and the
Mediterranean basin. When such contacts became more frequent in the Christian
era, local African traditions were deeply rooted and resistant to change. In
addition, the vast space open to migration south of the Sahara decreased
conflict over land, thereby lessening what had been a significant stimulus in
the formation of many early Eurasian states. This factor, too, helps account
for delayed political development.

Although most Americans have traditionally thought of sub-Sahara Africa
as an immense jungle, more than half of the area comprises grassy plains,
known as savanna. The northern savanna, sometimes called the Sudan, stretches
across the continent, just south of the Sahara. Other patches of savanna are
interspersed among the mountains of East Africa, and another belt of grassland
runs east and west across the southern continent, north of the Kalahari
Desert. Between the northern and southern savannas, in the region of the
equator, is jungle. Heavy rainfall here permitted the cultivation of some
nutritious crops, but soils were not very fertile, and the rain forests
produced many dangers, including sleeping sickness, to which both humans and
animals are susceptible. Generally, the most habitable regions have been the
savannas, which have favored transportation and agriculture.

After the Sahara became arid, the most prominent sub-Saharan peoples were
Negroid speakers of diverse but related Bantu languages. Originating in west
central Africa, between the savanna and the forests, the Bantu began migrating
after about 1000 B.C. For centuries, they moved south and east, ultimately
spreading along the east coast. By A.D. 1000, they had reached central Natal,
in what is now the Republic of South Africa. During their migrations, the
Bantu absorbed or displaced other Negroid peoples of eastern and southern
Africa, driving pygmies, Bushmen, and Khoisan-speaking pastoralists into the
southern jungle, the Kalahari Desert, or the extreme southwestern savanna.
Thus Bantu migrants provided most of sub-Sahara Africa with a common cultural
identity.

The Bantu migrations were closely related to agriculture and iron-working
in a continuous reciprocal process. Developing agriculture expanded Bantu
populations; iron tools and weapons provided the means to acquire new lands;
and the resulting migrations spread both technologies through the whole
sub-Sahara region.

Originally posted by DerepentLEstranger
reply to post by Idonthaveabeard

 

reply to post by Fitch303

 

Originally posted by Fitch303
Africa is one of the richest continents on the planet in terms of resources. Unfortunately the only developed parts were created by white men who no longer run things or live there, that's why everything is dilapidated. Even the north africans (mostly Arab) are far more advanced than their southern neighbors. I'm not going to say Blacks are less cerebral than everyone else but I will ask how many first world black countries there are and how many third world white countries there are.....?


Then you argue "well whites took advantage of native blacks" To which I respond what type of people get taken advantage of?

edit on 12-12-2011 by Fitch303 because: (no reason given)

I do not believe everyone was created equally but I do believe everyone should be treated equally.

edit on 12-12-2011 by Fitch303 because: (no reason given)

blame the west for that 1st it was colonialism since at least the 70's it's genocide

Kissinger plan to transform North Africa and Middle East into Turkmenistan forum.prisonplanet.com...
depopulation_linked_merck_pharma_announces_africa_plan www.infowars.com...

www.schillerinstitute.org...

wlym.com...


the last thing the West wants is a United Africa, no more cheap or nearly free resources and no more toxic waste dump[Somalia] and no more bio-warfare testing on the continent of the greatest human genetic variability if that should happen.

edit on 13-12-2011 by DerepentLEstranger because: added reply to fitch to whom this post is directed

Right but what i'm saying is that people were taken advantage of all over the place at just about every point in history. Whites in Europe fought each other just as much as they did everyone else. My point is that a stronger people will eventually overcome this, which Africans haven't.

Two Views of The Bell Curve - the truth is that for anyone to say that one racial group is inherrently superior to another is politically unacceptable, doesn't matter whether true or not, it is simply forbidden to even enquire about it!

Breaking the Last Taboo Review by Thomas J. Bouchard, Jr.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." With these words Jefferson introduced one of America's most treasured documents, the Declaration of Independence. Successive generations of Americans have not only embraced Jefferson's noble sentiments, they have embellished them. Equality of political rights and legal standing has been expanded into a belief in literal equality; today, differences in outcome are taken as prima facie evidence of unequal opportunity. In an egalitarian society such as ours, the existence of significant and enduring individual or group differences in intelligence is seen as a challenge to our highest ideals.


This challenge is taken up by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray in The Bell Curve. The Bell Curve has a simple but powerful thesis: There are substantial individual and group differences in intelligence; these differences profoundly influence the social structure and organization of work in modern industrial societies, and they defy easy remediation. In the current political milieu, this book's message is not merely controversial, it is incendiary. As scholars such as Daniel Moynihan, Arthur Jensen, and E. O. Wilson have learned, the mainstream media and much of the scientific community have little tolerance for those who would question our most cherished beliefs. Herrnstein and Murray have received similar treatment.

They have been cast as racists and elitists, and The Bell Curve has been dismissed as pseudoscience, ironically by some commentators who broadly proclaim that their critique has not benefited from a reading of the book. The book's message cannot be dismissed so easily. Herrnstein and Murray have written one of the most provocative social science books published in many years. The issues raised are likely to be debated by academics and policymakers for years to come.