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2016-04-24 Africa Subsaharan
Why is Africa so poor while Europe and North America are so wealthy?
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Posted by Besoeker 2016-04-24 12:02|| || Front Page|| [11128 views ]  Top

#1 I think it has to do with culture and weather. Cold weather climates promote a work together or freeze to death culture. Hot weather cultures do not.
Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-24 12:49||   2016-04-24 12:49|| Front Page Top

#2 Good points at the salmon. With due respect to your acknowledged expertise and study, I'd love to hear your comments on the 40,000 to 80,000 year (by some estimates) head start on civilization and progress.

There has got to be more to this story than environmental impacts.
Posted by Besoeker 2016-04-24 13:00||   2016-04-24 13:00|| Front Page Top

#3 Yep, that's why civilization started in freezing Messopotamia, and why sweltering Eskimo never amounted to anything.
Posted by g(r)omgoru 2016-04-24 13:05||   2016-04-24 13:05|| Front Page Top

#4 Obama hasn't finished yet?
Posted by Bobby 2016-04-24 13:06||   2016-04-24 13:06|| Front Page Top

#5 Tribal Crab Mentality
Posted by Frank G 2016-04-24 14:12||   2016-04-24 14:12|| Front Page Top

#6 The disparaging of the lowly crab. Must you go there Frank ;-)
Posted by Besoeker 2016-04-24 14:14||   2016-04-24 14:14|| Front Page Top

#7 I recommend reading "The Bell Curve".
Posted by Pholulet Chusomble5802 2016-04-24 14:29||   2016-04-24 14:29|| Front Page Top

#8 Does this paper come with a complimentary bottle of snake oil?
Posted by Betty Hitler2611 2016-04-24 14:51||   2016-04-24 14:51|| Front Page Top

#9 
Posted by 3dc 2016-04-24 14:55||   2016-04-24 14:55|| Front Page Top

#10 I once read an interesting paper about the absence of domesticable animals in sub-Saharan Africa. There were no horses or dogs or cattle that easily supported the growth of Animal Husbandry. No pigs or chickens to speak of made it extremely hard to move off the hunter gatherer plateau.

Can't critique the argument but it seemed to make sense as something to add into the picture. Of course there is no single answer as so many always want.
Posted by AlanC 2016-04-24 17:15||   2016-04-24 17:15|| Front Page Top

#11 Up till about 1700, Europe was a bunch of tribes just getting their national identity together. Meanwhile, China had been the real world power in size and whatever passed for GDP back then and had been for centuries, minus the cyclic breakups and reunifications. They could have asked back then, why is Europe poor and China so wealthy? Once you understand the operative elements to Western ascendency, then you can critique from perspective the whys for the differences.
Posted by Procopius2k 2016-04-24 17:47||   2016-04-24 17:47|| Front Page Top

#12 I would venture to say it is a combination of many factors. But rarely discovery out of Africa was ever popular. While Europe and Asia continuously innovated, explored, expanded... To improve their way of life. How far underdeveloped would Africa be without the evil colonialists?
Posted by airandee 2016-04-24 17:59||   2016-04-24 17:59|| Front Page Top

#13 Perhaps freezing wasn't the best term. Some weather promotes agriculture and civilization, others like tropical islands provide and civilization doesn't seem to from the same way.
Posted by rjschwarz 2016-04-24 19:33||   2016-04-24 19:33|| Front Page Top

#14 The problem is, no one wants to talk About the Northern Protestant explosion, so they have to talk about race and genetics, but they can't talk about that, really, either, because Nazi, sooo... You get mush like this paper.
Posted by Thing From Snowy Mountain 2016-04-24 20:14||   2016-04-24 20:14|| Front Page Top

#15 Sub-Saharan Africans are the only genetic population lacking Neanderthal DNA.

There have been and will be many great civilizations. But Indo-European's seem to have produced the largest and most successful of those consistently throughout known history.
Posted by jefe101 2016-04-24 21:17||   2016-04-24 21:17|| Front Page Top

#16 There's also the element of 'private privilege and ownership'.

The early European feudal systems made it difficult for an individual to innovate. There were no individual incentives to expand or progress, unless your ruler deemed it so. In fact, individual incentive was usually met with less than desirable results.

Modern civilization in Europe didn't really take off until the breakup of the feudal system, with the result being that mere individuals could own property and work for themselves. The Dutch and British were the first to really implement this in the 1300-1400's (some locations earlier), other northern European countries followed with the Mediterranean states (Italy, Spain, Greece) lagging till much later.

Whereas early North American colonization (NOT Mexico) was of the Dutch/British notion that individuals could work their own jobs and own property, Mexico, Central and South America were still of the old 'Padron' feudal system until the 1800's.

The African tribal systems ran along the 'feudal' mindset that there was no individual property rights and you were born to your life's work. Again, there was no individual incentive to expand or progress, unless your ruler deemed it so.

East Asian systems were 'feudal', but had extremely strong (and large) family components AND Confucian philosophies. They succeeded until the ruling classes were so interbred that they became physically unable (and unwilling) to continue any progress. The civilizations there stagnated until the late 20th century.

Culture stagnation and the repression of individual incentives may have a part to play with the answer to this question, too.
Posted by Mullah Richard 2016-04-24 21:49||   2016-04-24 21:49|| Front Page Top

#17 Another interesting point with regards to genetics is the "mix". For example, we have empirical evidence for successful civilization development if we look at Japan and Germany, both culturally unrelated, both monolithic and both very warlike. Germany having followed the natural progression of development and Japan "jump starting" in the mid 1800's. Both industrialized relatively quickly and despite annihilation, were able to become world economic powers within a short time. Yet these two civilizations are totally unrelated in every aspect. It would be interesting to see if therein is a certain genomic mix which both genetic groups share.
Personally I think warfare, it's type, frequency and duration plays a huge role in a civilization's success and development. Mainly, being the culling of those unsuccessful in contributing to war and it's losers. Intense generational warfare over hundreds of years, as experienced in Europe, certainly produces a genetic "type" of European, whether serf or King, the successful one.
Posted by jefe101 2016-04-24 22:43||   2016-04-24 22:43|| Front Page Top

#18 It's the genes.
End of story, period.
Posted by jvalentour 2016-04-24 22:45||   2016-04-24 22:45|| Front Page Top

#19 Also an interesting aspect of Sociobiology could be displayed in modern terrorism. So the classic example is a father and son are drowning, who does the grandfather save? Sociobiology will dictate he saves the grandson because at the genetic level the grandfathers actions are dictated that his own genes are most likely to succeed through the grandson.
Contrast this with a civilization where you encourage your son or grandson to become a suicide bomber. To Eurpoeans/Americans this is anthema. Is this genetic? Does some aspect of their genomic makeup allow for this? I'm not saying parents don't love their kids. I'm saying this could be an example of a difference in outcome at the genetic level due to genetic make-up of the different population which, for some reason, devalues the necessity to select the best option to perpetuate the genes.
Posted by jefe101 2016-04-24 23:05||   2016-04-24 23:05|| Front Page Top

23:23 Iblis
23:05 jefe101
22:59 Zenobia Floger6220
22:45 jvalentour
22:43 jefe101
22:30 Lone Ranger
22:08 swksvolFF
21:49 Mullah Richard
21:18 Zenobia Floger6220
21:17 jefe101
21:10 European Conservative
20:14 Thing From Snowy Mountain
19:41 CrazyFool
19:38 CrazyFool
19:36 rjschwarz
19:33 rjschwarz
19:26 Dale
19:25 Dale
19:23 Frank G
19:14 SteveS
19:08 SteveS
19:04 SteveS
18:41 SteveS
18:39 49 Pan









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