Although a couple of our commenters have been citing a lot of the accomplishments of black Africa, Dr. Michael H. Hart paints a very different picture in his book Understanding Human History.  Hart’s book was published in 2007 so some of his claims may no longer be accepted as the archeological record has since become more complete and politically correct.

For starters, Hart claims that farming was not practiced in Africa until it was brought to Egypt by Southwest Asians in 6000 BC and from there it spread to Ethiopia, Sudan and then West Africa by 3000 BC.  Central and Southern Africa however, were still living in the paleolithic until 1000 BC, according to Hart.

By 600 BC iron smelting occurred in Nigeria. Hart writes “It seems probable that knowledge of iron work had been introduced from the North or brought from the eastern Sudan.”  Introduced or brought in by Caucasoids?

Hart notes that prior to 1500,  sub-Saharan Africa could be divided into two wildly different sections.  The exposed zone and the secluded zone.  The exposed zone was all the parts that were in contact with Caucasoids, such as West Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia, small remote parts of the Indian Ocean colonized by Arab traders, and parts of the Atlantic coast where Portuguese traders  had set up shop.  The rest of sub-Saharan Africa was the secluded zone.  A terrifying region roughly twice the size of Europe.

While the exposed zone was not poor, and benefitted from written languages brought by Muslim slave traders, Hart feels the indigenous peoples still failed to make a single contribution to World civilization.

But it is the vast secluded zone that bears the brunt of Hart’s poison pen.   Described as a primitive and backward region until as recently as the 19th century,  Hart notes that there were:

-no wheeled vehicles, nor even the potter’s wheel

– no method of even joining together pieces of wood

-no beasts of burden or draft animals (though cattle was raised)

-not a single written language in the entire region,  and thus no law codes, no philosophical works,  no literature or even oral epic-poetry

-no coins or money

– no math beyond simple arithmetic,

-no cities beyond small towns, no temples, large monuments nor domes, arches, schools, hospitals, libraries nor paved roads.   Hart credits the ruins of Great Zimbabwe as the most notable construction in the secluded zone, but feels it was nothing compared to the Machu Picchu in South America, or Cambodia’s Angkor Wat complex, or Mesoamerica’s large cities and religious buildings.  Hart notes that the giant statues on the tiny isolated Polynesian Easter Island were more impressive than anything found in the entire, secluded zone of black Africa.

-Almost no maritime skills.  Hart notes the stunning fact that it took Indonesians from the other side of the Indian Ocean, coming from 3000 miles away, to inhabit Madagascar in 500 AD, because Africans still had not reached it, even though it was only 250 miles off the East African coast.   Nor did they reach the Cape Verde Islands, just a few hundred miles off the West African coast.

Hart also claims the secluded zone was primitive when it came to political and ethical matters, noting the lack of democracy and civil liberties and the common use of slavery and occasional cannibalism.

Why was the secluded zone of black Africa so far behind virtually everyone else on Earth?  In Guns, Germs and Steel,  Jared Diamond argues that black Africa was simply cut off from the rest of the World, and thus didn’t have access to advances in knowledge, however Hart rejects this explanation because Native Americans were even more geographically isolated than black Africans, yet their societies were so much more advanced.

Instead Hart favours the cold winters explanation.    Races who left Africa tens of thousands of years ago, and got at least some exposure to the ice age, evolved higher intelligence to survive the cold,  and once the ice age ended, this allowed them to create advanced culture and technologies.

Update Oct 1, 2017:

On Sept 25, 2017, commenter Jm8 wrote the following rebuttal to Hart’s narrative:

Some of his claims are no longer accepted because the archaeological and historical record has become more complete, but others were not accepted in 2007 (or were heavily doubted) either and have been undermined or unsupported by evidence prior to that.

Michael Hart is not a historian or an archaeologist, or anthropologist, etc (or has any similar such background, let alone a scholar of Africa) (apparently he is astrophysicist). And his statements on Africa (and perhaps his purpose in writing on the subject at all) seems likely to be primarily ideological and politically motivated more than anything else, since he had no backgroud in it or in any related field). Much of his activity outside of Physics has been in association with white separatist and other racialist and far right organizations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_H._Hart

“no literature or even oral epic-poetry”

The second is very untrue and such was known before 2007.

Epic poetry is found all over West Africa as much as Central Africa (especially, but not only among the Mande and other peoples of the Mali region, the Senegambia and Guinea, who have casted hereditary bards—a custom that originated with them and has been adopted by some neighboring tribes. The animistic hunters’ societies of many tribes, more primitive and believed to be extremely ancient and even older than the bardic tradition, have a specialized body/tradition of epic songs as well). Long form epics and oral history/mythology are also found among many of the non-Mande peoples of the Western savannah Burkina, N. Ghana, and further south in the forest region: (just to give a few examples) among the Ashanti/Akan, Ewe, Yoruba (who have a genre of oral literature called Oriki, as well as a body of sacred poems memorized by their Ifa priests). The Fang, Beti and the Bamileke (and Bamoum, Bafut, etc.) and neighboring tribes in Central Africa Cameroon and Gabon are also especially noted for their epics (traditionally played to a stringed instrument called the Mvet—especially associated with epics and battle songs), as are the peoples of the Lakes region of East Central Africa (The Baganda, Haya, BaRwanda, etc), and the peoples of parts of Congo (e.g. the Lianja epic of the Mongo people)

Most of West Africa was not in contact with caucasoids when its most notable civilizations formed (as I explained in the comments of the last post). Iron working in Nigeria predates 600 bc as well as ironworking in the lands of the nearest caucasoids (who thus are unlikely to have introduced it).

One written language was created in s Africa (Nsibidi), which show no sign of foreign origin (it is very unlike any other script and all surrounding regions had no scripts). Anyway independently invented scripts are rare historically (and there is no evidence of them in Europe).

“Native Americans were even more geographically isolated than black Africans, yet their societies were so much more advanced.”

This is generally not true (in many cases the reverse is true esp. of North America and South America outside the Andes). The argument could be made only of Native Americans in parts of Central America and (as mentioned) much of the Andes (in some respects it might be true in those cases, and in others not).

They claim about a lack of seafaring though (in a sense—that is relative to Europe and Asia), is largely true (the same could be said of Native American cultures, even the most advanced ones, and this likely has a lot to do with geography (Africa has few islands archipelagoes or island groups near the mainland of the kind where seafaring cultures usually evolve: like the Greeks in the Agean, Norse in N. Europe, or Polynesians and their seafaring Southeast Asian ancestors in SE Asia. The Mayans, Incas, and Aztecs/Toltecs did no real sea faring either—or really none at all for the most part. The Amerindians that traveled most by sea were the relatively non-advanced Carib and Arawak Indians (who settled the Caribbean from Venezuela) and, to a lesser extent, the Indians of the North American NorthWest Coast.
As for what did exist:

In Africa seafaring (among traditional non-influenced subsaharans) was not nonexistent and substantial seafaring boats made of joined wood—which did exist (about the same size and the extremely large canoes used by the US Indians of British Colombia) for deep sea fishing, travel to nearby islands, and trading along the coast (though not really ships) were used by peoples along the West Africa Coast (before European contact—some of the first Europeans described them when they arrived) by coastal tribes like the Wolof and Lebu of Senegal, the Fanta, Ga and Ashanti in Ghana, and some of the Bantu tribes of coastal Central Africa like the Cameroonian Douala. Ethnolinguist Roger Blench has proposed that early proto Bantu in Central Africa (or branches thereof) may have spread along the Gabon-Congo Coast (the Bantu ancestors of the Bantu Bubi tribe of the Fernando Po/Bioko islands colonized them from the mainland millennia before Europeans arrived. There is also some (albeit tentative) evidence that fisherman and traders of certain West Africa cultures (Parts of South east Nigeria) occasionally reached as far as Gabon and the Northern Congo. In the case of Cape Verde, it’s earliest confirmed (and most likely) discovery (I believe) is by the Portuguese. I have read claims that Lebu fisherman might have rarely visited it before, but I have found not confirmation of that so it may well not be true.

Baganda craft:

Large boats were built by the African groups that lived along large navigable rivers (like the Niger) and lakes (like lake Chad and the lakes of Uganda/Rwanda/Burundi.

Along the Malian Middle Niger long canoe-like cargo barges (make of pieces of wood sewn together) are traditional and are used by various tribes that have lived by fishing and/or riverine trade (the Bozo, Somono, Songhai)—these (the larger ones that is) likely go back at least to the times of Djenne Jeno and (the older) Dia when specialized groups of river traders began to exists (specialized fisherman, or course go back much further, but their boat may have tended smaller since they were not cargo bearing—although the ancestors of the Songhai with their traditions of hunting hippos and crocodiles by boat may have had larger craft earlier. The Ugandan Baganda kingdom had a fleet of boats made for joined wood, as did certain tribes of the S.E Nigerian Niger (some of which had a small deck/cabin at the front—also of joined wood)—though of course these were of course much smaller than ocean-going ships)

Joining pieces of wood was widely necessary an common in may regions, (aside for in the types of boats mentioned) as the common styles of house buildings usually required a wooden/timber frame (sometimes underlying adobe of mud/mud brick as in Central/Souther Nigeria and S. Ghana, or in structures largely made of wood or bamboo as in Central Africa.
Some of the structure-types common in the Cameroon grasslands (Bamileke, Bamoum, Bandjoun tribes, etc) of West Central Africa were shown by Phil in the comments of the last post. I linked a collection of images form Ashanti previously (under the last topic).

Some more architecture from that region—down past the first few ancient Nubian images at the top of the forum thread):

http://historum.com/middle-eastern-african-history/58840-diversity-early-african-architecture-ruins-thread-16.html

The agriculture claim is untrue, and was in doubt for a while before his book (except for the agriculture of N, E, Africa, much of the horn, and the Maghreb which did come from the Middle East through Egypt), and Most SS African agriculture does not come from Egypt or the Magreb and is a distinct tradition.

Michael Hart would probably dismiss a lot of the achievements Jm8 mentions because they occurred in the exposed zone which was in contact with Caucasoids from the Muslim and European worlds, but Jm8 seems to be implying that even when the achievements occurred in the exposed zone, they either predated the Caucasoid exposure, or were still somehow independent of it.

But that begs the question, why was the exposed zone of black Africa so much more advanced than the secluded zone, if the exposure to Caucasoid peoples had nothing to do with it?

As for oral epic poetry not existing in the secluded zone, perhaps this depends on how you define “epic”, as Hart cites the Iliad as an example of epic oral poetry.

Given the fact that modern humans evolved in sub-Saharan Africa, and given the fact that even people whose ancestors left Africa some 70,000 years ago (Andaman Islanders) look African, I have long believed that blacks are the oldest human race.  Indeed when word first spread in the late 1980s that all human mitochondrial DNA traced back to Africa, Newsweek portrayed the first modern humans as black.

Thus I was intrigued to learn about a 33,000 year old skeleton from Nazlet Khater, Upper Egypt that “displays Negroid characteristics”.

A landmark study published in the year 2000 concluded:

it is possible that the Nazlet Khater specimen is part of a relict population of this proto-Khoisan Negro stock which extended as far north as Nazlet Khater at least until the late part of the Late Pleistocene.

The black race is extremely ancient.

With Halloween only weeks away, it’s time to start writing scarier articles, though every article is scary when you read some of the folks that populate my comment section 🙂

Speaking of psychos, as a kid not much scared me more than the Psycho movies.  I didn’t even know what they were about but seeing the images in the video stores was enough to keep me up at night.  Not the original Psycho, but the sequels, because after 22 years in the mental hospital, an older, greyer Norman Bates was creepier than ever.

I think my favorite is Psycho III, where some reporter is snooping through Norman’s house, and out of the darkness comes Norman, but dressed up like his mother, saying:  “why don’t you leave my poor son Norman alone?”

What made this scene so powerful is that even though he was dressed and speaking like a little old lady, he had the height and body build of a full-grown man, and that juxtaposition was true horror.  Watch the full scene here:

It’s not a coincidence that a psychotic like Norman Bates chose to dress up like a woman.  Just as Hans Asperger argued that Asperger’s syndrome was an extreme form of the male brain, scientists Crespi and Badcock argue that psychosis is extreme female brain, and one piece of evidence they use is that the psychotic population includes a lot of men who transition into women, while the autistic population includes a lot of women who transition into men.

So if autistic women want to be men, what do autistic men want to be?  Macho men?  Someone should do a study to see if autism is more common among extreme body builders.  Of course that doesn’t fit well with the theory that autism is an extreme form of nerdiness, but perhaps that theory is wrong.

Crespi and Badcock argue that on many different variables, psychotics and autistics are at opposite extremes, with neurotypicals in the middle.  Because this reminded me of J.P. Rushton’s controversial theory that on many different traits, Negroids and Mongoloids are at opposite extremes with Caucasoids in the middle,  I suggested back in 2014 that perhaps Negroids might be more at risk for psychosis and Mongoloids might be more at risk for autism, however Rushton claimed Blacks have the most testosterone and East Asians have the least, which should predict Blacks would be the most autistic,  according to the extreme male brain theory.

I did a google search for photos of different generations posing left to right from oldest to youngest, for the same picture and I was impressed by how perfectly Microsoft’s How Old Do I Look app was able to rank them (yellow age squares were added by app):

Guessing age is one of those intuitive tasks that were once thought to be beyond the capacity of computers, but with the advent of machine learning, artificial intelligence is progressing rapidly.

I’ve said before that there is no better way to learn about late 20th century America than watching old syndicated daytime talk shows.  This episode of Donahue from 1979 is especially educational.  Despite her small brain, her Jewish genetics allows her to hold her own against the big brained Donahue as she argues that altruism is evil, corporate monopolies are caused by government, education should NOT be publicly funded and no woman should ever be president.

A brilliant rational lady,  but her objectivism becomes subjectivism when asked about the Middle East, as ethnic genetic interests heat up.

On pages 54-55 of Daniel Seligman’s book A Question of Intelligence, he reveals Arthur Jensen’s little known interest in India:

In his early years, Jensen was being pulled in still another direction.  While in high school, he developed an enthusiasm for Gandhi and, incredibly found time to produce a book-length manuscript about the Mahatma.  Under Gandhi’s influence,  he also became a vegetarian.  That did not last too long, but Jensen retains an interest in Indian culture and customs–and food.  When he bought a lakeside vacation home several years ago, he put in a second kitchen so he could prepare Indian dishes without getting in his wife’s way.

I asked Jensen what it was about Gandhi that had attracted him.  Was it, for example, the pacifist message?  “No” Jensen said,  “I can’t say I was ever really a pacific.”  (He expected to serve during World War II but ended up with a medical exemption).   Given his determined advocacy of unpopular ideas during much of his life,  the reason he gives for gravitating to Gandhi seems significant.  The main reason:  “Gandhi’s willingness to go wherever his convictions took him.”

From page 76:

…Arthur Jensen once told me a gripping story about a child in India who was denied a formal education because, as a low-caste “untouchable,” he was not allowed to attend the only school in his region.  The child nevertheless managed to learn a lot by spending hours peering through the schoolroom windows,  ultimately,  figuring out what the teacher was explaining at the blackboard.  He learned to read this way,  which enabled him to pursue an education on his own and qualify for the University of Bombay.  Eventually, he became a distinguished Indian lawyer.  It is hard to believe that he would ever have made these heroic efforts to transform his environment without some genetic head start.

Seligman should have asked Jensen what he thought the heritability of IQ in India was during this period.  In the U.S., the WAIS full-scale IQ correlation of identical twins reared apart is about 0.7 by adulthood, suggesting a genotype-phenotype correlation among adopted Americans is an incredible 0.84 (the square root of 0.7)

But these correlations may be spuriously high, because in America, it may not be genes directly raising your scores.  It could be genes causing you to create an environment that raises your scores, so regardless of whether you were raised in a high or low social class, certain genotypes still end up attending university and joining a stimulating occupations that may prepare them for IQ tests.

But in 1930s India, when the caste system so restricted socio-economic mobility that untouchables were prohibited from even entering school, it would have been fascinating to see an IQ study of identical twins reared apart, because you’d have one person confined to a life of unclean labour, and his identical twin raised in an upper caste becoming a doctor.  Only in the most extreme cases, like the anecdote Jensen cited, would an untouchable have become a professional.  Thus, such a study would have given us a more meaningful measure of heritability.

There’s been an incredible amount of IQ testing done in South Africa, with entire schools with thousands of kids being administered the Raven Progressive Matrices.  The broad finding is that on a scale where white Americans average IQ 100 and SD = 15, whites South Africans average IQ 96, Indians average IQ 86, Coloureds average IQ 83, and blacks average IQ 69.  The black mean probably sinks to the mid 60s by adulthood because paper-pencil tests (even those like the Raven) are sensitive to schooling and the racial education gap widens at older ages.

It’s clear that the black South Africans are being held back by horrific environments, since the black descendant of slaves reared in First World countries average a far more impressive IQ 85 (white admixture might have boosted their IQs slightly, but slave class ancestry lowered them, so it cancels out).

To a lesser degree, the Coloureds, Indians, and even Whites also have their IQs suppressed by South Africa’s lack of progress.  We know for example that whites (by definition) average 100 in the First World, and early Indian immigrants to the UK (who were much less selected in those days) averaged IQ 93 by the second generation.

Since both Coloureds and Indians served as a buffer group to shield the white South African elite from the black masses, we can assume they enjoyed similar and roughly equal environments.  So if Indians score 3 points higher than Coloureds in South Africa and if Indians have a genetic IQ of 93, then (assuming the Phenotype = Genotype + Environment model), Coloureds have a genetic IQ of 90.

Genetic IQ of Bushmen

Genetic research tells us that the ancestry of the Coloureds is 25% bushmen, 25% regular black, 25% white, and 25% Indian.  Since the genetic IQs of the last three groups can be estimated to be 85, 100, and 93 respectively, simple math tells us the bushmen must have a genetic IQ of 82 for a genetic average of all four groups to equal IQ 90.

The IQ of Bushmen is important because they are sometimes thought to reflect the earliest stage of our species, having split off from other blacks about 250,000 years ago.

My guess is that the first modern humans who evolved in Africa around 300,000  years ago had an average genetic and phenotypic IQ around 80 (as measured by truly culture reduced tests, not pseudo-culture reduced tests like the Raven).

Out of Africa

Then by 70,000 years or so, average IQ (for non-proto Bushmen) increased to 85 and modern humans were able to leave Africa and migrate to locations as difficult to reach as Australia, which at the time was equivalent to going to the moon.  They were also for the first time smart enough to develop agriculture, as proven by the fact that it was independently developed in Papua New Guinea.

IQ 85 seems to be the cut-off needed to independently create agriculture which explain why Papuan New Guineans were able to invent it, and all black Africans with the exception of Bushmen were able to at least acquire it.

But while IQ 85 is high enough to invent agriculture, it was not high enough to create civilization.  That would take a mean IQ of 93 and such high average IQs would only appear for those humans who took the Northern route out of Africa and thus had their wits sharpened by the last Wurm glaciation.

One question is why didn’t Neanderthals develop agriculture if the ice age so selected for IQ?  The answer is Neanderthals were physically adapted to the cold, having mutated into existence in Eurasia.  By contrast modern humans are an African primate that evolved in Africa where we lived exclusively for most of our history. The ice age thus required enormous behavioral adaptability since unlike Neanderthals, our tall slim black bodies were so maladapted for cold.

Lion of the Blogosphere writes:

The genetically high IQ of Koreans means that North Korea can produce nuclear weapons (which is only a 1950s technology), while countries in Africa are never going to do that. It’s the HBD, stupid.

What a fascinating thing to say!

In my opinion, it’s virtually impossible for a country with a mean genetic IQ below 93 to make nuclear weapons.  Below an average genetic IQ of 93 (white norms),  there are  simply not enough geniuses to figure it out, and what few there are wont have enough smart teachers to guide them.

My guess is all human races can make nuclear weapons except for those who pre-Carleton Coon anthropologists crudely defined as “negroid” (including bushmen, pygmies, and the unrelated australoids).

I think a people’s ancestors needed at least some exposure to the incredible cognitive demands of the last ice age to have the power to either end civilization (nuclear weapons) or create it.

Indeed it was only after humanity had their wits sharpened by the Wurm glaciation that civilization may have been possible because before that ice age, no human race had a mean (genetic) IQ of 93+.

According to quickhistories.com:

In ancient history, six distinct “cradles” of civilisation are usually identified. These are the regions which appear to have developed civilisation independently or semi-independently.

The six cradles of civilisation were: Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, China, Mexico and Peru.

One curiosity is that, with the exception of China, which emerged a little later, each of these societies emerged around 3000 BCE – as if history’s light was suddenly switched on.

As Michael Hart implied for agriculture, I suspect civilization was likely in climates that were in or near the Goldilocks zone:  warm enough to work with, but cold enough to have selected for 93+ IQ.