A lively discussion occurred today at the house of a family member. The current racial tension, historical elements that had played into the current cultures and mindsets on all sides, government issues and involvements (or lack thereof in some cases), things that can be changed and things that can't, etc. All of it was fair game and for the most part all of it was respectful.

One of the oldest members there leaned quite heavily on the idea that the African continent had never been "successful", relative to the rest of the world, because of its people. He used Europe as his gold standard and thought whites had an out and out advantage historically. I remained quiet throughout most of this conversation and simply took in the dynamics at play (I love just watching stuff like this and seeing the different elements and personalities play out), but made a mental note to myself to learn more about different historical aspects of why different continents and areas and/or groups of people seemed to have done better over the last 1,000-1,500 years than others. Was it an element of invention (guns, navigation, printing press)? Was it an element of natural resources? Was it cultural? Was it kingdom making (Alexander, Cyrus, Rome) expanding ideas? Was it trade routes? Or was it something else totally?

I've never really thought through or read much about these types of dynamics played out over millennia but today's "old man claims" made me realize that I don't know much about that type of history.

JJMt said:

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And, for an extremely unpopular perspective these days, consider the impact of Christianity on Europe. Christianity gave birth to the scientific revolution, individualism, an environment where republican democracies could take a route, and free market capitalism. In addition, universities, hospitals, widespread medical care, literacy, nationalism, and so many other ideals were unique to Christianized Europe.

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The "why" to some of your points is what I'm searching for. Why would widespread medical care, literacy, and nationalism take route there and not in other areas of the world? Was it some superiority of races (as the old person in our family suggested)? Seems doubtful since the difference in the people from the Black Sea area and the celts was pretty significant. Was there something, or a lack of something, that made sub-Sahara Africa less likely for those things to take hold? Even after colonization some of those areas never really took off like other colonized areas of the world.

And can you expound on how Christianity helped some of those things take route? Without this turning into a R&P board discussion, the early churches discussed in Acts lived more communally than they did with a free market environ. I'm not saying you're wrong but maybe expound a bit on why you said what you did and how Christianity was a driver for this things?

Right? Rome and Greece were rocking along well before Christianity began, much less took hold in Southern Europe. Those kind of items were part of my "kingdom building" references in my first post....not that I have any assumptions they were more of a factor than other things (the Mongolian empire spread some things but failed miserably in others), but they may have helped in some ways with the spread of ideas.

BQ78 said:

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Plentiful resources for sustaining life in Europe versus Africa. When you are struggling to live it is harder to be enlightened.

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Such as? It seems like they have lands for crops, meat to eat, wood/thatch/mud for shelter, water availability in most areas. What were they lacking?

To get at the genetic side, I would look at David Reich's Who we are and How we got Here. Also papers from his lab. Also The Beaker Phenomenon and the Genomic Transformation of Northwest Europe, which is a pretty short academic paper.

Research in this area is still ongoing and methods are rapidly improving. It doesn't say much about whether genetics makes civilization work, but it does show that European genetics have turned over more than once in the last 20,000 years, so it's harder to make a case that European genetics are unique.

Stive said:

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Right? Rome and Greece were rocking along well before Christianity began, much less took hold in Southern Europe. Those kind of items were part of my "kingdom building" references in my first post....not that I have any assumptions they were more of a factor than other things (the Mongolian empire spread some things but failed miserably in others), but they may have helped in some ways with the spread of ideas.

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Another piece of this is that there were large, powerful Sub Saharan African kingdoms. So it's less about explaining why they didn't happen, and more about why civilizations from other parts of the world outpaced them.

But your Christianity argument basically gives zero credit to the advancements that Greece and Rome had already made prior to Christ ever showing up on Earth.

The Asia aspect is a bit more interesting. Some of the greatest historical kingdoms were in Babylon and Persia. There were cities and advancements going on there that were keeping pace with some things in Europe and outpacing in a lot of ways (especially in the dark ages) until the Mongols did there thing. Add China to the "getting wiped out by the Mongols" list as well and set back in a significant way....or at least that's my simple understanding.


The differences between Eurasia and Africa vs North and South America seem to be isolation of the latter. Travel around and across the former continental grouping, the sharing of ideas, concepts, and learning would have been much easier than the ability for the "new world" to have kept up. You're basically asking why the natives in S. America didn't invent the same things as those in Europe? That seems to be asking a lot....for two completely separate entities, that have zero connection to each other, to come up with brand new things. While possible, I'm not sure that's a practical expectation. That's like asking each island in the Pacific why they didn't have the same things, individually, as Rome had at the same time in history.

Who said Africa was never as successful? That's not strictly true. The Mali Empire would like to have a word with everyone who bought into that take.

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Musa's journey was documented by several eyewitnesses along his route, who were in awe of his wealth and extensive procession, and records exist in a variety of sources, including journals, oral accounts, and histories. Musa is known to have visited the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Al-Nasir Muhammad, in July 1324.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#cite_note-Bell224-25][25][/url] Because of his nature of giving, Musa's massive spending and generous donations created a massive ten year gold recession. In the cities of Cairo, Medina, and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal significantly. Prices of goods and wares became greatly inflated. This mistake became apparent to Musa and on his way back from Mecca, he borrowed all of the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#cite_note-Goodwin110-20][20][/url] Some historians[who?] believe the Hajj was less out of religious devotion than to garner international attention to the flourishing state of Mali. The creation of a recession of that magnitude could have been purposeful. After all, Cairo was the leading gold market at the time (where people went to purchase large amounts of gold). In order to relocate these markets to Timbuktu or Gao, Musa would have to first affect Cairo's gold economy. Musa made a major point of showing off his nation's wealth. His goal was to create a ripple and he succeeded greatly in this, so much so that he lands himself and Mali on the Catalan Atlas of 1375. He also receives a visit from now a well-known traveler of the Muslim World, Ibn Battuta.

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We're getting pretty locked into debating one theory right now, and regardless of whether a particular religion played into it, other factors certainly mattered a lot as well.

For example, part of the reason the printing press took off in Europe but not Asia was the Arabic alphabet vs ideographic Chinese alphabet. There were massive hospitals in ?12th? century Islamic Baghdad that were hundreds of years ahead of anything in Europe at the time. There was no bronze age in the US, but there also weren't any accessible sources of tin. Meanwhile there were sophisticated political states and reasonably advanced mathematics and architecture, albeit later than in the Old World. Then again, we can't give Christianity credit for Stonehenge or the Pyramids.

Personally I think there was a point in time where the Catholic church accelerated learning through its administrative and educational apparatuses, the monastery system, and regional insistence on translating the Bible into the local languages. There were some good work habits that were promulgated by some of the Protestant groups. But at the same time, there are a lot of other factors that matter just as much.

JJMt said:

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I don't think so. Science never took root and flowered in either Greece or Rome. Neither Greece nor Rome saw widespread hospitals, universities, health care, or most anything else that we take for granted in an advanced civilization.

Or am I missing your point? What advances by Greece and Rome are you thinking of that I'm not taking into account?

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Greek_inventions_and_discoveries


Tons of stuff we have now are based off of the early math and "discoveries" of the Greeks. While only about half of this list is pre-Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology

Likewise for Rome. Their infrastructure MADE European information easily accessible across their holdings.


I'm not downplaying the aspects of Christianity but to say that because a culture didn't have it they ended up behind seems like you're ignoring a lot of other factors.

One could argue that a lot of the success of Christianity was due to Greek philosophy and Roman world domination.

Greece made a lot of progress in science in a very short time. Same with Romans in engineering. And another thing... the Jews played a pretty significant role in facilitating a lot of the growth of trade, industry, and even states specifically because they weren't restricted by certain Christian rules of the time.

Something as seemingly insignificant as the horse collar had a much larger impact than people realize. According to some historians, the Plague hit a reset button that facilitated faster growth than we would otherwise have experienced.

It's all hopelessly intertwined, that's why it's so fun.

JJMt said:

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Your last par. is confusing and I'm not sure I follow. You seem to be suggesting that I'm suggesting that I'm criticizing the South American cultures for not borrowing from Europe? If so, I'm not suggesting that at all. Rather, I'm asking why South America did not show any development whatsoever. You say it's isolated, but so was Europe from it?

Why did South America stay in the Stone Age? Did it even have a Bronze Age? Why did it never have an iron age? I suggest that the answer is culture. The dominant religious hierarchies in South America oppressed their peoples and did not permit development of any sort.

Look at the impact of the simple act of translating the Bible into the vernacular had on Europe. Within one or two generations, virtually all of Europe was literate for the first time in its history. People had a desire and incentive to read, and the availability of something to read. That translation was due to religious factors, not geographic.

Even the printing press, which allowed the newly translated Bibles to be widely distributed, was due almost entirely to religious factors. The Chinese had invented it at around the same time but never used it much. Gutenberg, on the other hand, developed his for the explicit purpose of printing Bibles and religious literature. In addition, the elites in northern Europe did not crack down on its use, but rather encouraged it, because they shared those some religious values.

We see here in the West the consequences of trying to divorce our society from religious values. In the past, it was not solely the law that caused people to engage in virtuous behavior. Rather, it was a commonly held set of moral beliefs. As we discard those moral beliefs, we enter into an age of insanity, where post-modernism reigns and the decision as to what is acceptable is determined solely by who has the most power.

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Why did Europe advance into the bronze age? It wasn't Christianity (came long after). Why did Europe have an Iron age? It wasn't Christianity (came long after).

The American continents weren't privy to the transport of information due to the moat on both sides when compared to information sharing across Eurasia and down into Africa. When one culture invented something there, it would take a while, but eventually it spread to all corners of those continents. It had a slim to zero chance of getting across the Atlantic during that time thus those periods would have needed to be discovered independently in two separate worlds. While that's not impossible, it seems unlikely.

I'm not suggesting you're criticizing it, I'm simply pointing out the slim possibility of those two separate worlds stumbling upon similar inventions.


But I'm with Ulrich: this has shifted into one theory that while helpful in some ways isn't the only factor....not by a long shot. Otherwise, all of the societal advancements in and around the Mediterranean and in the fertile crescent prior to Christ are completely thrown out.

Scorebook said:

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Who said Africa was never as successful? That's not strictly true. The Mali Empire would like to have a word with everyone who bought into that take.

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Musa's journey was documented by several eyewitnesses along his route, who were in awe of his wealth and extensive procession, and records exist in a variety of sources, including journals, oral accounts, and histories. Musa is known to have visited the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, Al-Nasir Muhammad, in July 1324.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#cite_note-Bell224-25][25][/url] Because of his nature of giving, Musa's massive spending and generous donations created a massive ten year gold recession. In the cities of Cairo, Medina, and Mecca, the sudden influx of gold devalued the metal significantly. Prices of goods and wares became greatly inflated. This mistake became apparent to Musa and on his way back from Mecca, he borrowed all of the gold he could carry from money-lenders in Cairo at high interest. This is the only time recorded in history that one man directly controlled the price of gold in the Mediterranean.[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansa_Musa#cite_note-Goodwin110-20][20][/url] Some historians[who?] believe the Hajj was less out of religious devotion than to garner international attention to the flourishing state of Mali. The creation of a recession of that magnitude could have been purposeful. After all, Cairo was the leading gold market at the time (where people went to purchase large amounts of gold). In order to relocate these markets to Timbuktu or Gao, Musa would have to first affect Cairo's gold economy. Musa made a major point of showing off his nation's wealth. His goal was to create a ripple and he succeeded greatly in this, so much so that he lands himself and Mali on the Catalan Atlas of 1375. He also receives a visit from now a well-known traveler of the Muslim World, Ibn Battuta.

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That's interesting...I'd never read that about that gold manipulation.

Any theories or thoughts on why the development of the southern half of Africa slowed and never happened when compared to the northern parts (Mali, Egypt, Carthage). Or did they and I'm just not aware of them? For example...when reading about the Iron Age, they have specific century windows on when different areas of Eurasia began to work and live with iron....but nothing is revealed about Africa and it seems that those advancements didn't extend into the sub-Saharan continent.

Ulrich said:

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I suspect it's no longer the most popular interpretation, but try Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. Even when people disagree with the conclusions, a lot of arguments on the topic tend to be about whether he was right or wrong, so it's a great place to start either way.

From there, I need to spend some time trying to remember authors' names. There is a more economics-based way of thinking about physical and financial infrastructure, governance and institutions, and geographical capabilities. It's all wildly controversial but I think there are a lot of important ideas there and you need to at least understand the arguments.

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this was the first thing that came to mind for me as well.

Which advancements are you saying "died" still born in those cultures and they did nothing with them?

First, I don't think I've seen any contemporary researcher say that Christianity is a requisite to sustained cultural development. That would be unusual.

Second, if Christianity is the secret sauce, then we have to explain why there was rapid advance for several hundred years leading up to the turn of the millenium followed by 1300 years of relative stagnation in the west after Christianity was founded.

RE: metals in South America, I'll have to defer to the experts, but what I've read is that tin isn't as easily accessible there. Since smelting ore to get/combine metal was discovered essentially by accident, having the ore on the surface is really important. Iron requires higher temperatures that can't be reached without a smelting apparatus, so without bronze it is less likely that a culture will get iron.

And again, all found millennia before Christianity.

JJMt said:

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Science, math, medicine, education - you name it.

There was no culture of science outside of western Europe.

There was no widespread culture of math outside of western Europe.

There were no widespread universities and education for the masses outside of western Europe.

There were no widespread medicine and hospitals outside of western Europe.

Sure, there were a few scientists, a few mathematicians, one or two universities, one or two hospitals outside of western Europe, but nothing on the scale or duration of time as in western Europe. In each example of of such outside western Europe, the example is solitary with no widespread cultural acceptance or spread. And all of those developments in western Europe were done by either the Church (universities and hospitals) or by individuals explicitly in the name of God (scientists and mathematicians).

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With all due respect, you should probably read up on the Babylonians, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians before we go much further (or maybe I'm misunderstanding your premise). All four of the first things you mentioned have strong histories (extensive in some cases) for anywhere from 100's to 1,000+ years before Christ ever showed up. And none of them "died" prior to Christ getting here. They all built on each other over the centuries, different aspects were borrowed from different cultures, etc.

And there were mathematic writings in the Far East 100's of years before Christianity showed up not to mention what was happening in the Middle East before the Mongols.

Like Ulrich said in separate spots: the channels for communication were largely in place to spread Christianity before Christianity arrived. The Greeks and the Romans helped facilitate that in the 400-600 years prior to Christ. Additionally, if Christianity was the conduit for all of this, then the 1,000 year void would definitely need to be justified.

I'm not arguing that the empires didn't die out....Many of the ideas lived on. There's no longer a Greek empire nor is there a Roman Empire...the British empire is a shadow of itself. As all empires have done since the beginning of time, they've faded and died. What has continued, across cultural lines, is learning.

Saying that the Greek contributions to science and mathematics "died" because their empire died simply isn't true. Concepts that they had (before Catholicism/Christianity) were taken up and advanced further by the Romans (still before Christianity) .Concepts that the Egyptians and Persians had were taken up by the Greeks. They laid foundations for certain concepts and learning that are still in use today.


Now that the thread has been hijacked let's get back on topic.



With Western Europe being the advanced culture (prior to Christianity) of the world at the time, why was that? What were the key aspects on why it and the Fertile Crescent had the empires that they had through those centuries and why they didn't expand further down into Africa? Was it as simple as geography? Or were there empires like the one in Mali that weren't as widely known in history?

JJMt said:

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Saying that the Greek contributions to science and mathematics "died" because their empire died simply isn't true.

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Where did I say that?

And didn't your OP ask this?

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One of the oldest members there leaned quite heavily on the idea that the African continent had never been "successful", relative to the rest of the world, because of its people. He used Europe as his gold standard and thought whites had an out and out advantage historically. * * * made a mental note to myself to learn more about different historical aspects of why different continents and areas and/or groups of people seemed to have done better over the last 1,000-1,500 years than others. Was it an element of invention (guns, navigation, printing press)? Was it an element of natural resources? Was it cultural? Was it kingdom making (Alexander, Cyrus, Rome) expanding ideas? Was it trade routes? Or was it something else totally?

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But don't you wonder why those advancements died still-born in those cultures? Those cultures may have invented something, but then did nothing with it.

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And yes...I did ask that. You seem to be giving the lions share of credit to Christianity being what drove western Europe to be what it is. Several of us have pointed out that Western Europe (and many of the inventions/discoveries that were key in advancing it) were already in existence prior to Christianity being in play. None of us are saying it wasn't a factor in the last 1,000 years of cultural impact, but the timeline doesn't support that it was the primary driver for Western Europe. Western Europe had a 400-600 year head start on it.

Literally the first paragraph of the britannica link you posted talks about universities in the ancient world far before Western Europe which counters what you seemed to state about there not being universities until the church sponsored them in Western Europe.

Heck even the oldest, continually operating university had nothing to do with Christianity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatima_al-Fihri?wprov=sfti1

But I realize that doesn't fit your narrative.


Maybe I wasn't clear regarding my 400 year head start. ...the Roman Empire and the Greek empire had a 400 year head start on Christianity....and they had already made significant societal advances.

It's not a series of false starts and resets to zero. It's a progression where each civilization builds upon the knowledge of the ones before it. Without Islam saving the Greek texts, or without the Greeks in the first place, Christianity wouldn't have had nearly as much to draw from in the late middle ages.

Without an Italian secular humanist discovering Lucretius in a monastery, science and thought may have remained stuck in scholasticism for centuries longer. To me that's more the model. It's very pluralistic, but it's hard for me to draw any other conclusion but that the progress of civilization is a patchwork of causes that could have played out a million different ways.

For religion specifically, there have been golden ages under many creeds. Paganism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, and many more.

Narrowing the focus to Christianity, it presided over hundreds of years of stagnation from late Rome to the Renaissance. Good at preserving knowledge, but contributing little that was new. Universities were founded, but they were centers of theology and scholasticism, not progress. Inventions were largely imported. Then there was an explosion of progress. People who were Christian in fact or in name gathered the accumulated knowledge of ~16,000 years of human history and, sometimes against the Church's will, built on it in a 600 year explosion. Opinions differ on the state of Christian cultural hegemony in the West, but science continues to accelerate without much contact with Christianity.

Ask any society at it's peak or shortly after, and it will tell you that it is uniquely suited to progress and point to results that appear to speak for themselves. And then the next one will reach higher heights on a different set of assumptions because it got to start where the last guys left off. Christianity is the religion that was in place during the most recent scientific revolution. That's not the same as proving that it is the most effective cause of cultural and scientific progress.

There's still plenty of room for faith in there, I'm not trying to attack anyone's belief in the facts of their religion. But just because something explains one thing, doesn't mean it explains everything.

And I just realized something...when I state Western Europe, I'm including the Roman Empire that had so much to do with France, England, Spain, etc growing into what they became. If you're not including them in that blanket comment of "Western Europe" then maybe that's where we're talking past each other.

One question is "which religion is best for science".

I think a much more interesting question is "how was Christianity influenced by a developing concept of the world in the West?" Have the cause and the effect gotten mixed up? Did Christianity tell people that the world was knowable, or was it a bunch of hardheaded Italian traders and financiers who decided that it must be so - and the church followed?