jaxvid said:
All that you posted is a selective look at history. Constant warfare is not a cause of arrested advancement. The history of Europe is one war after another. War in fact drives technological advancement.
The dark ages were not so "dark", that is a biased look at history. The article above devolves into another blame whitey game with criticism directed at the Portugese who only were acting like the "Negro kings" of the time and conquering lesser peoples.
Civilizations are constantly rising and falling. Yep. Now for the first time we live in a failing civilization that's not being conquered but surrendering.
Well I'm definitely not the type to blame whitey (lol, white people got this world to where it is, for the most part, and held it together)-- and I faulted the Negro rulers and non-white Moroccans as much as the Portuguese for the initial downfall of Negro Africa--but I won't deny facts. There is no denying the Moroccan invasion triggered the downfall of Songhay (there were other reasons, as I said it could be written into a 1,000 page book) and there's no denying that after the Portuguese arrived in E. Africa the interegional trade almost completely dried up between East Africa, Central Africa and India and entire cities were wiped out when they refused (or couldn't) pay the taxes. Those are just historical facts.
However, I don't look down upon the the Portuguese at all for doing it. People have conquered weaker people throughout history. It is what it is. The East African and Central Africans should have had better armies if they didn't want to get conquered. Guns played a role, but they weren't the end all be all at that time; You didn't see the Portuguese dominating the West Africans or NE Africans because they had large and organized armies with better soldiers than those the Portuguese conquered. The East and Central Africans were very soft, along with the Indians, thus were easily defeated. And like you implied, whenever black kingdoms had the power, they also conquered their weaker neighbors. That's history. The strong march on and the weak get conquered.
And it's really not even a matter of why Africa fell so far behind Europe (because everybody did), but the reasons cited above are why they even fell behind the Middle East and Asia.
Pretty much, in the 1400s, white Europe took the ball and ran in regards to civilization, philosophy, technology and military strength. We blew by everybody. The Middle East and Asia roughly remained the same until Asia began to improve in the late 1800s by adopting some European technology and ideas. Africa, on the other hand, went backwards.
I agree that the term "Dark Ages" is an exaggeration and misnomer, just like the idea of the "Dark Continent" of Africa was exaggerated. However, there is truth to both. Besides Spain, which was ruled by outsiders, Western Europe was far from the glory and technology of the Roman Empire or Ancient Greece. The Byzantine Empire, although still strong, really did not make many significant cultural advancements like the ancient Greeks or Romans (Their biggest contribution was keeping the Arabs out of Europe). The largest library in Christian Europe at the time, for example, was in Paris with only around 300 books, compared to Moorish Spain, which built one with 500,000 books. Even Negro West Africa had larger libraries than Europe. But with the renaissance Europe exploded onto the world stage again and led us to where we are now. And like I said about "Dark Africa," Africa did go backwards. Were they a bunch of hunters and gatherers living in the jungle, running around naked and eating each other? No, less than 1% were likely hunters and gatherers (just like white Europe), but they were nowhere near the technology and power of Nubia, ancient Ethiopia or the West African kingdoms like Mali and Songhay to name a few.
So I stand behind my initial comments. You asked why Africa didn't progress and even fell back. I think the two primary reasons were 1. Guns, 2. Slavery.  &n bsp; ÂÂ
Edited by: Fightingtowin 
