Hmm, I've never been to Kenya. Although I can't imagine it's that different from other African countries, bad economies, crap infrastructure, corrupt governments, you know the rest. :down:

Agreed, everything but the Smithsonian Channel and History International in the science and historical channels svck right now.

I'd say its probably a combination of resource availability, random events, and stuff I haven't thought of.

If you're in the middle of a desert, its hard to find enough trees to build a ship... and there isn't much reason to, anyway. If you're in the middle of a jungle, its difficult to find enough clear space to start cultivating crops, and without a surplus of food its difficult to support artisans, and it does take good tools to clear a decent amount of jungle (circular problem).

Then there's things like vulcanised rubber -- which got 'invented' because some bloke was clumsy (dropped some sulfer and rubber sap on a stove). I imagine there are numerous stories like that throughout history, many of which are probably long forgotten.

Described it perfectly.

Sadly, it wouldn't be far from the truth to blame Europeans (and Arabs) for most of that .

Care to share the name of that? Because, well, searching "immortal Neanderthal" yields links to people asking "Did neanderthals have immortal souls?," and I don't think that's what I'm looking for.

If you're referring to the colonies, then I'm afraid that excuse is far from the truth and overused. The reason as to why they're in the state they are now is simple, it's their own fault.

Maybe, but you can't blame Europeans for most of it.

WTF? The chinese were drilling for gas, and had massive industry producing salt while europeans were agog over their technological invention: the chamber pot.
Salt was so productive it built an empire for the chinese.

It's a little bit of both, I think... it's not like you can say the Scramble for Africa was exactly a good thing, and giving warlords money for slaves during the hundreds of years prior didn't help matters.

Yeah, I dun knows histry much :hehe:.

I do know that current political situations are the result of decades of independent screwing up, but I figured that having someone show up and form and empire/introduce the concept of an empire to a tribal society -along with a jump in weapons technology- would've been a bit of a spanner to whatever stability they had at the time :shrug:.

EDIT: Plus, a good way of maintaining one's empire is to manipulate the locals into having more antipathy towards each other than they do towards you. I don't know how much that was used, though.
EDIT2: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Colonial_Africa_1914_map.png showing how Africa was divided up in 1914.

If any of us were genetically pure we probably would still be eating dirt and hitting each other with clubs. Thank heavens for the biodiversity and mutation that's allowed us to evolve to eating fast food and suing each other.

Wasn't there a recent finding that humans probably originated in Asia and then moved east?

:shrug: The only relevance to digging that far back in history is, in my opinion, to see if the gene sequences can be useful (such as for treating diseases). Otherwise, it's all a very nice story, but has little practical usage...

Eh, it was time for an update anyway.

--V--

Nah, if any of us were genetically pure, they'd still be cellular . I mean, when our ability to breath oxygen comes from another organism, and being able to grow babies inside without the mother's autoimmune system reacting comes from a virus, I don't think anything can be said about genetic purity without it being laughable.

That wouldn't have served my (awful) joke, though. Way to take things to their logical conclusion there, buddy.

The4y had guns and mines long before us, im suprised they didnt take over the world tbh, they were far ahead.


Yeah its crap like 2012 now Or some other doomsday or aliens.


I disagree, it was probablly messed up before the Romans went there (most places were) and later on the whole slavery thing, they sold slaves to us, yet its always the europeans who get flak. Sorry but I dont think you can blame it on others.

I have reservations about believing something that suddenly pops up, there are alot of ways that evidence for something can be gathered to disprove a previous theory but ultimatly its always inebitable that some time in the future that theory will be disproved to.

either way, its irrelevent and isn't productive.

Hooray for useless informations :derp:

Hey, you get your joke, I get mine, everybody wins! (Except everyone reading this thread)

:P

How do fire werk?

When the spirits of nature hunt, their spears strike the earth.

Wait didn't humans start in Africa (so that makes ALL humans African)?

Geographically yes. But I think this was established before this research came about..

Ask a scientist, I'm sure they could tell you, and tell you how magnets work.

I thought this was all common knowledge. :shrug: