sage:

You didnt answer the question

When Europeans were backwards and behind Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, where they inherently less intelligent than people from those places?

bgees:

It depends on how u define intelligence.

gadogado:

The point Im making is, collectively as a group, Africans constitute the least intelligent people on the globe. In contrast, Africans are some of the best athletes in the world. There are obviously going to be exceptions to the rule (putting a Nigerian student in a class with Japs and Brits) but this does not in anyway negate the fact that we are naturally disorganized which in my opinion is a component of lack of intelligence. We also lack other components of intelligence such as foresight.

Nigeria started at the same level with Asian countries, as far as economic indicators but because they're more intelligent, they have grown to supersede. Look, the examples of Africas lack of brain power is evident, you see it daily. So why deny it?

tpiah:


being emotional isnt a measure of intelligence anymore than being unemotional indicates a lack of cognition.

measuring intelligence by emotional yardsticks leads nowhere.

africans are more in tune with their emotions, true.

in no way does that indicate a lack of intelligence.

and i repeat- ignorant people are found in every society, and africa does not have a higher number of such.

ola olabiy:

the question is:
when was the time sub-saharan africans were ahead of any other race?
good you knw that north africans were better at a stage. and asians too.
but, what about blacks? when? or is this due to some inherent factors?

gadogado:

Sure, you can teach an African something and he'll be good at it, you can train an animal in something and it'll be good at it but the question is, was the african able to teach himself? thats the question, coming up with your own stuff that reeks of intellectual ability like inventing a car for example. SO far, on this whole thread, people have been able to come up with bronze casting as peak african invention and they have latched to the glory of egypt. Now bring you bronze cast anyday and share a display table of inventions with a European, I'd assume you'd come out thoroughly embarrassed.

sage:

Europeans were also behind for thousands of years. Was it an inherent factor?


Just because a place is backwards and behind other places at a point in time does not mean that the people are less intelligent or that with a change in circumstances that they would not do well


Europeans are living proof of that

ola olabiy:

the question is:
when was the time sub-saharan africans were ahead of any other race?
good you knw that north africans were better at a stage. and asians too.
but, what about blacks? when? or is this due to some inherent factors?

bgees:

There was never a time like that. I also want to believe that all across Europe to Asia, these people learnt from each other through repeated contacts they might gave had. Sub-Saharan Africa must have been isolated .

yes it could be due to some psychological factors. Some people argue that all races have different philosophies.

bgees:

There was never a time like that.  I also want to believe that all across Europe to Asia, these people learnt from each other through repeated contacts they might gave had. Sub-Saharan Africa must have been isolated .

yes it could be due to some psychological factors. Some people argue that all races have different philosophies.

ola olabiy:

you are right.
but, would you say we match others too when it comes to the no of geniuses?

tpiah:

yes.

you're confusing lack of emotion with genius.

sage:

You didnt answer the question

When Europeans were backwards and behind Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, where they inherently less intelligent than people from those places?

Katsumoto:

Guys, this has been an intelligent debate so far; there is no need for insults.

gadogado:

Simple! Europeans fell from glory so in comparison to their initial attainment of enlightenment, they became ignorant, thats comparing the two stages in their history. Africa never had the attainment of enlightenment at no point in time, so nothing to lean a comparison against. Its one thing to rise and fall and in their case rise again unlike the Mongols who only had a rise and fall. But to never ever rise in the history of humanity is something quite different. What has subsaharan Africa ever contributed to the advancement of humanity??

ikenwan:

Forgive me if I disagree with you. Mr Drommerl here openly declarede himself as a Shuwa Arab then proceeded to denigrate the entire African race in the face of their European "superiors." His goal was not to incite any meaningful discussion. Had it been, he would not have dodged questions. His goal was to troll and while at it, give himself a pat on the back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

White Northern Africans(Berbers) didnt even have a written language while darker skinned Africans in East Africa did but he is somehow making a phony genetic/skin colour argument

ola olabiy:

you don't need to be ladened with emotion to showcase geeky instincts.
or, do i need enlightenement here.

Punt



The majority opinion places Punt in Eastern Africa, based on the fact that the products of Punt (as depicted in the Hatshepsut illustrations) were abundantly found in East Africa but were less common or sometimes absent in Arabia. These products included gold, aromatic resins such as myrrh, ebony and elephant tusks. The wild animals depicted in Punt include giraffes, baboons, hippopotami and leopards. Says Richard Pankhurst : “[Punt] has been identified with territory on both the Arabian and African coasts. Consideration of the articles which the Egyptians obtained from Punt, notably gold and ivory, suggests, however, that these were primarily of African origin. … This leads us to suppose that the term Punt probably applied more to African than Arabian territory.”

tpiah:

and do you need to be geeky before you can be intelligent?

yes, you need enlightenment.

bgees:

Having a sense of organization and intelligence are two different things. I agree we lack the first as seen in the Africa's development today.

gadogado:

WRONG, having a sense of organization is a form of intelligence because organization suggests rationality, i suspect you're looking at organization or the way i used it with a simplistic lens. organized behavior includes being able to plan ahead among many other things

the question is:
when was the time sub-saharan africans were ahead of any other race?
good you knw that north africans were better at a stage. and asians too.
but, what about blacks? when? or is this due to some inherent factors?

gadogado:

Simple! Europeans fell from glory so in comparison to their initial attainment of enlightenment, they became ignorant, thats comparing the two stages in their history. Africa never had the attainment of enlightenment at no point in time, so nothing to lean a comparison against. Its one thing to rise and fall and in their case rise again unlike the Mongols who only had a rise and fall. But to never ever rise in the history of humanity is something quite different. What has subsaharan Africa ever contributed to the advancement of humanity??

gadogado:

WRONG, having a sense of organization is a form of intelligence because organization suggests rationality, i suspect you're looking at organization or the way i used it with a simplistic lens. organized behavior includes being able to plan ahead among many other things

ChinenyeN:

On the issue of writing and scripts. . . I hope you all realize how amazing the invention of writing really is. Looking through all of human history, writing systems are thought to have been independently developed in only a handful of places. Everything else (for example, this Latin script) we are witnessing now, is simply as a result of cultural diffusion from select societies, and from that diffusion, those writing & pre-writing ideas 'evolved' (had other small ideas added on). Without that diffusion, English would not have a script, which it learned from the Romans, who in turned learned and 'evolved' their from the Greeks, who in turn learned and 'evolved' theirs from the Phoenicians, who in turn learned and 'evolved' their from their dealings with Egypt and Sumer. Had these early ideas not diffused, we would not be witnessing writing, as we are in this day. In fact, without the diffusion, much of the world would still be considered illiterate, and some societies would be on the verge of literacy, while only a select few isolated societies would have knowledge of actual writing.

Now, scripts were developed (or just to be safe, in development) in pre-colonial Africa. Nsibidi is one that I know of, and I've heard of others. The question now is why those scripts did not develop like writing systems found in Europe, Mesopotamia, and Asia, and the answer to that takes us back to the first thing I stated in this topic; diffusion. Don't get me wrong, those pre-colonial African scripts were actually developing. They were just developing rather slowly, due to the nature of sub-Saharan geography, which presented logistic problems for cultural diffusion (again, a great many societies lived in relative isolation). So, cultural diffusion occurred at a rather slow rate. This slow rate of cultural diffusion directly correlates with the slow rate of societal/technological advancement. So it isn't to say that sub-Sahara Africa would have never developed any of the societal/technological advancements we see coming from Europe or Asia. Sub-Sahara Africa certainly would have, but at a much slower pace.

As for Ethiopia, it has its relations with southern Arabia to thank for the development of its own script. In fact, I've noticed that societies at the upper edge of sub-Sahara (the Hausa, Ethiopia, Sudanese, etc.) all have their relations with southern Arabia to thank for the development of their scripts. Further south though, where more and more groups lived in relative isolation, writing is not as widespread, and even where there is evidence of writing, there is a clear lack of European or Arabic influence (as in, sub-Saharan societies actually invented writing, independently). Now, I don't know about anyone else, but if one actually want to use the development of writing as a means to justify intelligence (or lack there of), then I would say that sub-Saharan societies truly did exhibit marked evidence of intelligence, by independently inventing their own scripts, as opposed to many other societies in Europe and Mesopotamia, who only did nothing more than copy and 'evolved' theirs from a select few societies.

Again, sub-Sahara Africans do not have a problem of 'lack of intelligence capacity', or 'sub-par intelligence levels'.