cadbren wrote:
500 years? Slaves have been taken from south of the Sahara since ancient Egypt first records the practice.
So you know this and you still don't think that it had a effect on development?
While the desert acts as a barrier to mass movement, the caravans across it ensure connectivity. Salt, spices and other materials were major commodities. Certainly there was enough exchange for musical instruments like the sitar to be introduced to the local population where it developed into the early banjo and was taken to the USA by the slaves.
I didn't say they weren't connected at all. Culture develops faster when multiple cultures are in close proximity to each other. It forms a chain effect. The Sahara desert is a void where only a few major cities existed off the coastline. There were trade routes through it evident in the archeological record but it's like comparing marbles to bowling balls. After the fall of the Roman Empire all trade across the Sahara virtually stopped for several centuries until the Moors started it again. It stopped again due to constant conflicts within the Muslim world and went on and off until European colonization began in the 16th century.
The Sahara desert is a massive geographic barrier to cultural diffusion. That's not a statement that there was zero, its a statement that while the Middle East and Europe benefited from a massive trade chain across the Eurasian continent that spread goods and ideas as far away as China, Africa sat relatively isolated in comparison.
You can choose to consider what I have to say as made up if you like. I'm not invested in this enough to want to bother looking up the relevent papers for you to dismiss them as unrepresentative, taken out of context or whatever other prepared explanation you might have. I don't get credits for this, this is entertainment for me as it is for you. I believe what I do and you believe what you do, only time will show who has a better handle on things.
The issue is that the vast majority of studies say the opposite of what you say (anyone who has been to college and taken a sociology class learns this fast, so its not uncommon knowledge). If you don't want to spend your time digging for citations that's fine (I don't bother either) but don't expect people to take you seriously when you make a fringe claim.
