ancient civilisations and empires in history

let's list 'em.
off the top of my head, there's ancient greece (philosophy! sculpture! tragedy!), rome (gladiators), the byzantine empire/constantinople (mosaics, awesome architecture), ancient india (uh.. elephants?), ancient egypt (pyramids and papyrus!) .. ancient china (vases, funny hats and robes), feudal japan (ninjas)

am I missing any? add please.

>>80
Empires usually have their own form of written language and leave archaeology behind.

>>80
lol wut i hav an empire too right in my own backyard.

>>80
I took a shit on the ground once, was that an empire too?

>>57

>>32-35

What's with this "sata andagi" spam anyway? Is it Okinawan for "get your viagra here" or something?

>>73

By "people" I'm going to assume you mean "scientists". And the reason scientists keep saying that the human race(s) haven't changed since leaving Africa is because on a strictly genetic and empirical level: They haven't.

>>78

Perception is not reality. While, to the common-minded it would appear that the Japanese had a long hard look in the mirror and decided that it was inferior and need to "improve", but the actual fact of the matter is that Japanese consider themselves superior and ALWAYS have.

Subhara Africa and Ancient Africa had empires and civilization and were very capable of modern thinking. What you fucking delusional morons refuse to admit is that civilization or modern think would have never even occurs to those who left Africa if that mode of thinking wasn't already INNATE. Understand and Learn: We have not chaned one iota genetically since the human races' exodus from Africa. From a completel biological stand point: Skin color has ZERO correlation or causatation to intellect or "modern thinking" or "the ability to create civilization."

 

>>86
Humans have not seperated into differenet sub-species, but they were well on the way before the white race discoverred how to travel the globe. The Nile, Himalayas, Asian steppes and Bering strait have kept negroes, caucasians and mongoloids seperate for generations with little mixing. Recent advances in genetic science have proven the magnitude of the distinction between the races. In the bottle necks there are mixed races, but the vast majority of the world's population fit into the Negro, Caucasian, Mongoloid and native american categories.

Due to the domination of Africa by white males, the vast majority of sub-saharran Africans and blacks have at least one recent white ancestor. The black race has effectively ceased to exist or at least been reduced to the same satus as eskimos and australian aborignes. This is important for black people to remember.

"Africa had empires, dude...  Fukken EMPIRES.   You can't tell me they're inferior when they had fukken EMPIRES. The Mali Empire, Oba of Benin, the Kanem-Bornu Empire, the Fulani Empire, the Dahomey, Oyo, Aro confederacy, the Ashanti Empire, and the Songhay.  How many empires did europe have?  Like, three?  Fuuuuck, bitches!"

First let's define Kingdoms, Confederacies, and Empires, because they are not the same thing.

Kingdom: A politically organized community or major territorial unit having a monarchical form of government headed by a male monarch of a major territorial unit; especially one whose position is hereditary and who rules for life or is a paramount chief.

Empire: major political unit having a territory of great extent or a number of territories or peoples under a single sovereign authority; especially : one having an emperor as chief of state.

Confederacy: the body formed by persons, states, or nations united by a league (not an emperor or king, and thus neither a kingdom nor an empire.)

I actually learned a lot about African history by reading the Wikipedia articles I looked about the "empires" you spoke of.
Here's what happened to those empires and I'll even list the ones that aren't empires at all.

Mali Empire: Richest empire in all of Africa. Eventually conquered by the African Muslim group the Songhai.

Oba of Benin: A person not a kingdom. "Kingdom of Benin" however, was an empire and was eventually destroy by the British.

Kanem-Bornu Empire: Pretty much Chad and small bits of other African countries. Declined due to poor administration and attacks from the Fulani, eventually conquered by the Sudanese.

Fulani Empire: One of the most powerful African states in the continent, later colonized by the British.

Dahomey: KINGDOM: NOT AN EMPIRE. Now the Nation of Benin. At one point one of the largest slave exporting nations in all of Africa. (An African King enslaving other Africans, just thought I'd point that out before the "white man keeping down the black man bandwagon" starts rolling. At one point colonized by France and later granted independence.

Oyo: NOT AN EMPIRE, NOT EVEN A KINGDOM. A city in modern day Nigeria, the birthplace of the Mali Empire, I believe (don't quote me on that part about Mali).

Aro Confederacy: NOT AN EMPIRE: I think the name says it all. It was a kingdom comprised of city states. Also a large slave exporting area. Again black people enslave black people, do not hop on the "evil white man bandwagon".

Ashanti Empire: Wikipedia only found Ashanti Confederacy, therefore also: NOT AN EMPIRE. It was a kindom lasting from about 1400-1600 and was later colonized by Britain.

Songhai: An ETHNIC GROUP in Africa, particularly Muslims. Also NOT AN EMPIRE. But they were the people that destroyed the Mali Empire in its decline.

As for European Empires we have: France, England, Spain, Portugal, which makes 4. After I discerned which things you listed were actually empires, Africa also had 4. All of which were later colonized by Britain or France. Yes, that's right, France coquered someone. To your credit, these empires had a lot of great successes on their own, but compared with those of Europe, did not contribute anything to western civilization, and were later colonized by the peasly four empires that Europe had. In that repsect, I can see why people call the African Empires inferior. Thanks for giving me a chance to learn something of Africa, though.

>>88
you forgot the empires of the ancient and middle ages. Romans, Hellenic, Holy Roman, Byzantine

>>87
>>89

First of all: The white race didn't discover how to travel the globe first. You should know better than this. Human reaserch indicates the first travelers of the world were African, African Arabs and then the Chinese. (IN THAT ORDER)

Second of all: You don't get to define civilization or modern thinking. These are defined by the dictionary and generally by those who have a higher education and more of an advance intellect than you. So, by that definition Sub-Sahara Africa did have civilization and were exetremely capable of modern thinking. Your refusal to acknowledge the fact that the human race has not genetically changed when it comes to intellect (therefore acknowledging the ability of Subsaharans to "think modern").

>>90

(cont...)

Your refusal to acknowledge the fact that the human race has not genetically changed when it comes to intellect (therefore acknowledging the ability of Subsaharans to "think modern") basically hinges on downplaying everything Africa has done and resetting the goaline everytime SubSaharan Africa supasses what little knowledge you have of the subject. You are simply IGNORANT.

ffs is this the race thread all over again?

>>87
Ever heard of race? There's not really sub-species that's called race. Same species, but little bit genetically different. We are humans as species and we have countless of different known races nowadays.

>>93

Yeah, yeah, yeah...give it a rest already. You keep saying shit that runs alien to what the science of the matter clearly states: Mankind has not changed genetically, what so ever, since the exodus from Sub-Sahara Africa.

>>90
haha you fucking retard, european ships were the first to circumnavigate the world and travel across massive oceans, shipping millions of your race across the atlantic

AUSTRALIA IS WHITE FOR FUCK'S SAKE

stop being a retard

>>94
BS, we've clearly evolved, skull shape is different, athletic abilities are different (negroes are good runners, caucasians are good weightlifters, mongoloids are good gymnasts), forensic scientists can tell the age, gender and RACE or a person from their tibia or pelvis. There are proven genetic differences. For the 65000 years and at least 20000 generations since Humans left africa to ice age europe and the rest of the world we must have evolved.

>>96

Stop saying shit that isn't true and start backing it up with hard genetic evidence. I know what's been said. But words and the actual truth are two seperate things. There's no religion about it. The science of the matter says that we haven't. Therefore, until there's peer reviewed reasearch saying otherwise, you're completely full of shit. Give up...on life.

>>95

Ok, then go ahead and prove that. Because I've actually studied history and signs point to other races that traveled the globe before "whites".

>>97
1.read up on IQ based on race.
2.humans did change, just like dogs. same species, different breeds.
3.if these other races did "travel the globe", then they must somehow managed to hide the evidence that they did. it was the Colonian Europeans that influnced the modern world more than any other race did, without them i doubt you'd be here having these "modern thoughts".

p.s. i'm not white, but at least i can LEARN TO ACCEPT FACTS.

>>98
continue on >>98, if your arguments is truly based on facts instead of more political correctness, proof it instead of resulting to insults and more bs.

>>97
Why people have different shapes, eyes, sizes, skin color etc. Isn't it a clearly genetic difference? I don't say that we have evolved or race is related to intelligence, but there are certainly different races in human species.

>>98

1. I did. It's hogwash from the basic premise. How can you base IQ on race and claim it's genetic when IQ tests only test people based on environmental factors of intelligence? Invent a genetic IQ test and maybe I'll start to take the race/IQ correlation, seriously.

2. You clearly don't understand the human genome.

3. History is a shroud. And very often, dependant on the dominating culture of the time. I've seen evidence that is contrary to what alot of european books say, and due to empirical nature of the evidence I've seen...I am supsicious of people or repeat what they read from their home countries textbooks. Perception isn't always reality and it definately isn't always the truth.

P.S - I don't care if you're white. Do as >>99 instructs.

So a few differences in skin and eyes is suddenly evidence of some great change in genetics? Then how can gorillas in one single forest have greater genetic difference than the entire human species? And look damnably alike?

>>96
"65000 years and at least 20000 generations"
Wow, that makes one generation just under three and a half years. Imagine that, a three-year-old human giving birth!

At least get your numbers straight, will you?

>>102
Are you claiming that those traits aren't genetic then? Remember that those gorillas in one forest might be of different races too. Race is universal to animal kingdom and occurs in every species. I'm not claiming that there are lesser or greater human races. I'm not racist, nor I'm the uninformed guy who claims that white race developed modern thinking. I'm just saying that there different races in human species, but by no means it means that should mean we should treat some races different than others.

Skin tone is skin deep. So is hair color. And eye color.
One word: cosmetic.

That goes for that skull shape thing too; the eyes didn't suddenly swap places with the mouth or something, did it? The same things are in the same places, just with some extremely minor changes largely due to cultural preferances.

Remember, it's been some 2500 generations since that Out Of Africa thing, both for us and the folks back in Africa. The change this has done to us is basically cosmetic. At least I assume that's what those previous posters mean with nothing whatsoever having changed.


Oh, and if anyone's had some 25k+ generations, that'll be those gorillas. And they've been largely stationary. We've gone from endangered (read: genetically largely identical) to global in way less.

>>101
First off, >>98 and >>99 is the same person.

IQ based on genetics is a controversial subject and thus is subject to much debate, but the fact that after, to quote >>104, "2500 generations since that Out Of Arica thing" these certain races are still living in primitive societies or in poverty and in third world countries would make anyone speculate their intelligence.

Unlike >>103, I am claiming that there are lesser and greater human races, not based upon genetics(I'll leave it to the experts to decide, and no i don't mean you, anonymous.) but based upon the current situation of these races, socially, politically and economically. I am an asian, but it is no doubt that Europeans left the most influnce in the modern world thus historically i consider them the "winners". Of course, whichever race that dominates the different aspects of social/political/etc and influences the future world would be the greater race in my book. However, I still believe in equality and fair treatment among humans, regardless of race and ethinicity.

>>104
i am >>105, forgot to add. does the average asian guy's short height and small penises count as cosmetic as well?

>>105
Ofcourse Indo-Europeans(aka Aryans) and Anglo-Saxons are winners, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that their racially superior. Culturally and technologically they are "superior" however.

>>98
Hey now, the asians weren't all that far behind whitey.  If they had had the urge (now that was cultural, I'll give you that) to go out sailing and shit, they would have been the horrible oppressors that whitey is made out to be.

>>98
Hey now, the asians weren't all that far behind whitey.  If they had had the urge (now that was cultural, I'll give you that) to go out sailing and shit, they would have been the horrible oppressors that whitey is made out to be.

>>109

What so hard for alot of whites (or whoever!) to grasp is that whites aren't labelled opressors for "winning" in history. They're labelled opressors for ACTUALLY OPRESSING PEOPLE. There's a difference.

>>110
we grasp it. i am the descendent of some of the worst people ever. english, german, irish, spanish. my ancestors kicked your ancesters ass. what a lot of us get mad about is that we are still paying for what they did today, which we ourselves had nothing to do with. rich ass native americans is a prime example. come on, you, your dad, your grandad, and your great grandad never witnessed us take over the US, let it go. Latin America has done it nicely, they dont call themselves native american, they call themselves american. its about time we did too instead of this retarded PC bullshit.

>>110
I'm the whitest cracker I know, and I never oppressed anyone.

I suppose the chinese emperors were busy oppressing their own people to go out and oppress foreigners.

>>111
>>112

No one is blaming you specifically. Anyone who seeks respite merely because you are white is simply confused. What is still damaging to us- is white privalege. If you truly grasp >>110 then you should be able to acknowledge that there are privaleges to being white. That's what we seek to dismantle. If you truly wish to not be lumped in with your forefather,then you'd join us.

>>113

You suppose right.

>>105 et al
"these certain races are still living in primitive societies or in poverty and in third world countries"

That's actually not intelligence, that's resources. No, not gold or silver or any of that junk (in this case), there's at least 4 (off the top of my head) things a growing empire needs:


1: Crop plants
By that I mean something that can be cultivated on a large scale, to feed huge cities (10k+ might not sound like much now, but we're talking stone and bronze age tech). I'm not aware of all that many such plants coming out of, say, Sub-Saharan Africa.

Remember, civs have perished for ignoring this one. Yes, really!


2: Livestock and pack animals
Once again, I'm not aware of all that many usable animals from SSA. Water buffalos and zebras are too temperamental (cows and horses are zombies by comparison. They're also imported).

Livestock is needed for meat, leather, fur, wool, etc.

Pack animals and riding animals are needed for at least two things: military and trade. Anyone who's seen too many movies like Arthur will see the need for cavalry, but let's not underestimate the need for trade.

Example: The Ghana Empire (that the current Republic of Ghana took their name after) started as a small(ish) kingdom, and didn't really take off until Arabs brought camels and camel caravans. Suddenly they could export salt (expensive in those days), gold, ivory etc, over long enough distances and in big enough amounts to grow big and get rich (enough to attract Almovarid invaders).


3: Building materials
Seriously, a single-story mud hut can only house so many people, you can only administer so much from one. Also, there's stuff like waterproofing the roof.

The very least you can do with a huge building with a smooth surface, is to duly impress subjects and visitors. Then there's housing the bureaucracy an empire will inevitably need, not to mention how much more people you can put into an area with multi-story buildings than one with mud huts and tents.


4: No parasites
Didn't see that one coming, did you?

I'm talking about stuff like mosquitos (malaria) and tsetse flies (sleeping sickness). Tropical areas, especially moist ones like rivers and swamps, are crawling with the stuff. More than just itch for a few days, they can kill both you and the horse you rode in on. Literally.


I sair "at least" and "off the top of my head". That means, by definition, that there's bound to be more. Like, say, the advantage of the main land mass being oriented east-west (like Eurasia) rather than north-south (like America and Africa), as technology, livestock etc will be equally available over a larger area once they pop up in one spot. (hint: try putting up an igloo in Nevada...) (hint2: the horse was tamed in central Asia first. Suddenly "everyone" in Eurasia rode horses.)

>>115

Wow. Who are you and where were you in the race thread?

>>116
I was moving to a new house and looking for a new internet connection. When I finally got back, this thread had popped up and gone to shit in my absence. In short, time to quit lurking (for a while)...

>>115
All non-black civilisations in similiar environments have been succesful. Even those that were at a technological disadvantage, discoverred their own crops, domesticated their own animals and created their own large scale government systems.

Black "civilisations" would have certainly been exposed to plain's crops and domesticated animals from the arabs since the time of ancient egypt. For a brief period when Egypt was being attacked by the Persians, the negroes enslaved by the Egyptian rose up and went north up the nile and set up the last dynasty of Egypt (blacks destroyed the Egyptian empire's status as an independant superpower). For a brief period during the fall of Roman power on the Nile the Aksum Kingdom arose, however this only lastd a few hundred years until the jihad saw arab dominance over modern day Sudan to this day.

This proves without a shadow of a doubt that civilisation was possible in Africa's tropical climate.

>>115
We must admit that our race is inferior and support eugenics.

>>118
"All non-black civilisations in similiar environments"
And those are?

"Similar environments" would be one where
- what crop plants there are, barely sustain a small village grown in a field where, say, wheat would give a certain surplus (like, say, enough to trade with neigbours, or store for next year, so at least someone can have time to think out better tech and stuff). And potatoes even more so.
- all nearby "domesticatable" animals are the likes of zebras (makes horses look loke zombies), water buffalos (even worse) and elephants. And before you say "India", remember they (and others who domesticated elephants) had tamed other, smaller animals first and knew it could be done, and how to deal with large animals in general. (And I've yet to hear of anyone that breeds elephants; they capture a very young, feral one and break it like a horse). There's that expression about running before you can walk.
- mosquitoes and tsetse flies aren't even the worst parasites around, just the ones with the rep to go with it.


"the negroes enslaved by the Egyptian"
Are you accusing the Egyptians of being white? Then look at the map again; Egypt's in Africa. Also, the first foreigners ever to invade Egypt were the Hyksos, in the mid-2nd millenium BC. By then Dynastic Egypt alone was almost two millenia old. And don't let the skin tone of current egyptians fool you; those are Arabs.

And this isn't even a unique phenomenon. The current population of Asia Minor was Greek, until Turks invaded over half a millenium ago. Constantinople was last to fall in 1453; we now know it as İstanbul (the initial upper-case "i" is actually dotted, for grammatical reasons).

Oh, and that pale, burger-chomping fatso being "real American"? Don't make me laugh! (As for Black Americans, they even say so themselves; they're the ones insisting on the term "African-American". To me, though, they've spent too long in Yankeeland for there to be all that much "African" about them.)

Also, it's not like there haven't been civs in Africa. Egyptians, for one, were just as black as the nubians, whose civ btw is as old as Egypt itself.


>>119
Whatever race you're talking about, the answer's the same: Baaaah!
Problem is, when OP asked about ancient empires, some shit-for-brains racist phucca started pretending African empires somehow, magically, didn't exist just cos we invaded them and not vice versa.