Comments by "Angry Kittens" (@AngryKittens) on "Extra History"
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@adamblakeslee5301 Not quite. Let me illustrate. Madagascar, a massive island right next to the African mainland, the cradle of the human species. Humans have lived on the East African coast for literally hundreds of thousands of years. You know who colonized Madagascar first? Austronesians. All the way from Borneo. At around 0-500 AD. East Africans never invented seaworthy vessels until Austronesians arrived and introduced the outrigger canoe with a crab claw sail.
Or another one: the Australo-Melanesian migration. The first human wave out of Africa. Leaving Africa at around 100,000-70,000 years ago. Before any other humans. They were an exclusively coastal migration, following the southern shores of Arabia, India, Indochina, Island Southeast Asia, and finally New Guinea and Australia. Yet they did this without any advanced boats. The sea levels were low enough during the glacial periods that they could walk literally to what are now islands, with a short hop (possibly by raft, possibly accidental) between what is now Borneo/Sulawesi/Timor to the continent of Sahul (New Guinea/Australia). When the sea levels rose again by the end of the last glacial period around 12,000 years ago, they were stuck in the islands they were in. They never even colonized Island Melanesia until Austronesians arrived and assimilated most smaller groups and diffused boat-building technologies to coastal Papuans.
Or let's go bigger. China. One of the earliest to establish a civilization. Their ancestors were an inland people around the Wei and Huang He Rivers in Northern China. During the Han Dynasty (c.200 BC-200 AD), they spread southwards, invading the former homelands of modern Southeast Asians (whom they called the "Baiyue", including pre-Austronesians and Austronesians) in southern China. Until they reached the shores of the South China Sea. Then they stopped.
They built massive coast-hugging and river barges, they had writing, stone palaces, the Great Wall, various inventions, etc. Yet they didn't have seaworthy boats capable of crossing open seas. So they expanded no further. You know when they started building boats? 900 AD, during the Song dynasty. And they did it by copying the massive trading jongs of Srivijaya, an Austronesian civilization. Then they were conquered by Mongols who tried to use those new ships to invade Japan, Java, and Champa (southern Vietnam). And failed miserably.
Then came Zheng He, whom history books today erroneously credit as being the first East Asian to voyage as far as Africa (including this channel) using fanciful ships with physically impossible gargantuan dimensions (only a landlubber would think big ships = better ships). Which is hilarious considering the route he was using was a sea highway - the "Maritime Silk Road". It was established around 1500 BC by Austronesians who started trading with India and China, which expanded out to the Red Sea later on when Arab, Persian, and Indian traders started using the same route.
China didn't invade the nearest island to them, Taiwan, until after the Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch had already invaded the island in the 1500s. Hainan doesn't count, since you do not need to cross open seas to reach that.
The point being: river and lake ships were common as mud, but seaworthy ships in the stone age were a rarity. And I think were independently invented by only two cultures: the Austronesians, and the Phoenicians. Everything else were derivatives of those first ships. And bear in mind, Phoenicians, in contrast to Austronesians, sailed the relatively protected Mediterranean, not actual oceans.
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@ulisesdimopulos4376 What technological gap? The native Filipinos when Magellan arrived had metal weapons. Those "bamboo spears" (bangkaw - actually fire-hardened rattan) had metal tips. They had iron swords (he was killed by a kampilan - look it up). The native warships (which were faster and more maneuverable than Spanish galleons) have cannons (lantaka). Everyone had immunity to most European diseases. Southeast Asia during this period had been trading with India, China, Japan, Persia, and Arabia/Egypt for more or less 3,000 years. The Philippines is in the OLD WORLD. This is not the Americas, where people had no immunity to Old World diseases, no metal weapons, no ships, no contact with other ethnicities and cultures. The Spanish conquered the Philippines not by force, but by pitting natives with each other. They first gathered allies, showered them with gifts, converted them, then used those allies to subjugate the nearest settlements, and so on and so forth.
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Klaidi Rubiku LOL. Let me ask you a simple question. When did Europe become technologically superior? Did they invent planes, phones, trains, and cars, and thus easily conquered other cultures?
Nope. They became technologically superior after the colonial era
Europe before the age of exploration wasn't a bastion of science and knowledge. They were roughly at the same level as multiple other cultures. They only achieved technological dominance and kickstarted the modern era due to the accumulated wealth, resources, knowledge, and acquired technologies because of the colonial era.
They also had the advantage of being built on an earlier culture that did the same on a lesser scale - the Roman Empire, which itself accumulated new technologies through trade and conquest of numerous other regions.
Europeans did not invent the wheel, or writing. They didn't invent gunpowder, ships, iron/steel metallurgy. They were not the first to cultivate rice, corn, wheat, potatoes, tomatoes, coffee, onions, garlic, etc. They were not the first to invent bread or beer. They were not the first to domesticate chickens, cattle, goats, sheep, dogs, pigs, or turkeys (though Indo-Europeans were probably the first to domesticate horses). They didn't discover math or astronomy. They didn't even found Christianity. And so on. They acquired them through contact with other cultures.
Cultures do not "advance" in isolation. This isn't a Sid Meier's Civilization game where you need to "research" new technologies alone. Cultures with more neighbors have more opportunities to exchange or acquire technologies. Austronesians were largely isolated and thus had little opportunities to acquire new technologies (with the exception of Southeast Asian Austronesians). But they excelled in technologies suited for their environments.
In fact, some Austronesian technologies reached Europe before the colonial era. Rice, bananas, sugarcane, coconuts, kaffir limes, turmeric, long pepper, cloves, and other crops and spices are Austronesian cultigens. So are chickens and water buffalo. Or the triangular lateen sail which was likely developed by western Asians after seeing Austronesian crab claw sails.
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Klaidi Rubiku Austronesians invented the first true marine boats, back when other humans were still paddling in rivers and lakes. They innovated with multihull ships and outriggers, which westerners are now only discovering is far more efficient, faster, and stable than single-hull ships. They were the first to create sea trade routes, from Eastern Africa to Japan (the route the Chinese now call the "Maritime Silk Road"). They were the first to domesticate bananas, sugarcane, coconuts, and rice, among other staples. They also invented paddyfield farming technology, which was carried all the way to Madagascar and Hawaii.
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I've read a few. But yeah, I think his preeminence had more to do with the movie and his speculative (but believable) portrayals of humanity's future, rather than his skill in writing engaging stories. Blasphemy, I know. My favorites have remained with the 2001 series (yes there are more, 3001 is actually my favorite among them). I also liked the Rama series. I was meh on Songs of Distant Earth and Childhood's End. And I hated Cradle which was a confusing mess.
I still prefer Sagan over Clarke, in terms of "peaceful first contact" sci-fi, especially since Sagan's last plot twist in Contact was far more profound than Clarke's monoliths. Though both were very influential in fostering my love for science fiction as a kid.
Still, there are MANY other SF authors I enjoyed far more, like LeGuin, Niven, William Gibson, Aldiss, Haldeman, Alastair Reynolds, Heinlein, Vonnegut, Huxley, Zelazny, Pohl, Paul Anderson, Silverberg, P.J. Farmer, James Tiptree Jr., Greg Bear, Ben Bova, Stephen Baxter, and so on.
My absolute favorite SF author though is perhaps Iain M. Banks on his Culture series. And the individual book I loved the most was Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Liebowitz.
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