language, music, art, stone tools, and mastery over fire (i.e., cooking warm foods) are all invented by black people in Africa thousands of years ago
Out of those five, stone tools and cooking definitely preceded humanity, art almost certainly did, language could have, and it’s hard to say for music, though it also apparently could have.
There are countless valuable black inventions, but ascribing the most primordial technologies all to black people just because is acting like the first humans were made from clay and didn’t have very intelligent predecessors who evolved into humans. I’m not sure how to articulate it, but also just seems like kind of a problematic view, basically assigning a mythical quality to a group of people such that their (and our) own ancestry is erased and they are viewed like prime movers.
Black people, like all people, have invented things throughout history and continue to invent, but if you’re interested in known precolonial inventions specifically, Wikipedia has a big list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pre-colonial_African_inventions_and_innovations
It also mentions stone tools, but again those preceded humanity.
very intelligent predecessors
those were humans though, i don’t think the heap of australopiths did any of op’s tech.
The idea of ascribing these things to race at all is extremely silly, since race is a floating social category.
That said, if we are going to do it, then ascribing the invention of fire to ‘humans’ when it comes out of Homo Erectus is just as much stealing valor as a white person stealing credit for a black persons invention. Species at least has slightly more scientific categorical grounding than race.
Species at least has slightly more scientific categorical grounding
homo species are extremely contentious, no one agrees how many there are. sometimes new samples are given new species names, while some folks put those new grains in an existing heap. like sure OOP’s a bit cheap for that answer but homo erectus is definitely people.
I am well aware of that. Hence why it is ‘slightly more scientific’, in that neither one of them are particularly concrete, but there is at least a little more grounding in species arguments.
My point is that if we are going to assign inventions to race (which is really stupid), then we can definitely assign inventions to different species (which is almost as stupid).
The entire argument is fucking dumb. It is basically could Batman beat Superman but for racists.
We can call them humans, but being that they weren’t homo sapiens, weren’t the same species, I feel kind of weird about calling them black people. Does that make sense?
(But I should have said “precede homo sapiens” before rather than “precede humanity,” you are correct there)
Western Africans were already crafting things in iron before Europeans even knew what bronze was. They skipped the bronze age and jumped straight to iron.
Can add maths there too.
Yeah but they didn’t invent the souls-like. So there.
Another w honestly
That wasnt white people either
Mother of the humankind
Forget shifting the goalpost, that crackkker was putting the goalpost into a quantum state.
Sartre quote about antisemites goes here.
When dealing with chuds, it’s why neither you nor me should apologize for coming off as elitist.
Because these dudes have to practice in the mirror to talk just like fucking anime villains. Always smirking, always having a pre-planned snappy way to handwave away any argument against them…but they’re never called “elitist”.
So do it back. They’ll claim victory anyway. Might as well have them walk away claiming victimhood rather than with that shit-eating grin.
I dislike the framing of these questions so much. Like, name one thing you invented. The inbred french aristocrat that invented some fuckass thing wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire, you don’t get to claim that prestige.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” - Stephen Jay Gould
stephen jay gould is badass. ive been relistening to his old lectures on the misappropriation and misunderstanding of darwin, and just random lectures on gallopogos snails and shit. hes one of the goats w/ sagan imo
Yes he is, and like him Kropotkin was one of my first entry-points into communist literature with Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution as a student of evolutionary biology.
Let’s see. Pads. I believe the filament in light bulbs was either invented or contributed by Black man before white guy took credit. Fountain pen. The super soaker. And a whole shit ton of other things.
And those are things that we know of. You poke around history enough you will learn very quickly to suspect any white guy who claimed to have no help.
White cis men were stealing ideas and inventions left and right. Wasn’t a Black person, but there was a women who came up with a machine to make modern paper bags with the flat bottems quickly.
A guy almost succeeded claiming it was his before she proved it with ordinal drawings and stuff. Who know how many people were not so fortunate.
I’d like to make a synthesis of this and @CrawlMarks@hexbear.net’s ideas
I don’t like the framing because the fame for the invention feels very silly to attribute to the group or insinuating it’s only possible because of race or something. I think things like movies, books, code, lessons, blueprints, and recipes have a great artificial scarcity that takes a Titanic amount of constant effort to maintain. People should always be tinkering, learning, reinventing and refining like you’re trying to find exploits in Ocarina of Time for speed running. What was the race of the person who invented Ganonfloor? Who cares???
I think it’s good to take ideas even if it’s to barely change it. I think the fucked up part is to aggrandize invention and participate in capitalism with an enforced artificial scarcity with the invention. It’s the difference between the haber Bosch method and Monsanto suing over cross pollination. Only under capitalism and pessimistic, cynical, virulent chauvanism can cross pollination be bad.
This is a good post.
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
🫳🎤
