In the Congo, what Are Some Barriers to Early Advanced Civilization

[Isfendil]

Something that I have heard from geopolitically savvy and politically inclined friends and colleagues of mine are frequent laments about how resource rich the Congo is. One of them constantly asks me why the Congo of all places is and was not more economically advanced in the past. Now, I am of course aware of the achievements of the Kingdom of Congo, but obviously that's not what's being asked about here, so I wanted to ask what the barriers, historically and prehistorically, were to sedentary civilizations or other advanced civilizations (what with hearing that the first major cities in Mesopotamia were founded by desert pastoralists and not southern agriculturalists as was originally taught) to taking root in the Congo as far back as five to ten thousand years ago? I know people will point to the jungle cover for one but in that case, what differentiates the Congolese jungles from the Mesoamerican or Southeast Asian ones?
I ask these questions genuinely and out of true curiosity.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

The big issue is rain and soil. Weather currents from East to West meant that areas like Vietnam and Eastern Mexico were sheilded from deluge for the most part, with the ocean laden clouds hitting moutain ranges before getting over to them, and so water came at a steady enough rate that it dident swamp the soil and make agriculture hard to sustain. The Yucatan/Mesoamerics also has a fairly sandstone heavy bedrock and looser soil, meaning it retains water worse which ironically does a service in facilitating irrigation and reducing the possability of natural overwatering. While this made their food supply more fragile and drought-vulnerable, SE Asia and Mesoamerica also had the advantage of being geographically isolated from outside invading groups who could violently disrupt the system (See Persia getting walloped by the Mongols and the Bantu Expansion for an opposite example) which meant they just needed to avoid Black Swan weather events to sustain their much higher food ceiling.

More calories allows for more people and more specialization.

 

[mjwebb76]

A couple of factors come to mind. First, the climate is inhospitable to technology that facilitates transportation and to some extent capital accumulation generally. Specifically, the intense rains wash away roads and other infrastructure. In addition the tstse fly makes it difficult to keep large draft animals (i.e. cows and horses). Therefore, you cannot cultivate rice as you could say in the Khemer empire. Finally, the transatlantic slave trade (and later the rubber terror) reduce population (dramatically and for centuries) which undermines society.

 

[Deleted member 67076]

Lack of crop diversity. Before the Banana Revolution beginning in 500 AD the main crop for farming was the yam, which is well inefficient and often exhaustive to the soil resulting in a largely semi nomadic population that was very sparse in density. This was of course supplemented by hunting and fishing but the lack of farming puts a huge dampter on population growth. After that you started to see increasingly complex chiefdoms as bananas and plantains provided a far more improved staple crop.

But once you got the introduction of rice, beans, potatoes and so forth from the Columbian exchange, the Congo region's population really starts to take off and with it a round of war and statebuilding.

 

[Atterdag]

Isolation plays a part, the place is damn huge and hard to get to, which means less trade, less influx of new ideas ect.

 

[Isfendil]

Thank you very much, is there anything that has not yet been mentioned? This is enlightening. As well, are there any "easy" [from an alt-hist standpoint] solutions or possible butterflies that come off the top of the head to encourage growth despite the factors mentioned? For instance, earlier introduction of less inefficient crops? Mutations (LORAG Super-Yams come to mind)?

 

[manitobot]

The tsetse fly makes it hard to maintain animal husbandry.

 

[Jürgen]

Jungle plant doesn’t do well outside jungles, cereal do well far more places, which was why civilization was able to spread from Mesopotamia. Sedentary people dwelling in Congo would be significant limited in their ability to expand, also most evidence of any civilization they build would be lost, as the easiest building material they have access to rots. So the answer is that the cereal growers was the start of modern civilization, because their civilization was able to spread, and their use of stone as building material meant they left evidence behind of their civilization.

 

[mjwebb76]

Thank you very much, is there anything that has not yet been mentioned? This is enlightening. As well, are there any "easy" [from an alt-hist standpoint] solutions or possible butterflies that come off the top of the head to encourage growth despite the factors mentioned? For instance, earlier introduction of less inefficient crops? Mutations (LORAG Super-Yams come to mind)?

You may want to read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. He provides a detailed discussion about why "Civilization" (i.e. living in cities) emerged first in the near east and not Africa, Mesoamerican, or Australia.

 

[Isfendil]

Alright, having recently regained my ability to write, I am going to practice by making a post that hopefully will be found useful. I will collate all of the reasons given in this thread for why complex settled societies did not take root here, for the purpose of future TLs. Who knows, I may write the beginnings of it myself, but I still think having a quick reference list (so that people know where to point their butterflies) will be generally helpful for any person's Congo TLs in future.
In the order introduced:

1. Torrential and unpredictable rains: These rains were very difficult to deal with and created a swampy environment not suited to the farming of cultivars available to the Congolese.
   • Swampy environment is also bad for roads, wheels, skiffs- basically every kind of pre-industrial transport infrastructure except perhaps donkeys.
2. Absorbant soil: This drawback can be a benefit in many circumstances but in this case it made innovating irrigation more difficult and contributes to overwatering, which kills plants and hurts yields almost as badly as a lack of water.
3. Agropastoral woes: Lack of diverse cultivars that could maximize calories (the yam was the only heavy hitter until Bananas in the 6th century CE), and barriers to animal agriculture due to the tsetse fly spreading sleeping sickness among all megafauna, which includes humans.
4. Verticality: New agriproduct does not spread easily to the Congo because it's in a narrow band of a vertical continent. Most of the farming is being done with crops that evolved to deal with the climates of more northerly latitudes, spreading horizontally along Eurasia.
   • As specified by a member whose name is now lost, the Congo could benefit greatly from rice, beans, and potatoes. Potatoes, as time has told, will grow anywhere.

Already I can envision a few solutions to these, but I don't know what can be considered the realm of ASB or not:

• Extinction of the tsetse fly or an animal developing resistance to the sleeping sickness
  • Barring that, special clothing for domesticates and their keepers?
  • Perhaps the discovery of an alleviant to the disease? I'm not knowledgeable enough in herbalism to speculate further.
• Potato rafting
• Chicken rafting? Chickens are much easier to keep and provide decent nutrition for their upkeep.
  • They're also very possible to spread, since the Austronesians have them.
• Rice can thrive in these conditions, so any POD that allows rice to spread faster to the region from wherever else it can be found would be good.
• Some kind of technological innovation to aid in reckoning the swamps. Maybe a way to dry them out, damn them, drain them. Not the gentlest or most sustainable thing, but a way to facilitate agriculture at least.
  • Barring that, perhaps a mass burning, though this may require a drought and that puts things pretty squarely in geoclimate i.e. ASB territory.