I'm just tickled to death by the tacit implication here. Okay, yeah, maybe they did and still do live in dung huts and hunt with spears—but they had metal spearheads!
Let's assume for the sake of argument that Africans did develop mining and metalworking independently, although the jury's still out on that until I finish some reading. I've seen a metal spearhead. Next to the club or a shard of sharp rock with a crude plant fiber grip, the spear is the most primitive and ancient hand-crafted weapon of man. Where are the more advanced metal tools and the advanced metallurgy techniques that followed after simple, crude iron spearheads? Where are the missing links between those crude spears and obviously imported modern technologies?
I'll tell you where those missing links are: They're somewhere, anywhere other than Africa. At varying points in history throughout most of the world, clear and traceable evolutions of mining techniques, of advances in metallurgy, and in technological applications of metals can be found. Metals were the super-substances of their time, and in fact they remain the super-substances of our time. Certainly, technologies were frequently imported and exported; but once gained, most civilizations didn't just stop there. They didn't whip up some spears, jewelry, and crude sickles, and then call it good for thousands of years. They vigorously pursued metals and metallurgy with intensity, because metals afforded increasingly extensive advantages in pretty much every aspect of life.
It's almost as though, when a great civilization fell or simply departed from Africa, metals and metals-related technologies stalled right where they were, and then receded. It's almost as though those many imported civilizations I mentioned were Africa's only hotline to metals and metals technology throughout its history.
It's almost as though I laid a trap with this line of reasoning... almost. Yeah, almost. We'll go with that.
Personally, I see absolutely no issue with some human populations remaining primitive for much longer than others. Racism isn't even a factor here. Look at gorillas: They loll around in huge natural salad bowls all day, and haven't been forced by their environment into doing any differently. Those huge natural salad bowls are Eden for them. Despite its wildness and dangers (keeping in mind that nearly every single of inch of Earth was once just as dangerous, if not more so), Africa is an Eden for human beings. That's why our entire race was born there, and it's why Africans remained primitive for time immemorial when left alone. Africans are almost certainly fractionally less intelligent than other human beings who migrated to more challenging (for humans) environments and remained there for many, many millennia.
The logic is incredibly sound, but it feels racist so it just can't be true. We're not going to let it be true. That's why the endgame for this mode of thinking is the incredibly anti-intellectual, anti-historical WE WUZ KANGS movement, which is in fact very real and not just a meme.
