[Growltiger]

English or otherwise, coffee is the grease that oils the wheels of industry!! (actually, I drink the coffee because the tea they have in my office is horrible!)

I'll see what I can dig up on the Nigerian civilisation. Cannot remember what it was called off hand.

Agree completely that ideas flow both ways, but I suppose my point is that if you left the African continent to develop by way of the flow of ideas rather than the rather large boot of colonialism, would have been interesting to see what happens.

Like what would the Zulu nation have grown into if left to its own devices and not us Britishers and the Dutch stomping all over and around it? Just a thought.

Maybe we would have Italian style city states throughout the African continent, maybe they would have been the agricultural and economic powers of the Western world,
what would have happended if it was them rather than the Europeans who colonised America, what would have happended if I had bumped into Angelina Jolie when young rather than the current Mrs Growltigga...

To many ifs, not enough coffee and certainly not enough time to stare out of the window speculating