> Many culturally and technologically sophisticated societies existed in the ancient world outside of Europe....

That is a fact.

However something else is also a fact. That growth over the last 3 centuries in almost every area catapulted Europeans to incredible, almost seemingly impossible levels of economic success with respect to previous history.

The truth is in the numbers. Look at a graph of economic change over the centuries, it is astounding. I'm no Kurzweil but I see where he gets his (misplaced) optimism from.

This success has also been incredibly specific geographically, with the Far East only coming up in the last few decades, a delay I attribute to the retardation that was Communism.

> What is incredible is how ignorant you are. The images above clearly demonstrate that trade is happening in Africa, though however I don't think trade is a meaningful measure of societal "success" in the first place.

I was an investor in the so called frontier markets. The statistics were, are, and continue to be, absolutely terrible. In many cases if you measure on a per [yes, including black] capita basis Africa is doing worse today than it was half a century ago.

Western media constantly harps on positive news from the frontier.

Western media has a very strong bias against negative news about Africa for political reasons.

Even the Chinese who are very frugal and exceptionally adept at business cannot make headway directly. They employ resource extraction, (expensive!) worker importation and bribery on a massive scale. What do you think the corollary to that is?

I suppose you'll dismiss this as something-ism but if you quit using evidence based on Tripadvisor photographs maybe we'd see eye to eye.

We have to call a spade a spade. Africa is the most backward place in the world. Most growth that exists is obviously non-organic, relying on extensive networks of foreign coordination and siloed off resource extraction. This is an entire Continent that has not experienced an agricultural revolution let alone an industrial one. The level of corruption is hard to comprehend because it is the norm and not the exception.

Did you know that the south of the Continent relies on electricity production from a single company that has plants which are past their lifespan, which have not been maintained properly or replaced for decades?

In the North, Egypt, the most advanced, is a standing joke with its high population and meager economic output. It is a canal that has a country, not a country that has a canal.

The economy, such as it is, of the entire system is extremely fragile and it is very likely to fail outright. The structural integrity is shot.

> however I don't think trade is a meaningful measure of societal "success" in the first place.

Over centuries it is indeed the physical, material success that matters. That and biology and ecology, but those are subjects for another day.

I agree that economic success is not the only factor in the world but without it supporting the bottom items in Maslow's Pyramid there isn't much else.

There exist people who disavow materalism, secular communists, religious monks, but to me this always seemed like the brain rejecting the feet in some futile metaphysical standoff, since those people with their lifestyle tend to be indirectly supported by the scale of the economic system, just as the existence of North Korea is tacitly because of the West and our competitors.

Intuitively it is hard to maintain human dignity and self respect when you're poor, and easier when you are richer.