But does dey be woke? There be no Wakanda because da white man be racist. Yeah, dass it.
Actually, given centuries worth of Islamic slaving in sub-Saharan Africa there’s no way to know if there could have been a more advanced than there historically was African civilization or not. And as sub-Saharan Africans often used perishable building materials, not unlike European commoners, it’s not surprising we don’t see a lot where the people were carted off and their homes left to be reclaimed by nature.
The Malinese were notorious slavers whose city Timbuktu still holds (in the form of uncounted manuscripts) the rotting largess of the wealth and civilization they derived by pushing the rest of Africa lower down. But before them others carried that banner … though Islam made everything worse (recall that picture of ranking Democrats kneeling whilst wearing colorful scarfs? At the time someone pointed out that those were traditional Senegalese attire, and the Senegalese Muslims were among the most ruthless latter slub-Saharan slavers).
And make no mistake: Islam would have done the same to Europeans had there not been men like Charles Martel to stop them.
And in North Africa the Muslims wiped whole peoples off the map, which is why there’s all those ruins of towns … no one was about to reuse the stone.
Yes, maybe provably so intelligent but why so overwhelmingly stupid ?!