[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

You're not the first to ask.



You might read David Keys especially his book Catastrophe. Keys makes a case that East africa was absorbing Hindu/Indian cultural influences and was on the way to becoming it's own distinctive high civilisation with a strong South Asian influence when a massive climate disruption changed the local disease climate and forced a switch from agriculture to pastoralism.

But any big change in Africa would require an earlier introduction of high-yield food crops.

You'd also need to get rid of sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis) and wide-spread domestication of elands would probably help, too.