While I really enjoyed Black Panther, there's something that really bugs me about it from an historiographical perspective.Originally Posted by Meister
The story is definitely a quality inclusive movie rather than tokenism (of course a stack of that is due to how good a storyteller Stan Lee was, when he created him during the Civil Rights era) and the idea of an African nation being super high tech because of a localised mineral deposit of extra terrestrial origin definitely works as a concept.
Trying to place the thing into a specific time zone is very tricky though.
As this video has noted, while the vibranium meteorite wouldn't have had an explosive impact, there would have been earthquakes due to conservation of momentum, meaning that any developed civilisation would have noted the earthquake.
Considering the spread of the Roman Empire, anything from the tail end of the 3rd Century BC is ruled out as by that point, Carthage exists in Africa, meaning that the impact would have been recorded and due to trading, Rome would have been aware of it.
So then what about placing the impact even earlier? We know that as of the tail end of the 6th Century BC,the Phonecian Empire was a large, seafaring, trading empire and so it is reasonable to presume that the Phonecian Empire existed at least a few centuries prior. In fact the reason I cite the late 6th century is because we know at that time, a treaty was signed between Carthage and Rome with the express purpose of combating piracy - which the cynical mind would consider to be one of the two great exports of Ancient Greece; the other being xenophobia.
Given that we know that around 1200 BC, the great kingdoms of the age all died out, that Etruscan mythology points to a post-apocalyptic origin for it and the Latins and that Hellenistic (Greek) colonisation doesn't take place until roughly the mid 8th Century BC, a possible argument for the meteorite hitting Wakanda between 1200BC and 750BC could be made - although probably closer to 900BC rather than 750BC for the more recent date.
This then presents its own issues in terms of technological development.
We know that Wakanda hid itself from the outside world knowing that its resources could be corrupted and exploited. To do this effectively, it would mean that the introduction of Vibranuim would require cloaking shield technology to have been created by roughly 2,800-2,900 years ago.
While it's not outside the realms of possibility, that is one hell of a rapid period of scientific and technological growth.
However this presents another problem. The level of technology we see in Black Panther is certainly decades more advances than the rest of the world, but I wouldn't say that it's almost 3,000 years more advanced than the rest of the world- not even close to it. So then the question is, how do you explain such a rapid pace of technological advancement, followed by what is essentially an almost 3 millennia-long period of technological plateauing?
While I'm open to an explanation, I'm also incredibly grateful that I'm not the one writing a history of Wakanda and having to reconcile this massive continuity-based can of worms.
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