Mansa Musa of Mali After the 400s AD, the Bantu expansion slowed down. They had already settled most of the good farmland in southern Africa. What was left was mainly desert [...]
Climate change and world history: Wildebeest on savannah grasslands, Kenya (Africa) African grasslands emerge In the years just before human beings first evolved, the world was a wetter place than [...]
History of camels: A group of camels North American wild camels Wild camels first originated in North America. Before the last Ice Age, they spread from North America to East [...]
African salt caravan To have a chance to think about what these economic trades would have meant to African people, imagine you are one of these people (if you're in [...]
Early African art from Blombos Cave, South Africa (ca. 80,000 BC) South African art People were producing art in South Africa even before the first people left Africa for other [...]
Han Dynasty Chinese tile showing people mining salt underground and then processing it. See the bamboo pipe? Mining salt in antiquity The salt trade, already important in the Bronze Age, [...]
Medieval African economy: A salt caravan across the Sahara Desert West African caravan trade The African economy had always involved international trade. But trade became even more important in the [...]
