1800–1200 BCE: (Tichit — The Best-Studied Center of the West African Commercial Revolution, a String of Towns in Southern Mauritania Near the Mali Border wit…

1800–1200 BCE: (Tichit — The Best-Studied Center of the West African Commercial Revolution, a String of Towns in Southern Mauritania Near the Mali Border with Specialized Artisan Production for Trade, Different Towns Specializing in Different Manufactured Items Including Arrowheads, Grindstones, and Carnelian Beads, and Evidence of Long-Distance Trade with Regions Hundreds of Kilometers Away): The best-studied center of these new kinds of production is the Tichit region, located in today’s southern Mauritania, close to the Mali border and 500 kilometers west-northwest of the inland delta of the Niger River. Between 1800 and 1200 BCE, a string of towns developed in the Tichit region, with one larger than the rest toward the middle of this cluster. Families of skilled artisans in each of the towns engaged in the manufacture of different particular products for trade — with the different towns tending to specialize in different items: arrowheads in one, grindstones in another, carnelian beads in yet another. And these towns appear to have traded not just with each other but with regions hundreds of kilometers away, both to the east and the west. Think about what this means for the standard narrative of African history. Nearly four thousand years ago, in what is now southern Mauritania, there existed a network of specialized production towns engaged in long-distance commercial exchange. These were not villages. These were not encampments. These were towns with differentiated artisan economies and interregional trade networks, flourishing at the same time that the Phoenicians were just beginning to establish their commercial presence in the Mediterranean. Stone ruins of these towns survive to this day — physical evidence that no amount of historiographical neglect can erase. The West African commercial revolution was not an abstraction. It left its foundations in the earth.