2000–500 BCE: (The Two Foundations of the West African Commercial Revolution — Agriculture Enabling Population Growth and the Specialized Trading of Farm Pro…

2000–500 BCE: (The Two Foundations of the West African Commercial Revolution — Agriculture Enabling Population Growth and the Specialized Trading of Farm Products to Feed Concentrated Town Populations, and the Prior Inventions of Ceramics, Loom Weaving, and Metallurgy Giving Town Inhabitants the Capacity to Manufacture the Wares of Commerce, the Donkey Brought Westward by Chadic-Speaking Peoples as an Established Beast of Burden Across the Southern Sahara from Before the End of the Fifth Millennium BCE, and Boat Transport Along the Niger River as a Second Major Avenue of Long-Distance Movement): The independent commercial revolution of the western and central Sudan regions rests ultimately on two major sets of historical developments. The first was the transition to fully agricultural ways of life. Agriculture, because of its ability to produce vastly more food than foraging from the same amount of land, everywhere enabled the growth of human population. More importantly, a new kind of specialization — the trading of the products of farming — became essential to feeding the concentrated populations of the towns. The second set of foundational developments was technological. The inventions of ceramics, loom weaving of cotton, and metallurgy, all achieved well before this time, gave the inhabitants of the towns the capacities for manufacturing the wares of commerce, the goods on which were built the prosperity and growth of towns all across the western and central Sudan belt in the later second and the first millennia BCE. And in these regions as well, the donkey played a significant role. Brought westward by peoples speaking languages of the Chadic branch of the Afrasian language family, this animal seems likely to have been an established beast of burden across a wide stretch of the southern Sahara from probably before the end of the fifth millennium BCE. In the second and first millennia BCE, donkeys became key carriers in the overland transport of goods in the emerging commercial networks, with boat transport along the Niger River providing another major avenue of the movement of goods over long distances. Every element of this commercial revolution was African in origin: the crops, the technologies, the animal transport, the river networks, the merchant class. Not one component was imported from the Mediterranean.