2500–1000 BCE: (The Aïr Mountains as a Third Center of the West African Commercial Revolution — Copper Smelting Becoming Fully Operational by 1500 BCE and th…

2500–1000 BCE: (The Aïr Mountains as a Third Center of the West African Commercial Revolution — Copper Smelting Becoming Fully Operational by 1500 BCE and the Aïr Region Becoming the Exporter of Copper Across the Central and Western Sudan Belt, Megalithic Grave Sites in Five Different Parts of Aïr Suggesting Five Small Polities by 1500 to 1000 BCE Each Ruling Over a Portion of the Copper-Bearing Lands According to Archaeologist Augustin Holl): A third major contributing region to the West African commercial revolution lay in the Aïr Mountains, located at the southernmost edge of the Sahara, 1,200 kilometers to the east of the inland delta, in the modern-day country of Niger. Between around 2500 and 1500 BCE, the inhabitants of Aïr experimented with the smelting of local copper, bringing into being a fully operational industry of copper smelting no later than 1500 BCE. With that development, the Aïr region soon became the exporter of copper far and wide across the central as well as the western Sudan belt. Significant urban development in Aïr itself may not have taken place until later, but something else quite notable did happen. In five different parts of Aïr, people in this era began to construct megalithic grave sites. The archaeologist Augustin Holl has proposed that these sites indicate the existence of possibly five different small polities by the centuries 1500 to 1000 BCE, each ruling over a portion of the copper-bearing lands of the massif. Copper, political formation, and monumental architecture — three hallmarks of civilizational complexity, all present in the heart of the Sahara at a time when the standard narrative has nothing to say about the region. The Aïr polities controlled a commodity that the entire Sudan belt needed, and the trade networks that radiated outward from their mines would become the arteries of the West African commercial revolution.