500–146 BCE: (Punic Origin of the Word for Horse in Niger Bend and Mali Languages — The Words for Horse — So, Siso, and Closely Similar Shapes — in Languages…

500–146 BCE: (Punic Origin of the Word for Horse in Niger Bend and Mali Languages — The Words for Horse — So, Siso, and Closely Similar Shapes — in Languages All Around the Great Bend of the Niger River and Widely in Mali Derivable from Punic Ssw, Placing the Spread of Horses Across the Sahara via the Hoggar Route from Carthage to the Western Sudan Belt in the Centuries Before the Destruction of Carthaginian Political and Commercial Power by Rome in 146 BCE): The words for horse — *so*, *siso*, and closely similar shapes — in languages all around the great bend of the Niger River and widely in Mali can be derived from Punic *ssw*. These findings place the spread of horses across the Sahara in the centuries before the destruction of Carthaginian political and commercial power by Rome. The linguistic trail is precise: the Punic word for horse traveled the same route as the animal itself — from Carthage, through the Hoggar region of the central Sahara, to its terminus at the great bend of the Niger. The loanword evidence dates this transfer to before 146 BCE, when Rome destroyed Carthage. The horse arrived in West Africa as a commodity of Carthaginian commerce, carried along trade routes that predated the camel and that would later become the arteries of the trans-Saharan gold trade. The Punic etymon embedded in Mande and other Niger bend languages is a fossilized record of a specific commercial relationship — Carthage selling horses to West African elites — that operated in the mid-first millennium BCE.