Djenné-Djeno
250 BCE – 1400 CE
The oldest known city in sub-Saharan Africa — a densely settled urban centre on the floodplain of the Niger River in Mali, continuously occupied from roughly 250 BCE to 1400 CE, that flourished as a hub of trans-Saharan trade and iron-working centuries before the rise of the famous Mali and Songhai empires. Its excavation in the 1970s overturned the long-held colonial-era assumption that urbanism in West Africa was introduced from outside the continent.
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ClassicalLate AntiqueEarly Medieval
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