2000 to 1000 BCE · Africanspan
The inland Niger delta grew commerce out of its own ecology
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The second great region of the early West African commercial revolution lay in and around the inland delta of the Niger, where the river spreads into channels across a wide basin. The delta packs several different environments into a small compass, and the communities living there specialised accordingly. Along the bayous were people who lived by fishing. On the dry ground between the channels were growers of African rice. For hundreds of kilometres around the delta, farmers raised pearl millet, fonio and other grains without irrigation. None of these communities could produce everything it needed where it stood, and each could produce a surplus of one thing that its neighbours wanted. Fish for grain, rice for millet, one specialised product for another. Out of that arrangement came routes, standing relationships, middlemen and markets. No state organised any of it. The trade arose from the ground conditions, and it was running centuries before any political authority in the region was in a position to tax it.
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