Istwa Nou

The Garamantes lived in the central Sahara, in what is now southwestern Libya, and scholars have often credited them with setting West African commerce in motion. The dates do not allow it. They became prominent from the ninth and eighth centuries BCE onward. By then two separate commercial revolutions had been running for centuries, one to the north around the Mediterranean and the Middle East, the other to the south across the western and central Sudan belt, each with its own towns, goods and merchants. The Garamantes sat on the southern edge of one and the northern edge of the other. They responded to what was already moving, took the profits of position, and in time began producing goods of their own for both markets. That is a real achievement and it belongs to them. Handing them the invention of the trade is a different claim, and it collapses as soon as anyone lines up the centuries. It is like crediting a ferryman with the river.