“Cities such as Timbuktu had a uniquely West African flavor—and they developed without the external influences of “more advanced” societies, in contradiction to what many Europeans in the 19th and 20th centuries believed”
o’clock in the afternoon on April 19, 1828, René Caillié emerged from the dark hull of the slave ship that he had boarded weeks before. Eager to disembark and escape the “prison” that he had uncomfortably shared with bundles of rice, millet, cotton, honey, vegetable butter, and fellow travelers, Caillié mounted the first available canoe and glided toward shore.
But Caillié reported that Timbuktu was a small, provincial town with “nothing but a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth”—an observation that may have contributed to a shift in European perspectives on sub-Saharan Africa toward a more paternalistic and elitist stance.
The research by Park’s team is just one of a growing number of examples that suggest the typical model for ancient cities might not be as typical as once believed. The monumental architecture, concentrated wealth, and dynastic kings central to ancient cities like Uruk and Memphis, Egypt, have defined the archetypal early city. But at Timbuktu, the urban area developed into something unique.
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