c. 250 BCE onward / Sub-Saharan Africa
Djenné: Settlements and Markets in West Africa
Settlements in the inland Niger Delta grew into trading centres, with building traditions adapted to seasonal floods.
The story
The Djenné heritage area preserves settlements and urban remains from different periods. UNESCO traces occupation to about 250 BCE. Later markets became links in trans-Saharan gold trading, and the town was a centre of Islamic learning and dissemination in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Houses built on raised ground responded to seasonal flooding. The early archaeological settlements and the later town should not be treated as one city founded in a single year, nor are all surviving buildings ancient.
Elsewhere in the world
Early occupation at Djenné broadly overlapped with Meroë in the upper Nile valley; the history of African inland settlements long predates Atlantic commerce.
Dates and precision
c. 250 BCE onward Approximate year
An archaeological or scholarly estimate, rather than a claim that an event occurred in one exact year.
Representative map location
Inland Niger Delta · Djenné
The marker represents the heritage area; the earliest settlement and later town do not occupy exactly the same site.
Representative coordinates · 13.906°, -4.555°
Coordinates locate a representative point for the story. They do not mean the event happened only here and do not represent historical borders.
Bibliography
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre | Old Towns of Djenné
Sources are listed as bibliography titles, without external links. A reference does not mean every sentence or interpretation has been independently verified.