If there was ever a Land of Gold, West Africa was it. From the 11th to the 17th centuries, whoever ruled the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, or the Songhai Empire controlled most of the gold - and the money - across three continents. But, of course, there was competition! From the trans-Saharan trade of salt for equal weights in gold, to the Mali emperor whose wealth caused a wave of inflation across northern Africa, @HowMineralsMadeCivilization looks at the massive gold industry of precolonial west Africa.
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