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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Mauritania
Index
The early history of the
west Saharan
(see Glossary) region
is largely unknown. There are some written accounts by medieval
Arab traders and explorers who reached the important caravan
trading centers and Sudanic kingdoms of eastern Mauritania, but
the major sources of pre-European history are oral history,
legends, and archaeological evidence. These sources indicate that
during the millennia preceding the Christian Era, the Sahara was
a more habitable region than it is today and supported a
flourishing culture. In the area that is now Mauritania, the
Bafour, a proto-Berber people, whose descendants may be the
coastal Imraguen fishermen, were hunters, pastoralists, and
fishermen. Valley cultivators, who may have been black ancestors
of the riverine Toucouleur and Wolof peoples, lived alongside the
Bafour. Climatic changes, and perhaps overgrazing and
overcultivation as well, led to a gradual desiccation of the
Sahara and the southward movement of these peoples.
In the third and fourth centuries A.D., this southward
migration was intensified by the arrival of Berber groups from
the north who were searching for pasturage or fleeing political
anarchy and war. The wide-ranging activities of these turbulent
Berber warriors were made possible by the introduction of the
camel to the Sahara in this period. This first wave of Berber
invaders subjugated and made vassals of those Bafour who did not
flee south. Other Berber groups followed in the seventh and
eighth centuries, themselves fleeing in large numbers before the
Arab conquerors of the
Maghrib (see Glossary).
Data as of June 1988
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