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Comment by canoebuilder | Hacker News Reader

And remember, cross-continental trade is old.

What is your source for claims of trade?

There is no evidence for trade between Europe and Africa going back thousands of years.

Sub-Saharan Africans never developed a written language, this would seem to be a not quite vital, but certainly helpful thing when engaging in trade.

Thousands of years ago there was very little, if any, industry to speak of in sub-Saharan Africa. What was being traded?

Edit:

The poster above referenced black Africans, a distinct population from north Africans, and "cross-continental" trade implying a great distance and regular contact between the African and European races.

While some could argue that it is technically cross-continental as we understand geography today, I don't believe a good faith interpretation(in this discussion) of 'cross-continental trade' includes trade conducted in ancient Mediterranean world.

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Uh...

The Nile river valley in Egypt and the coast of the Maghreb was very much a part of the Mediterranean sea network back to the beginning of recorded history. The Phoenician alphabet is actually the ancestor of basically every written language save Chinese and its descendant scripts.

But you're clearly ignoring North Africa. Even without North Africa, Africa was still very much connected to the wider Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese worlds. Musa I of Mali was the person who gave away so much gold on his pilgrimage from Mecca that he literally broke the economy. The crest of the Niger river was a major center of learning (Timbuktu, Djenne), and the geography was known as far back as Greek times. The Ethiopian highlands were early converts to Christianity, breaking off from "mainstream" Christianity circa 200. The Indian Ocean coasts provided one of the major sources of trading fleets for the vibrant Indian Ocean trade, again back at least to Greco-Roman times.

That's the stuff I know off the top of my head.

> There is no evidence for trade between Europe and Africa going back thousands of years.

I take it you're not familiar with Phoenicia, Carthage, Macedonia, or the Roman empire?

> Thousands of years ago there was very little, if any, industry to speak of in sub-Saharan Africa. What was being traded?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_trade

>There is no evidence for trade between Europe and Africa going back thousands of years.

Are you serious? As one example, thousands of years ago (2,350 years ago to be exact) Alexander the Great (a European) conquered Egypt (which is in Africa by the way).

Of course there was tons of trade going on between Egypt/North Africa and Europe for long before Alexander the Great. And, of course, there was tons of trade going on between Egypt and sub-Sahara Africa at the same time (what were they trading? Incense, myrrh, oils, gold, resins, ebony, ivory, animals, etc.)

As for your nonsense about sub-saharan languages:

http://atlantablackstar.com/2014/08/08/11-ancient-african-wr...

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