Before the camel became widespread in North Africa, scattered archaeological evidence, including rock art and finds of Mediterranean goods at sub-Saharan sites, points to limited and intermittent contact across the Sahara. Garamantian communities in the central Sahara, in what is now Libya, developed oasis agriculture and are thought to have acted as intermediaries in exchanges that moved goods such as salt and possibly gold northward. These early contacts were far more limited in volume and regularity than the organized camel caravan trade that developed in later centuries. They nonetheless established patterns of oasis-based exchange that later trans-Saharan trade would build upon.
Relevance to Trade History
These early, limited contacts across the Sahara are a precursor to the much larger medieval trans-Saharan gold and salt trade, showing that the desert was never a complete barrier to exchange.
Read the full story in our article The Development of Markets in Ancient Societies.
Source: UNESCO World Heritage — Archaeological Site of Germa (Garamantian Civilization). See our Sources & Methodology page for how we select and verify references.