History of Mali

Mali is located in Africa. The history of the territory of modern Mali may be divided into:

Pre-Imperial Mali, before the 13th century
The history of the eponymous Mali Empire and of the Songhai Empire during the 13th to 16th centuries
The borders of Mali are those of French Sudan, drawn in 1891. They are artificial, and unite part of the larger Sudan region with parts of the Sahara. As a consequence, Mali is a multiethnic country, with a majority of its population consisting of Mandé peoples.

Mali's history is dominated by its role in trans-Saharan trade, connecting West Africa and the Maghreb. The Malian city Timbuktu is exemplary of this: situated on the southern fringe of the Sahara and close to the Niger River , it has played an important role in the trans-Saharan trade from the 13th century on, with the establishment of the Mali Empire.
Prehistory
Paleolithic
The Sahara was often drier, but also more rainy for a long time than it is today. So it was a place uninhabitable for humans 325,000 to 290,000 years ago and 280,000 to 225,000 years ago, apart from favorable places like the Tihodaïne lake on the water-storing Tassili n'Ajjer . In these and other dry periods, the desert stretched repeatedly far to the north and south; its sand dunes can be found far beyond the present-day borders of the Sahara. Human traces can only be expected in the rainier green phases. It is possible that anatomically modern humans, which perhaps developed in the said isolated phase 300,000 to 200,000 years ago south of the Sahara, already in the long green phase over 200,000 years ago the water-rich area at that time. Even around 125,000 to 110,000 years ago there was an adequate network of waterways that allowed numerous animal species to spread northward, followed by human hunters. Huge lakes contributed to this, such as the Mega Lake Chad, which at times covered over 360,000 km2. On the other hand, the desert stretched far north and south again 70,000 to 58,000 years ago and is therefore likely to have represented a barrier that was difficult to overcome. Another green phase followed 50,000 to 45,000 years ago.

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