Hello, and welcome to today's history lesson.

My name is Mr. Merritt, and I'll be guiding you through today's lesson.

So, let's get started.

Today's lesson is looking at trade routes throughout West Africa, and by the end of today's lesson, we'll be able to describe the geography of West Africa and the Ghana Empire.

In order to do that, we'll need to use some key terms, and our key terms for today are trade, empire, and Sahel.

Trade means the exchange of goods.

An empire is a group of territories ruled over by one person, or group of people.

And the Sahel is a dry region bordering the southern Sahara desert.

Today's lesson will comprise three separate learning cycles, and our first learning cycle is looking at West African geography.

So, let's get going.

So, West Africa is a land of diversity.

And on the map on the screen in front of you, I'll just put a map of Africa up and I've boxed off what I mean by West Africa.

Along its southern and western coast looking out over the Atlantic Ocean are the Guinean forests of West Africa, which are tropical rainforests, filled with a huge variety of different plants and animals.

North of this region lies the Savannah, which is a warm, lush grassland that also includes much of the Niger River, which is the third largest river in Africa.

The Niger River flows northeast from its source into the Sahel, which is a dry region that borders the Sahara Desert, and that's the largest hot desert in the world.

And this vast range of ecosystems has produced a number of different peoples who've exploited the landscape to carve out great empires, which rose and fell over many centuries.

So, let's go for a quick check for understanding.

I'd like you to pick the odd one out.

Which ecosystem does not naturally occur in West Africa, is it deserts, savannah, rainforest, or tundra? Make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose D, Tundra, then congratulations, that is indeed correct.

So, the peoples of this region had a great many resources to exploit to help them survive and thrive, of which the two most important were gold and salt.

Gold was found in large quantities in the savannah region and could be traded for salt, which could be found in the Sahara.

Gold was used as a luxury item for elite citizens to demonstrate their prosperity, and for melting down into currency.

Whereas salt was used for flavouring and preserving foods.

In the days before refrigerators, one of the only ways to make sure that meat stayed fresh for longer was to preserve it using salt.

Other trade goods, such as ivory and enslaved people, also provided the people of West Africa with huge amounts of wealth.

So, another check for understanding now.

What I'd like you to do is pick the odd one out.

Which trade goods were not found in mediaeval West Africa, is it gold, salt, ivory, or tin? Make your choice now.

All right, if you chose D, tin, then, very well done, that is indeed correct.

Let's go for our first task of today then.

So, what I'd like you to do is write a paragraph describing some of the features of the geography of West Africa, and I'd like you to use the following terms in your paragraph as well.

Trade, Sahel, Sahara, gold, and salt.

So try to make your paragraph as detailed as possible.

Pause the video now whilst you're doing that, and I'll see you once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got along fine with that task.

Let's see what you could have written.

So I've got a model answer on the screen here, and let's see if yours is similar to mine.

So I said, West Africa has many diverse ecosystems, such as rainforests, the dry Sahel, and the largest hot desert in the world, the Sahara.

This variety of landscapes means that there are lots of different things that can be found and traded by the people who live there.

For instance, salt is a trade item in West Africa that is found in the desert.

It is vital for humans to live and therefore, valuable.

West Africa also has large deposits of gold, which was used as currency and for elite members of society to show off their wealth.

So you might have something different to mind, but as long as you're using those key terms, you're explaining what they mean, then I'm sure your answer's absolutely fine as well.

Let's move on then to our second learning cycle for today, which is looking at West African connections.

So the resources of West Africa have been known to the peoples of Europe and the Middle East for thousands of years.

Yet for much of their history, they were not easily exploitable by people from outside of the area.

In the fifth century BCE, the Carthaginian explorer Hanno sailed outta the Mediterranean and made contact with people from West Africa where he traded goods for gold.

But this seagoing trade route was not repeated frequently, due the difficulty in sailing along the west coast of Africa.

And I got an image there of the west coast of Africa on the screen, just to give you an idea about just how barren and difficult it would be for anybody sailing along.

Generally speaking, if you look at the fifth century BCE, the people sailing along would need to have regular contact with the coast in order to get things like food and water.

And as you can see, the Western Sahara doesn't really have a lot of fresh water, you can't see a lot of food there either.

So it's a very difficult trade route if you're gonna go by sea.

As a result of that, much of the trade conducted with West Africa travelled through the hostile Sahara deserts.

And, again, here you can see on the screen another image of how that actually takes place.

You'd have what's called trade caravans, which were large groups of people, generally using camels to help them transport their way across the Sahara, and they could be absolutely ginormous as well.

Usually, on average, there's about 500 camels in each caravan, but there could be up to 12,000 camels in some of the particularly big caravans there.

So, massive, massive numbers of people and animals moving across the Sahara, and it's generally safer to go in those larger numbers.

During the mediaeval period, a journey from the Sahel to the Mediterranean coast of Africa could take 40 days or more.

And without an experienced guide, the risk of becoming lost in the desert was extremely high.

Fortunately, desert nomads, people who travel from place to place and have no permanent home, such as the Berbers and the Tuaregs, were able to act as guides to the trade caravans that crossed the deserts.

Although there is evidence that the Roman empires sometimes traded with West Africa across the Sahara, trade routes through this mighty desert only really became a regular feature after the spread of Islam into Africa in the seventh century CE.

The Islamic empires of North Africa traded with other Islamic nations in the Middle East, who in turn held trade connections with the Far East via the Silk Road, which was a network of trade routes stretching from China to Europe.

The Islamic nations needed gold to pay their armies, and the best source of gold was in West Africa.

Huge quantities of gold travel from West Africa through trade centres on the edge of the Sahara, like Sijilmassa, and then onto coastal cities such as Rabat.

It's estimated that at its highest point in the mediaeval period, 2/3 of the gold in the Mediterranean came from West Africa.

In return, the people of West Africa received clothes, weapons, cultural ideas, and the spread of Islam to the region.

Okay, let's have another quick check for understanding now then.

So what proportion of gold in mediaeval Europe originated from West Africa? Was it 1/2, was it 2/3, or was it 3/4? Make your choice now.

Okay, if you chose B, 2/3, then very well done, that is indeed correct.

Let's go onto our next task now then.

So, what I'd like you to do is think about the fact that many things were exchanged between West Africa and North Africa, and I'd like you to put a tick in the box, which is on the screen in front of you, to show where each exchange started from.

So, for instance, gold, did that start from West Africa or North Africa? Did salt start from West Africa or North Africa? Just put a little tick in the correct column.

Pause the video while you do this, and I'll see you once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on okay with that task there.

So, just to quickly run through the correct answers here.

So, gold and salt both came from West Africa initially.

Clothes were imported from North Africa.

Enslaved people travelled from West Africa.

Islam and some weapons came from North Africa, and Ivory came from West Africa.

So, hopefully you've got some of those down correctly as well.

Let's move on now then to our final learning cycle for today, which is the Ghana Empire.

So, the first recorded people to take full advantage of the trans-Sahara trade with the people of the Ghana empire.

Ghana, which is also known as Wagadou, was located in the Sahel, north of the Niger River.

The modern day country of Ghana is much further down to the south, and it actually took its name from the Ghana empire and it was kind of as a sign of respect.

But they don't actually hold any sort of geographical similarity at all, they're nowhere near each other.

The map on the screen in front of you gives you an idea about the size and location of the Ghana empire.

So the Ghana empire has been bordered in, in that red colour there.

So this dry and difficult land, the Sahel, became the focus of a thriving empire due to its trade connections.

It was perfectly situated between gold fields to the south, and salt mines to the north.

So if you look on the map there, Taghaza, up in the very north, right in the centre of the Sahara desert, that's where the salt mines are.

And just to the south, pretty much just to the south of where the Ghana empire is, is where some of the gold mines were as well.

So it was also, the Ghana empire was also, the first place that trans-Saharan travellers from the Mediterranean coast would reach.

And as a result of that, a lot of trade came through the Ghana empire.

These trade links more than made up for the sometimes difficult living conditions of the Sahel.

Ghana was a thriving empire from the sixth to the 13th century.

Muslim traders nicknamed it the land of gold.

Gold dust was the main currency used among the people of Ghana, and the reason being is that any nuggets of gold was stored by the king.

And in turn, the people who brought in the nugget of gold, the equivalent in weights of gold dust was given in return.

And the reason why he did this, the king kind of hoarded these nuggets of gold in order to keep the value of gold high.

So it wasn't the case of being greedy.

There may have been an element of greed in there as well, but the primary purpose of this was to make sure that gold was still seen as a valuable commodity.

If there's lots and lots and lots of something in the markets, then the value of that thing will decline.

If there's only a little bit of that thing in the market, then the value of that thing will stay very, very high.

And that's what the kings of Ghana we're trying to do.

They're trying to keep the value of gold very high, making sure the larger bits of gold were never part of the popular circulation.

Although gold was the main source of wealth, the people of Ghana also controlled a thriving trade in enslaved peoples.

And on average, about 5,000 enslaved people, which who were gained through warfare and through raiding of the neighbouring peoples, they were traded from Ghana to North Africa every year.

Copper, iron, Islamic scholars also made their way north along the trans-Saharan trade routes as well.

Ghana was the first of the great West African empires that grew powerful from the Sahara trade routes, but it wouldn't be the last.

Right, let's go for a quick check for understanding now.

What I'd like to you do is explain to your partner why the Ghana empire was perfectly situated to take advantage of nearby trade links.

So can you come up with maybe a couple of different points? Pause the video if you need to, and I'll see you once you're finished.

Okay, so maybe you got something along the lines of this.

So you could say the Ghana empire was perfectly situated to take advantage of nearby trade links because it was between goldfields to the south, and salt mines to the north.

You might have also said that it was the first place that trans-Saharan travellers from the Mediterranean coast would reach if they're travelling south into West Africa.

And let's go for another check for understanding now.

So, true or false, the Ghana empire was given the nickname the land of gold by Muslim traders, is that true or is that false? Okay, if you chose true, then congratulations, that is indeed true.

But let's justify this answer now, why is it true? Is it true because the nickname was given because of the colour of the sand from the Sahara and the Sahel? Or was it true because the nickname was given because of the amount of gold the empire traded? So choose your justification now.

All right, if you chose B, then very well done, that is indeed correct.

Okay, let's go for our final task for today then.

So, read through the statements about the Ghana empire that I've got on the screen in front of you.

And I'd like you to tick the statements that are correct, and cross the statements that are incorrect.

You then need to rewrite the incorrect statements so that they are correct.

So the statements we've got here are that the Ghana empire was also known as Wagadou.

The Ghana empire was situated between the salt mines to the south and gold mines to the north.

The Ghana empire was powerful from the ninth to the 15th century.

The Ghana empire used gold nuggets as currency.

And the Ghana empire traded gold, salt, slaves, copper, and iron.

So pause the video now whilst you're working through that, and I'll see you once you've finished.

Okay, welcome back.

Hopefully you got on okay with that task.

Let's go through the answers now and see what we've got.

So the Ghana empire was also known as Wagadou, that is indeed correct.

The Ghana empire was situated between salt mines to the south and goldmines to the north, that is incorrect, and we'll go through and we'll rewrite that correctly in just a moment.

The Ghana empire was powerful from the ninth to the 15th century, that is also incorrect.

The Ghana empire used gold nuggets as currency, that's incorrect as well.

And the Ghana empire traded gold, salt, slaves, copper and iron, that is correct.

Right, let's go through and make sure we can rewrite those statements so they are correct.

So the first incorrect statement, you could say instead, the Ghana empire was situated between salt mines to the north and gold mines to the south.

The second statement could be rewritten so that it says, the Ghana empire was powerful from the sixth to the 13th century.

And our third and final incorrect statement could be rewritten so that it says, the Ghana empire used gold dust as currency.

So hopefully, you've got all of those correct as well.

Right, let's summarise the lesson for today then.

So, West Africa has varied ecosystems and abundant resources, including vast gold fields.

One of these ecosystems, the Sahel, is a semi-arid area between the Sahara Desert and the Savannah grasslands.

The Islamic empire allowed trade to flourish from North Africa to the Middle East.

The Silk Road continued this trade all the way to the Far East.

Trade routes also stretched across the Sahara to the Sahel.

And West African powers, such as the Ghana empire, profited from these trade routes.

Thank you very much for joining me today, I hope you enjoyed yourself, I hope you learned something.

And I hope to see you again next time, bye bye.