Chapter 6 (Commonalities & Variations)

What I thought was most interesting about this chapter was the Along the Niger River: Cities without States. The middle stretches of the Niger River in West Africa witnessed the emergence of a remarkable urbanization. A prolonged dry period during the five centuries which brought growing numbers of people from the southern Sahara into the fertile floodplain of the middle Niger in search of more reliable access to water. Accompanying them were their ironworking technology. Over many years people of this religion created distinctive city based civilization. The most fully studied of the Urban clusters that grew up along the middle Niger River was the City of Jenne - jeno, which at its high point probably housed more than 40,000 people. I thought that was pretty crazy how many people it housed. Niger urban centers were not encompassed within some larger imperial system. Each city had its own centralized political structure, embodied in a monarch and his accompanying bureaucracy. They were cities without citadels. I thought this section of the chapter was really cool to read about because I got to read about the Niger River and how they were living without states.

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