A Trans-Saharan Silk Road

Cool, thanks. I can manage academic French and I've printed it out to read.

How do you see the silk-producing culture being organized? Proto-feudalism? City-states? Elected kingship (common in West Africa)? Something else? Would the silk farmers be a separate social group like blacksmiths - you mentioned the Dioula, so would the silk producers be the people who give rise to a distinct mercantile caste? Also, are you using a variation the Dogon religion, and how might silk culture affect this, especially with respect to regional cross-cultural practices such as masquerades?

I see silk production at the beginning to be much like OTL hunter-foragers and herders to accumulate livestock.

First it's foraging for honey to trade for pottery. As time moves on pottery is used to harvest pupae from cocoons. The silk is used in cordage, bows strings and decoration of the hair (look up African hair threading), these developing silk goods are traded for sheep.

From there the two groups merge together but unlike pygmies (and more like the Bangime) the distinct language of the cliff dwellers remain.

Silkers develop full time into Weavers as the herders will begin to harvest kreb (wild grains), butters and cheeses to trade for silk items. This is critical because usually the gatherers submit to the needs of herders.

As pig husbandry increases up high in the cliffs producing meat much faster than sheep the need for herder trade lessens and the development of ex-herders turned foresters, wood workers, farmers and security begins to facilitate not only prestige cloth and adornment but materials for daily life.

I see a highly specialized caste based system of guilds for the first couple thousand years. It'll facilitate the spread of silk production to all the habitable cliffs of the region as they support the spread of tamarind trees, Shea, Baobab, winterthorn, etc.. used to feed silkworms, pigs, sheep, cows and fertilize fields.

Weavers will attain the very unique position somewhat like blacksmiths found throughout Africa which is to say respected but feared for their powers of transmutation. It'll be different because the activities involved won't have the same sort of awe inducing smelting and smithery can have. It will be gendered oppositely with men harvesting raw material and making pottery but afterwords being the work of women.
___
Silk OTL like gold, copper and the skin color of young women throughout the continent are refered variously as a sheen, glow or having a redness/whiteness/luminous quality (Some would say aura or heat/hotness) all are manifestations of power, prestige, femininity and divinity.

The cosmology will incorporate the serer belief of the primodial swamp given the people's origin in the Neolithic subpluvial but also incoporates Dogon and Wodaabe beliefs all being people that have retain in my opinion greater continuity in beliefs of the Green Sahara.

By the end of the Neolithic subpluvial you'll have warring factions of artisan guilds fighting for forest lands below the cliffs that provide fodder and wood for silkworms, pigs and silk production.

You'll have miners of shallow gold, salt natron, bat guano, hyraceum, acaciawood and semi-precious stones just south and around the escarpment.

I think by the time of about the Greeks you'll see cliff and adjoing valley city states with kingmakers that will elect a single ruler for them all.

But also various city states and developing kingdoms around far out mines, salt mines and other regions. I still want Mande people to develop and even war with these Bangime people.

Otherwise I'll be butterflying away the Niger-Congo expansion much less the Bantu expansion completely.

The masquarades are gonna be different in many ways but I'll be taking the time to mark them by astronomy as is done OTL.
 
Last edited:
This combined with the OTL reasons you'd trade with West Africa would certainly increase the appeal of the region to outsiders and add to its wealth, sparking many legends amongst outsiders. Would it be identified the same as Punt, or would it be regarded as some other place?
Egypt would have to realize that West Africa was different from Punt, it's an entirely different cardinal direction departing from Nubia. Plus the Mesopotamians distinguished several different trading kingdoms in Arabia and the Indus despite the distance.
 
I see a highly specialized caste based system of guilds for the first couple thousand years. It'll facilitate the spread of silk production to all the habitable cliffs of the region as they support the spread of tamarind trees, Shea, Baobab, winterthorn, etc.. used to feed silkworms, pigs, sheep, cows and fertilize fields.

Weavers will attain the very unique position somewhat like blacksmiths found throughout Africa which is to say respected but feared for their powers of transmutation. It'll be different because the activities involved won't have the same sort of awe inducing smelting and smithery can have. It will be gendered oppositely with men harvesting raw material and making pottery but afterwords being the work of women.

Weaving doesn't involve anything as spectacular as smelting but it does involve making many things into one. There's nyama in that.

This is how writing is going to start, isn't it - through cloth patterns, like nsibidi only more so? That could also be part of the magic of the silk-producer caste, which would mean that writing and record-keeping will be women's work in this culture.

I would also love to see this timeline's West African tapestries.

But also various city states and developing kingdoms around far out mines, salt mines and other regions. I still want Mande people to develop and even war with these Bangime people.

Definitely. The idea of civilization will spread beyond its original inventors as has happened everywhere.
 
Weaving doesn't involve anything as spectacular as smelting but it does involve making many things into one. There's nyama in that.

This is how writing is going to start, isn't it - through cloth patterns, like nsibidi only more so? That could also be part of the magic of the silk-producer caste, which would mean that writing and record-keeping will be women's work in this culture.

I would also love to see this timeline's West African tapestries.

I'm really influenced by two papers
https://www.researchgate.net/public...l_Efficacy_and_Cultural_Significance_of_Sheen

And another one that was taken off online but it's on an old phone of mine.

Tembo, M.S. (2010). The Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies. Eurocentric Destruction of Indigenous Conceptions: the Secret Rediscovery of the Beautiful Woman in African Societies

There are also quite a few passages in old books that highlights this obsession from the Tuareg to the Korana in South Africa over the qualities of sheen from metals to minerals and the sorts of embodied power and aura that arises from it. It interweaves with the glow and brightness of women who come of age and the degree of energy they exude out.

Good stuff over all

Definitely. The idea of civilization will spread beyond its original inventors as has happened everywhere.

I'm really trying to keep them in Bandiagara and limiting the transmission of written language. Even increasing metal production could cause numerous butterflies in West Africa and Africa as a whole if it's too early.

Honestly it's why I want craftspeople up in the cliffs, covered and escorted by the former herders in a ritualized manner and create peg bridges on the cliffs/trails above the cliffs.
 

Vuu

Banned
HAve something take care of our friend the tsetse fly and we might find ourselves with interesting results
 
Does this tie into, or compete with, the incense (myrrh?) trade?

I picture this going through Petra, making it even more significant, & earlier.

Are there other trade route cities that would benefit that didn't OTL?

Also, if there's more silk in North Africa & Europe, do they discover its value as a "layer" of armor? AIUI, it helped protect against arrows, like a crude Kevlar.
 
Last edited:
OTL there was silk in Kos, probably from another species of moth. That source being closer and accessible by sea should totally outcompete African silk traded overland. Unless, of course, the African silk were much higher quality. (As actual Silkworm silk is.)
 
Does this tie into, or compete with, the incense (myrrh?) trade?

I picture this going through Petra, making it even more significant, & earlier.

Are there other trade route cities that would benefit that didn't OTL?

Also, if there's more silk in North Africa & Europe, do they discover its value as a "layer" of armor? AIUI, it helped protect against arrows, like a crude Kevlar.
There is hyraceum and civet available.

West African myrrh does exist but with Sudan and Egypt so close to Mediterranean and Red Sea trade its not all that worth export.

Tbh arrow is going to go through silk.

OTL there was silk in Kos, probably from another species of moth. That source being closer and accessible by sea should totally outcompete African silk traded overland. Unless, of course, the African silk were much higher quality. (As actual Silkworm silk is.)
Kos silk was many things

Weak: in strength
Tedious: in harvesting by terms of cocoon of silkworm, output of raw filaments and thirdly geographically fixed to the island itseld
Unspectacular: Eastern Eurasian silk swallowed the market in an instant.

Wild West African silk is in-between the qualities of domesticated Asian silk and wild Asian silk. Given that a few thousand years of domestication would have a silk quality superior of that to Asia.

Unlike asian silk and silk worms that feed on mulberry trees that could grow throughout Europe the tree hosts of African silks would make it past southern turkey in sheltered southern exposed mid elevation sites.

Anyways I don't even think I'm gonna do this TL tbh, I got bored with jt after I was done doing my research :p
 
Question, however: if chufa is that efficient, what made people not cultivate it as a primary staple in more places? Growing conditions?

Just noticed this.

Anyways it is commonly cultivated in West Africa and is used as a beverage and sweet porridge.

Like most things that come easy, Chufa lacks prestige. Millet, Sorghum, rice, corn etc... Grains that are harder to grow and have lower yields but associated with access to resources and time spent do.

This PDF
They make reference to it in the Mandara
section but this is honestly the most accessible and comprehensive paper of an African region's agricultural history

https://journals.openedition.org/ethnoecologie/1836

I always recommend it to folks, it's in French though but Google translate has gotten better over the years.

Talks about prestige in crops within the context of the Western Soudan in passing.
 
There is hyraceum and civet available.

West African myrrh does exist but with Sudan and Egypt so close to Mediterranean and Red Sea trade its not all that worth export.

Tbh arrow is going to go through silk.


Kos silk was many things

Weak: in strength
Tedious: in harvesting by terms of cocoon of silkworm, output of raw filaments and thirdly geographically fixed to the island itseld
Unspectacular: Eastern Eurasian silk swallowed the market in an instant.

Wild West African silk is in-between the qualities of domesticated Asian silk and wild Asian silk. Given that a few thousand years of domestication would have a silk quality superior of that to Asia.

Unlike asian silk and silk worms that feed on mulberry trees that could grow throughout Europe the tree hosts of African silks would make it past southern turkey in sheltered southern exposed mid elevation sites.

Anyways I don't even think I'm gonna do this TL tbh, I got bored with jt after I was done doing my research :p

That’s quite a shame. I was looking forward to reading it :(
 
Maybe somebody else will write one. There's always hope.
If whoever picks it up doesn't do proper research im gonna pick it apart piece by piece.

African anything in TLs on AH are generally lackluster in studies. It's like someone gets really generalized history and spins it with European or Asian models of linear "advancement".
 
If whoever picks it up doesn't do proper research im gonna pick it apart piece by piece.

African anything in TLs on AH are generally lackluster in studies. It's like someone gets really generalized history and spins it with European or Asian models of linear "advancement".

Well, at least they know where to go for help ;)
 
Last edited:
Top