Djenne-jeno, or “ancient Djenné,” sprung to life roughly 250 years before the birth of Christ, on a floodplain near the banks of the Bani River, not far from where it joins the course of one of the continent’s greatest rivers, the Niger, on its long, trundling arc through West Africa. In its early phases of growth, the city counted more than fifteen thousand residents, many of whom lived inside a high, 1.3-mile-long wall that was twelve feet thick at its base. Another thirty thousand or so people lived in related urban clusters nearby. Early in the Christian era, an aggregate population like
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