. The crop was first domesticated along the river. placed on a
Ptolemaic map. The
River Ger is visible at bottom. Note it is placed, following
Ptolemy, as just south of the land of the
Garamantes, in modern
Libya, constricting the continent to the land from the central
Sahara north. . The mouths of the
Senegal River and
Gambia River are postulated to flow into a lake, which also feeds the "Ger"/"Niger River", which in turn feeds the "Nile Lake" and
Nile River. At the end of the
African humid period around 5,500 years before present, the modern Sahara Desert, once a
savanna, underwent
desertification. As plant species sharply declined, humans migrated to the fertile Niger River bend region, with abundant resources including plants for grazing and fish. Like in the
Fertile Crescent, many food crops were
domesticated in the Niger River region, including
yams, African rice (
Oryza glaberrima), and
pearl millet. The Sahara
aridification may have triggered, or at least accelerated, these domestications. The region of the Niger bend, in the
Sahel, was a key origin and destination for
trans-Saharan trade, fueling the wealth of great empires such as the
Ghana, Mali, and
Songhai Empires. Major trading ports along the river, including Timbuktu and Gao, became centers of learning and culture. Trade to the Niger bend region also
brought Islam to the region in approximately the 14th century CE. Much of the northern Niger basin remains Muslim today, although the southern reaches of the river tend to be Christian. Classical writings on the interior of the Sahara begin with
Ptolemy, who mentions two rivers in the desert: the "Gir" (Γειρ) and farther south, the "Nigir" (Νιγειρ). The first has been since identified as the
Wadi Ghir on the north-western edge of the
Tuat, along the borders of modern
Morocco and
Algeria. This would likely have been as far as Ptolemy would have had consistent records. The Ni-Ger was likely speculation, although the name stuck as that of a river south of the Mediterranean's "known world".
Suetonius reports Romans traveling to the "Ger", although in reporting any river's name derived from a
Berber language, in which "gher" means "watercourse", confusion could easily arise.
Pliny connected these two rivers as one long watercourse which flowed (via lakes and underground sections) into the Nile, a notion which persisted in the Arab and European worlds – and further added the Senegal River as the "Ger" – until the 19th century. While the true course of the Niger was presumably known to locals, it was a mystery to the outside world until the late 18th century. The connection to the
Nile River was made not simply because this was then known as the great river of "
Aethiopia" (by which all lands south of the desert were called by Classical writers), but because the Nile like the Niger flooded every summer. Through the descriptions of Leo Africanus and even
Ibn Battuta – despite his visit to the river – the myth connecting the Niger to the Nile persisted. Many European expeditions to plot the river were unsuccessful. In 1788 the
African Association was formed in
England to promote the exploration of Africa in the hopes of locating the Niger, and in June 1796 the Scottish explorer
Mungo Park was the first European to lay eyes on the middle portion of the river since antiquity (and perhaps ever). He wrote an account in 1799,
Travels in the Interior of Africa. Park proposed a theory that the Niger and
Congo were the same river. Although the Niger Delta would seem like an obvious candidate, it was a maze of streams and swamps that did not look like the head of a great river. He died in 1806 on a second expedition attempting to prove the Niger-Congo connection. In 1946, three Frenchmen, Jean Sauvy, Pierre Ponty and movie maker
Jean Rouch, former civil servants in the African
French colonies, set out to travel the entire length of the river, as no one else seemed to have done previously. They travelled from the beginning of the river near
Kissidougou in Guinea, walking at first till a raft could be used, then changing to various local crafts as the river broadened and changed. Two of them reached the ocean on March 25, 1947, with Ponty having left the expedition at
Niamey, somewhat past the halfway mark. They carried a
16mm movie camera, the resulting footage giving Rouch his first two ethnographic documentaries: "Au pays des mages noirs", and "La chasse à l'hippopotame". A camera was used to illustrate Rouch's subsequent book "Le Niger En Pirogue" (Fernand Nathan, 1954), as well as Sauvy's "Descente du Niger" (L'Harmattan, 2001). A typewriter was brought as well, on which Ponty produced newspaper articles he mailed out whenever possible. == Management and development ==