Latest / Timbuktu: Africa's Forgotten Center of Knowledge — Fexingo History
The Lost Maps of Timbuktu: How West Africans Charted the World
When Europeans first reached the West African coast, they found kingdoms with sophisticated knowledge of geography — and maps that challenged everything they thought they knew. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore Timbuktu's forgotten cartographic tradition. They trace the journeys of scholars like al-Wangari, who calculated longitude using lunar eclipses, and examine a remarkable 1490 world map from the Italian cartographer Henricus Martellus that shows a strangely accurate southern Africa — leading some to suspect West African informants. They discuss the Timbuktu scholar Ahmad…
The skinny
The skinny isn't ready yet — notes appear once the transcript is processed.