Tichitt

Two things sit in the same place here. The Dhar Tichitt sites are the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in West Africa, stone-built by agropastoral communities from around 2000 BC, and they may run ahead of the Ghana Empire. The town itself was founded in the twelfth century as a caravan stop on the road from Oualata to Chinguetti and on to Sijilmasa, and local tradition says there are seven settlements stacked one on another underneath it. It had several thousand people early in the twentieth century and it is going under now: desertification and sand have taken many of the buildings, and a flood in 1999 damaged about 80 percent of what was left. UNESCO listed it in 1996 with the other three Ancient Ksour. Tagant Region.