[GenXteacher]

I still think Crassus had him beat.

[Alex Murphy]

Using the annual 2199.6per cent rate of inflation, where $100million in 1913 is equal to $2.299.63billion in 2012, Celebrity Net Worth's list includes familiar names like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett; but sitting at number one is Mansa Musa I of Mali.

The West Africa king, the richest person in history, and the ruler of the Malian Empire which covered modern day Ghana, Timbuktu and Mali in West Africa, had a personal net worth of $400 billion at the time of his death in 1331.

The list also includes the man who gave America Wal-Mart, another who developed mail-order shopping around 1870, as well as a few nobles who helped with the Norman conquest of England in the Battle of Hastings nearly one thousand years ago.

So what happened to all of that wealth? Did he get cleaned out by a Nigerian 419 scam?

[RegulatorCountry]

2199.6 percent annual inflation? I’m usually pretty handy with statistics. This strikes me as a typo, outside Zimbabwe or Weimar Germany.

[oblomov]

There are artifacts and ruins of the ancient Greek, Roman, Persian, Babylonian, Mongol, etc empires, but what remains of the Malian empire? They had no common language, and although coeval with other great empires, there are few architectural remnants. IIRC, the Great Zimbabwe was not Malian.

So just one mega-wealthy ruler and an impoverished people without a culture of their own. Some king he was...

[Sherman Logan]

The Rothschilds are worth $350B. Big woop. The Saudi royal family is worth somewhere around $1.5T in personal wealth, and then they more or less own the whole country.

For that matter, by any reasonable standard Stalin owned the USSR and everyone and everything in it. As the current Kim owns N. Korea.

[a fool in paradise]

The West Africa king, the richest person in history, and the ruler of the Malian Empire which covered modern day Ghana, Timbuktu and Mali in West Africa, had a personal net worth of $400billion at the time of his death in 1331.

"You didn' build that," Barack Hussein Obama, "Oh wait... this was before AmeriKKKa, meybe you DID!"

[fieldmarshaldj]

"Spanning 1,000 years and with a combined fortune of $4.317 trillion"

And just think, Zero has managed to spend that amount in less than four years.

[TexasTransplant]

The Obamas Upkeep / Vacations make these folks look like they are on Welfare.

TT

[arthurus]

I think Joe Stalin that quaint Djugashvili character from Georgia should be considered in there. He de facto owned everything and everyone in the Soviet Union and quite a bit outside of his home estate, the USSR.

[elephantlips]

Uh...Solomon.

[OneVike]

Wrong, Solomon was the richest, and wisest. It is believed that King Midas character in the short story was based on Solomon.

So this king may have been the wealthiest man in that span of 1000 years, but that does NOT equal all of human history. Especially when they leave off such men as Solomon, Nebuchadnezzar, the Pharaohs, or any of a number of rulers who lived in the ancient times.