Free Republic

[2-1/4 hour documentary] Today, the Songhai Empire is all but forgotten by history. But this medieval kingdom was once the most powerful force in Africa. Find out how this civilization grew up on the fringes of the Sahara Desert, among some of the most extreme conditions that nature can throw at us. Discover how it grew and flourished, passing through a process known as the imperial cycle, and learn about what ultimately caused its sudden and dramatic collapse.

[Captain Cooke] continued by stating that the people he met on Kauai were not "aquainted with our commodities, Except iron; which however, it was plain, they had....in some quantity, brought to them at some distant period.... They asked for it by the name of Hamaite." It is interesting to note that a Spanish word for iron is "Hematitas"... No Spanish map has yet been found which shows the location of a shipwreck in the mid-Pacific., However, many maps show these islands. In fact most charts of the Pacific printed in Europe after 1570 show a group of Islands in this...