ABSTRACT
Mauritania’s mineral wealth has been exploited since Neolithic times. Archeological evidence of a copper mining and refining site near Akjoujt in west-central Mauritania dates from 500 B.C. to 1,000 B.C. The divisive tendencies of the various groups within Mauritanian society have always worked against the development of Mauritanian unity. Both the Sanhadja Confederation, at its height from the eighth to the tenth century, and the Almoravid Empire, from the eleventh to the twelfth century, were weakened by internecine warfare, and both succumbed to further invasions from the Ghana Empire and the Almohad Empire, respectively. In 1961, the French Navy returned to Mauritania and performed second order geodetic surveys of the coast. Interestingly, they recovered some of the old monuments from earlier surveys and re-determined coordinates, both astronomically and geodetically compensated for the local deflection of the vertical as well as re-computed these positions on a different ellipsoid.
