I took this post’s photo at 3.16 pm on 14 October 2025.
My vantage point was a ridge-top in Morocco’s Anti-Atlas – the southwestern part of the Atlas Mountains.
This region’s climate is very harsh, but the pictured valley has “traditionally” received enough water to support agriculture, which is why there is so much terracing.
Over the last several years, however, drought has rendered the terraces (temporarily?) useless.
Immediately behind me was a strategically-located, solid and venerable structure.
Effectively, it used to be a bank – a bank which was fully operational several centuries before the establishment of certain Italian and German financial institutions which are routinely described as “the world’s oldest banks”.
All will be explained in future, multi-image posts.
Suffice for now that North Africa’s so-called “Berber granaries” are amazing, and they were certainly not just granaries.
Anyone who has visited some surviving examples – and learned a little of their history – will find it ridiculous that almost all online sources still describe European banks which were established in the 15th and 16th centuries as “the world’s oldest”.