Though in the villages life continues more or less unchanged, even here, as the older generations are gradually dying, there are ever fewer who understand the esoteric background of their beliefs than in former times. Even so, the Parthenon in all its splendor constituted the smallest part of Athens, while the average citizen lived in a flimsy dwelling of sun-dried clay and timber, the refuse at the city's edge an open invitation to the plague. Moreover, if we are unfamiliar with African culture, it is not so much because it never existed. Early visitors were overawed by such a display of wealth and gold as they had never seen in contemporary Europe. The city became a center of learning and a haven for scholars.
More profit is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.
On one of his frequent commercial and diplomatic missions in North Africa, he was captured by pirates and presented to Pope Leo X as a slave. Converted to Christianity after one year of imprisonment, he took the name Leo, lived in Rome where he wrote several learned works, but returned to Africa before 1530, where he died a Muslim in Tunis c. 1554. About a century later, however, the slow Sahara trade routes became outmoded by swifter sea transportation, and Moroccan invaders had all but broken the back of Songhay. A confusing circumstance to the researcher of African religions is also the absence of written text of sacred scriptures past or present, as well as of any prophet or avatar, whose name has been preserved for posterity. For lack of such 'Bibles' one has to rely on the fairly sizable, if secondhand, chronicles of early explorers, ethnographers, missionaries or government officials, later followed by the sociologists and anthropologists, who have recorded the oral traditions and generally presented their own observations.