the more fertile lands of the senegambian coast Gambia River and Casamance basins.

At this time, these populations did not use the ethnonym Mandinka, a term that later became popularized to denote those hailing from the Manden heartland of Mali. Instead, they formed a localized, decentralized ruling class that interacted with indigenous forest-dwelling people.. These "Old Mande" or Soos communities established the linguistic and social foundations of the