FROM “THE REMOTEST SPOT ON EARTH,” a brand description of the last coin issuing entity we looked at (Tristan da Cunha, tiny volcanic island in the South Atlantic, few hundred people), we hop to northernmost North Africa: Tunisia. The sociology is as different as can be. The remote island has only hosted humans for a few centuries. There were people in Tunisia before there were modern humans.
Tunisia has had written history almost as long as there has been writing. People have been making coins there almost as long as we have been making coins.
North Africa is five countries. From west to east they are Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. They are big countries, except for Tunisia. Little Tunisia is only a bit smaller than the American state of Washington, which is not tiny, but Libya, on the east, is twenty percent larger than Alaska, and Algeria, to the west, is almost twice as large as the largest American state.
Tunisia has the northernmost point in Africa. That actual point, a couple of hundred miles from Sicily, is currently sparsely inhabited. The modern city of Tunis is somewhat to the south, built on the landward side of a big lake. The ruins of Carthage are on a coastal salient, about ten miles away.
There is a story that Tunis, the city, was a Berber settlement that grew into a commercial-military operation, to do business with and keep an eye on what the Phoenicians were doing in Carthage. Carthage took over Tunis in the earliest days of its imperial expansion.
Tunisia is part of what is now called the
