Timbuktu can tell you that we are right at the heart of the world." Timbuktu is a sister city to the following cities: Timbuktu Timbuktu (), also spelled Tinbuktu, Timbuctoo and Timbuktoo (; ; Koyra Chiini: "Tumbutu"), is an ancient city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali. It had a population of 54,453 in the 2009 census. Starting out as a seasonal settlement, Timbuktu became a permanent settlement early in the 12th century. After a shift in trading routes, Timbuktu flourished from
Timbuktu shards on the surface. A survey of the area by Susan and Roderick McIntosh in 1984 identified several Iron Age sites along the el-Ahmar, an ancient wadi system that passes a few kilometres to the east of the modern town. An Iron Age tell complex located southeast of the Timbuktu near the Wadi el-Ahmar was excavated between 2008 and 2010 by archaeologists from Yale University and the Mission Culturelle de Tombouctou. The results suggest that the site was first occupied during the 5th century BC, thrived throughout the second half of the 1st millennium AD and eventually collapsed sometime during