Bejaia Province
Bejaia exhibits horizontal gene transfer like knowledge crossing cultures: Fibonacci learned numerals here in 1190, now it's the western Mediterranean's top oil port.
Bejaia Province sits at the transmission point where ideas and resources have crossed between civilizations for a millennium. Around 1190, the young Fibonacci arrived at this port city (then called Bugia) where his father managed a Pisan trading post. Here he learned the Hindu-Arabic numeral system from local scholars—a horizontal gene transfer of mathematical knowledge that would transform European commerce when he published Liber Abaci in 1202. The city was a medieval center of learning; the jurist Al Ghobrini called its scholars "princes of science." Even the French word for candle, "bougie," comes from the beeswax this port exported.
Today Bejaia is the most important oil port in the western Mediterranean. Since 1959, a pipeline from the Hassi Messaoud fields in the Sahara has fed crude oil to tankers in this protected sickle-shaped bay. The port's 13.7-meter channel depth handles Panamax and Super-Panamax vessels; it's the only port in Algeria authorized to handle dangerous goods. Bejaia Mediterranean Terminal operates the only ship-to-shore gantry cranes for container traffic in the country.
The province interfaces Grande and Petite Kabylie, the mountainous Berber heartland of 3-4 million people. This Kabyle identity persists as cultural transmission across generations, even as Algeria constitutionally recognizes Amazigh language. The port that transmitted Hindu-Arabic numerals to medieval Europe now transmits Saharan crude to modern Europe—same geographic logic, different cargo.