History & Archaeological Evidence:Imazighn

 Despite the fact that numerous studies began Berber history from the recent Capsian culture (9000-6000 BC.), there are several studies and fossils (from Casablanca, Cyrenaica, Rabat and Ternifine) documenting the existence of the Berbers in North Africa for at least one million years, when the first wave of early modern humans began to leave Africa, presumably arriving from East Africa to explore the world (cf. Gabriel Camps 1974). Moreover, the Lower Pleistocene sites of Ain Hanech (Algeria) and Casablanca (Morocco) have provided some of the earliest evidence for human behaviour, which, arriving at a time when most archaeologists believed no human artifacts older than the Pleistocene can be found, can only confirm that tool-making humans had lived in North Africa in the Pliocene. Rüdiger and Gabriele Lutz (1955) recall the cultures of Fezzan to have evolved over the past hundreds of thousands of years and vanished under adverse conditions. “Stone tools of bygone eras are lying about in millions, from the relics of early and late Acheulian (up to 500.000 years), Levalloisian (100.000 years) and Mousterian (50.000 years) to Aterian (40.000-20.000 years).”

More recently, there sprung, flourished, and vanished several other cultures across North Africa, many of which are still awaiting study: Libyan Pre-Aurignacian culture (85,000 BC); the Libyan Dabba culture (40,000 BC); the Iberomaurusian culture (22,000 BC; common to both Iberians and Berbers); the Eastern Oranian culture (15,000-9,000 BC); and the Mesolithic (Epipaleolithic) culture of Murzuk in southern Libya (10.000-6.000 BC). The Garamantian civilisation was also one of the later cultures involved in the Sahara's cultural proliferation of civilisations. Libya's prehistoric art heritage and other obscured venues provide a rich research environment for future Berber students and Berberists to explore, once freedom sinks in.

The Haua Fteah Cave in Cyrenaica, Libya, was documented by McBurney and others to preserve a continuous history in Libya from 100,000 BC to the present - one continuous line of living entities in one single cave - the largest cave in the Mediterranean basin and one of the largest in the (visible) world. Does anyone, at all, realise what this means? Did any one, at all, take any notice of this? Libya's previous rulers showed no serious interest in its deepest history, but let us hope the new ones can see the light that made them who they are -- that made them see in bitch-black darkness. Like the martyr Sifaw had said: it will be "papered" one day.

  Berber Nesmenser; Zuwarah, Libya.
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