Prehistory & History of Libya: One of The Oldest Civilisations on The Planet
Introduction to the History of Libya:
The ancient history of Libya, the "undiscovered country", is mainly known to us through a few scattered ancient Egyptian references and loose Greek and Roman descriptions, such as those of Herodotus, Diodorus and Sallust, who impolitely, in his Jugurthine War, said that: "Africa was in the beginning peopled by the Gaetulians and Libyans, rude and uncivilized tribes, who subsisted on the flesh of wild animals, or on the herbage of the soil like cattle. They were controlled by neither customs, laws, nor the authority of any ruler; they roamed about, without fixed habitations, and slept in those shelters to which night drove them." The more recent hypo-thesis regarding the history and the origin of the Libyans are no better than Sallust's hallucinations. Some say the ancient Libyans came from Asia, supremacists say they arrived from North Europe, Aryans purport they were Greek colonists, while we must not forget those who say they came from Libyan Poseidon's Atlantis, which Plato located near the Atlas Mountains in North Africa. Other more interesting sources of Libyan history come from the largest library of rock drawings and engravings in the world: the Sahara desert, which are yet to be studied and interpreted. Libya's rich archaeological remains were first noticed during the Italian occupation, where preliminary excavations produced some outstanding results. But although the Second World War quickly brought an end to this period of excavation, steps were taken afterwards by the British administration and the Libyan government to build up an Antiquities Department. The most ancient of these archaeological remains, namely stone-age implements and Neolithic tools, like grain mortars, still lay scattered around the surface of the desert, looted by visitors and buried by sand for future generations to rediscover. Full scientific and archaeological survey of Libya will take decades, if not centuries, to materialise, and until then, it is difficult to conclude an archaeological history of Libya. Therefore, proper history of Libya remains to be written, and must include the recent genetic evidence, presented in a symposium of European geneticists, historical linguists and anthropologists, held recently in Madrid, in which scientists concluded that the various theories put forward regarding the origin of the ancient Libyans have no scientific foundation, and that genetic results prove their continuous existence in North Africa for the last 50,000 years. Moreover, archaeology further extends this continuous existence to 100,000 years. Libya and the whole of North African littoral was originally inhabited by an indigenous group of ancient Berber tribes, whose linguistic unity proves that an ethnic sub-stratum of "autochthones" single race existed in North Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Sudan and from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, covering 11 countries, including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Canary Islands, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. This linguistic unity is part of a larger union which includes ancient Egyptian, Chadic, Ethiopian, Semitic and Omotic languages of East Africa, in what is originally known as Hamito-Semitic and now renamed Afro-Asiatic or Afrasiatic.
100,000 Years Ago:
The most important Neanderthal site from Libya is the Cave of Haua Fteah', near Marsa Sousa, in eastern Libya; other North African sites include Jebel Irhoud, Temara and Tangier. The Neanderthals were fairly short and had long skulls, protruding at the back, and heavier brows and jaws. They were the first humans to design clothes out of animal skin and the first in line to bury their dead. The Haua Fteah' in eastern Libya is one of the largest prehistoric cave-sites in the world and certainly the largest in the Mediterranean basin. A super-massive structure, providing continuous archaeological record from 100,000 years ago to the present. According to C.B.M McBurney (Libya in History, p. 7), "During the Last Interglacial period some 90,000 years ago Cyrenaica was occupied by an exceptionally inventive and advanced group of Paleolithic hunters, among the most technologically progressive communities so far known to have existed at the time." These ancient Libyan hunters lived on wild cattle, gazelle, snails and marine molluscs, and made tools far in advance of anything known at the time, including a bone flute. This hardly known discovery, which McBurney brought to the attention of the international community way back in the 1950s, remains one of the best evidences that humans have existed continuously in one site in Libya for 100,000 years.
50,000 BC to 30,000 BC:
About 37,000 years ago, Libya, and much of North Africa, was occupied by a tall, large-brained, and powerfully built humans, known as the Cro-Magnon. The remains of this type were found to be older than other Cro-Magnon samples from other sites (Europe and Middle East), and it was widely believed that they were the direct ancestors of the Berbers and the Iberians. Cultural evidence from Fezzan, the home of the classical Garamantes Kingdom, then the most advanced people in the Sahara, goes back to more than 30,000 years. Stone implements dated to the late Acheulean and the Aterian (named after Bir el-Ater) cultures (100,000 - 30,000 BC) were found in numerous sites from the Fezzan area, and, according to most sources, many more await discovery. The dating of Fezzan's rock drawings to 12000 BC is widely disputed and many scholars call for pushing this date farther back in time on the light of the recent discoveries, and also strongly criticised the old techniques originally used to date the work some 40 or 50 years ago.
This work (Brief History & Prehistory of Libya) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. (Note: this paragraph must remain intact including the active link to the original article at http://www.temehu.com/History-of-Libya.htm).
The ancient history of Libya, the "undiscovered country", is mainly known to us through a few scattered ancient Egyptian references and loose Greek and Roman descriptions, such as those of Herodotus, Diodorus and Sallust, who impolitely, in his Jugurthine War, said that: "Africa was in the beginning peopled by the Gaetulians and Libyans, rude and uncivilized tribes, who subsisted on the flesh of wild animals, or on the herbage of the soil like cattle. They were controlled by neither customs, laws, nor the authority of any ruler; they roamed about, without fixed habitations, and slept in those shelters to which night drove them." The more recent hypo-thesis regarding the history and the origin of the Libyans are no better than Sallust's hallucinations. Some say the ancient Libyans came from Asia, supremacists say they arrived from North Europe, Aryans purport they were Greek colonists, while we must not forget those who say they came from Libyan Poseidon's Atlantis, which Plato located near the Atlas Mountains in North Africa. Other more interesting sources of Libyan history come from the largest library of rock drawings and engravings in the world: the Sahara desert, which are yet to be studied and interpreted. Libya's rich archaeological remains were first noticed during the Italian occupation, where preliminary excavations produced some outstanding results. But although the Second World War quickly brought an end to this period of excavation, steps were taken afterwards by the British administration and the Libyan government to build up an Antiquities Department. The most ancient of these archaeological remains, namely stone-age implements and Neolithic tools, like grain mortars, still lay scattered around the surface of the desert, looted by visitors and buried by sand for future generations to rediscover. Full scientific and archaeological survey of Libya will take decades, if not centuries, to materialise, and until then, it is difficult to conclude an archaeological history of Libya. Therefore, proper history of Libya remains to be written, and must include the recent genetic evidence, presented in a symposium of European geneticists, historical linguists and anthropologists, held recently in Madrid, in which scientists concluded that the various theories put forward regarding the origin of the ancient Libyans have no scientific foundation, and that genetic results prove their continuous existence in North Africa for the last 50,000 years. Moreover, archaeology further extends this continuous existence to 100,000 years. Libya and the whole of North African littoral was originally inhabited by an indigenous group of ancient Berber tribes, whose linguistic unity proves that an ethnic sub-stratum of "autochthones" single race existed in North Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Sudan and from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, covering 11 countries, including Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Canary Islands, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad. This linguistic unity is part of a larger union which includes ancient Egyptian, Chadic, Ethiopian, Semitic and Omotic languages of East Africa, in what is originally known as Hamito-Semitic and now renamed Afro-Asiatic or Afrasiatic.
100,000 Years Ago:
The most important Neanderthal site from Libya is the Cave of Haua Fteah', near Marsa Sousa, in eastern Libya; other North African sites include Jebel Irhoud, Temara and Tangier. The Neanderthals were fairly short and had long skulls, protruding at the back, and heavier brows and jaws. They were the first humans to design clothes out of animal skin and the first in line to bury their dead. The Haua Fteah' in eastern Libya is one of the largest prehistoric cave-sites in the world and certainly the largest in the Mediterranean basin. A super-massive structure, providing continuous archaeological record from 100,000 years ago to the present. According to C.B.M McBurney (Libya in History, p. 7), "During the Last Interglacial period some 90,000 years ago Cyrenaica was occupied by an exceptionally inventive and advanced group of Paleolithic hunters, among the most technologically progressive communities so far known to have existed at the time." These ancient Libyan hunters lived on wild cattle, gazelle, snails and marine molluscs, and made tools far in advance of anything known at the time, including a bone flute. This hardly known discovery, which McBurney brought to the attention of the international community way back in the 1950s, remains one of the best evidences that humans have existed continuously in one site in Libya for 100,000 years.
50,000 BC to 30,000 BC:
About 37,000 years ago, Libya, and much of North Africa, was occupied by a tall, large-brained, and powerfully built humans, known as the Cro-Magnon. The remains of this type were found to be older than other Cro-Magnon samples from other sites (Europe and Middle East), and it was widely believed that they were the direct ancestors of the Berbers and the Iberians. Cultural evidence from Fezzan, the home of the classical Garamantes Kingdom, then the most advanced people in the Sahara, goes back to more than 30,000 years. Stone implements dated to the late Acheulean and the Aterian (named after Bir el-Ater) cultures (100,000 - 30,000 BC) were found in numerous sites from the Fezzan area, and, according to most sources, many more await discovery. The dating of Fezzan's rock drawings to 12000 BC is widely disputed and many scholars call for pushing this date farther back in time on the light of the recent discoveries, and also strongly criticised the old techniques originally used to date the work some 40 or 50 years ago.
This work (Brief History & Prehistory of Libya) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. (Note: this paragraph must remain intact including the active link to the original article at http://www.temehu.com/History-of-Libya.htm).