Lost Civilizations: Who Were the Garamantes?
Funded by an EU grant, researchers from the University of Leicester are investigating an ancient Saharan population, called the Garamantes, dating back to the period from 500 BC to AD 600. The team’s archaeological findings in southern Libya have proved to be crucial in shedding more light on this scarcely-known civilization and the history of pre-Islamic Africa.
Prehistoric Libyan rock paintings in Tadrart Acacus reveal a Sahara once lush in vegetation and wildlife.
Map of the Roman empire under Hadrian (ruled 117–138 AD), showing the location of the Garamantes kingdom, in the desert regions south of the Roman province of Africa proconsularis (Tunisia, Libya).
Credit: Andrein / Wikimedia Commons
Credit: Talessman / Wikipedia
After four years, the project has achieved significant results that will have profound implications for the scholars’ understanding of the historic relationships between the Mediterranean world and the Sub-Saharan area, leading to a reshaping of the history and archaeology of the African continent.
The Garamantes were an early civilisation, broadly contemporaneous with the Greco-Roman Mediterranean societies (c.500 BC – AD 700). Hitherto, the contribution of the Garamantes has been minimised or overlooked in general books on the archaeology, civilisation and historical geography of Africa. It can now be argued that they represent the earliest indigenous urbanised state in the central Sahara, a veritable civilisation built on sophisticated oasis agriculture, advanced manufacturing outputs and trade with zones to north and south of the Sahara.
They were a focal point in pre-Islamic times for communication networks that linked the Nile, the Mediterranean and the Maghreb with the Sub-Saharan societies around Lake Chad and the Niger Bend. The existence of an early state of considerable power and sophistication in the Central Sahara is thus of more than local (Libyan) significance. It has profound implications for our understanding of the historic relationships between the Mediterranean world (and Europe) and Sub-Saharan Africa.
David John Mattingly
Sterry, M.; Mattingly, D.J.
doi:10.1017/S0263718900009729
Mattingly; D.J.2013
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2016/08/lost-civilizations-who-were-garamantes.html
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