Jaime Manuschevich
Member
Member # 3005
Rate Member posted 03-27-2006 01:05 PM
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I do not have doubts that in all the coasts of the Mediterranean we will find many other rest archaeological. There, more ago than 12,500 years, the tasiense and capsiense culture existed (in Spanish), that extended by all the present coasts, plus the old coast, from Spain to Kenya. I could be seen in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsian_culturequote:
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The Capsian culture (named after the town of Gafsa) was a Mesolithic culture of the Maghreb, which lasted from about 10000 BC to 6000 BC. It was concentrated mainly in modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, with some sites attested in Cyrenaica (Libya). It is traditionally divided into two variants (often contemporaneous): traditional Capsian, characterized by flake and blade tools, and upper Capsian, with a much greater variety of geometric microliths. Bone tools were also used, and shell beads and decorated objects were made. Capsian sites are typically accompanied by shell mounds and dark-colored ash deposits; some involve caves, while others are open-air. They are often near springs or passes.
During this period, the area's climate was open savannah, much like modern East Africa, with Mediterranean forests at higher altitudes. The Capsians' diet included a wide variety of animals - many no longer present in the area - ranging from aurochs and hartebeests to hares and snails; there is little evidence on what plants they ate.
Anatomically, the Capsians (to use a loose expression) were modern Homo sapiens, classed in two "racial" types: Mechta-Afalou and Protomediterranean. Some (eg Ferenbach 1985) have argued that they were immigrants from the east, whereas others (eg Lubell et al. 1984) argue for population continuity based on physical skeletal characteristics.
It was in the early Capsian period that the first domesticated sheep and goats appear in the area.
Nothing is known about Capsian religion, but their burial methods suggest a belief in an afterlife. Decorative art is widely found at their sites, including figurative and abstract rock art, and ocher is found coloring both tools and corpses. Ostrich eggshells were used to make beads and containers; seashells were used for necklaces. The Iberomaurusian practice of evulsion of the central incisors continued sporadically, but became rarer.
The Capsian culture is often identified by historical linguists as having brought the ancestor of the modern Berber languages to North Africa.
The Eburran culture of the 13th-8th millennia BC in Kenya is also termed the "Kenya Capsian", due to similarities in the stone blade shapes; it is unclear whether this culture is to be linked with the North African Capsian culture.
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Other antecedents of region:
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Prehistory of Central North Africa
The cave paintings found at Tassili-n-Ajjer, north of Tamanrasset, Algeria, and at other locations depict vibrant and vivid scenes of everyday life in the central Maghrib between about 8000 B.C. and 4000 B.C. They were executed by a hunting people in the Capsian period of the Neolithic age who lived in a savanna region teeming with giant buffalo, elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, animals that no longer exist in the now-desert area. The pictures provide the most complete record of a prehistoric African culture.
Earlier inhabitants of the central Maghrib have left behind equally significant remains. Early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa, for example, were found in Ain el Hanech, near Saïda (ca. 200,000 B.C.). Later, Neandertal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles (ca. 43,000 B.C.) similar to those in the Levant. According to some sources, North Africa was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic flake-tool techniques. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 B.C., are called Aterian (after the site Bir el Ater, south of Annaba) and are marked by a high standard of workmanship, great variety, and specialization.
Neolithic cave paintings found in Tassil-n-Ajjer (Plateau of the Chasms) region of the SaharaThe earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Ibero-Maurusian or Oranian (after a site near Oran). The industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghrib between 15,000 and 10,000 B.C. Between about 9000 and 5000 B.C., the Capsian culture began influencing the IberoMaurusian, and after about 3000 B.C. the remains of just one human type can be found throughout the region. Neolithic civilization (marked by animal domestication and subsistence agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghrib between 6000 and 2000 B.C. This type of economy, so richly depicted in the Tassili-n-Ajjer cave paintings, predominated in the Maghrib until the classical period.
The amalgam of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers. Distinguished primarily by cultural and linguistic attributes, the Berbers, overshadowed by larger empires, tended to be overlooked or marginalized in historical accounts. Roman, Greek, Byzantine, and Arab Muslim chroniclers typically depicted the Berbers as "barbaric" enemies, troublesome nomads, or ignorant peasants. They were, however, to play a major role in the area's history.
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But they were a culture of fishermen, hunters and gatharer.
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Jaime Manuschevich