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Moroccan archaeologists have discovered the oldest known agricultural society in northwest Africa. This is a discovery that reshapes our understanding of Mediterranean history.
The region, known as the Maghreb, is ideally placed to serve as a major hub for cultural development and intercontinental connections, Cambridge University scientists said.
The importance of the North African region in the Iron Age and Islamic periods is well known, but there are major gaps in our knowledge of the archeology of the period between 4000 BC and 1000 BC, the researchers said.
New field research conducted at Oued Bet in Morocco reveals that it was the largest agricultural complex in Africa outside the Nile Valley between 3400 BC and 2900 BC.
Oued Bet ridge and river in Morocco (Toby Wilkinson/Ancient)
The researchers said the discovery indicates the existence of a large agricultural settlement in the area “comparable in size to Early Bronze Age Troy”.
“This is currently the earliest and largest agricultural complex in Africa beyond the Nile corridor,” they wrote in a study published in the journal Antiquity.
“For more than a century, the last great unknown of late Mediterranean prehistory has been the role played by societies in the southern Mediterranean, on the African coast west of Egypt.”
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The Oued Bete site first attracted attention in the 1930s when construction work by the French colonial government uncovered numerous polished stone axes and grinding artifacts.
Archaeologists discovered remains of domesticated plants and animals, as well as pottery from the Late Stone Age, during their latest field survey.
“The concentration of Oued Bet pottery and stone tools is unprecedented on the African continent at this time outside the Nile corridor and its immediate vicinity, and is also exceptional from a Mediterranean perspective,” they noted.
Map of northwestern Maghreb showing Oued Beit (Toby Wilkinson/Ancient)
They also discovered deep storage pits, like those found on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar on the Iberian Peninsula, which is now part of Spain and Portugal.
At archaeological sites on the Iberian Peninsula, archaeologists discovered ivory and ostrich eggs, pointing to links with Africa.
All this points to the Maghreb countries contributing to the formation of the Western Mediterranean in the 4th millennium BC, archaeologists say.
Scientists said this community made significant contributions to the formation of the early social world. “Oued Bet and the northwestern Maghreb region will henceforth occupy an essential and fundamentally revised position in the post-Mediterranean prehistory,” they said.
