Archaeologists in Morocco have discovered the remnants of a 5,000-year-old agricultural society, the oldest site ever found in Africa outside of the Nile Valley.
Thousands of stone axe heads and fragments of painted pottery discovered at this site suggest a previously unknown society of hundreds of individuals—comparable in scale to that of Bronze Age Troy—who may have lived together, cultivated the land, and traded with other societies across the Mediterranean.
Aerial view of the Oued Beht archaeological site. (Photo: Toby Wilkinson, OBAP Archive).
The Oued Beht archaeological site in northern Morocco was first discovered by French colonials in the 1930s. After being overlooked for 90 years, Moroccan archaeologist Youssef Bokbot had a hunch that there could be significant findings just beneath the surface and reached out to other experts for collaborative excavation.
The recently published study in the journal Antiquity reveals “a substantial amount of pottery shards and polished axes,” noted co-author Giulio Lucarini, an archaeologist at the Heritage Science Institute of the Italian National Research Council.
By radiocarbon dating charcoal and seed samples found during the excavation, the research team estimated the site dates back to around 3400 to 2900 BCE.
The groups living there may have had diverse genetic backgrounds. According to a 2023 study co-authored by Bokbot, traditional pastoralists from the Sahara, as well as those originally from the Iberian Peninsula and the Middle East, may have settled in this area.
The inhabitants of this site were farmers cultivating barley, wheat, peas, olives, and pistachios on the arid land, based on seed evidence found in large constructed pits. The research team also excavated remains of sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle at the site.
Moreover, the abundance of pottery and stone axe heads found at this location suggests that these Neolithic groups produced goods for trade with various other societies during the Bronze Age and Chalcolithic periods, such as groups in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Other studies have indicated the presence of ivory and ostrich eggs in Europe during this time, but thus far, archaeologists have yet to find evidence showing which societies in Africa might have supplied these items to Europe.
Like the Sub-Saharan region of Africa during this period, North Africa was largely inhabited by hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, nomads who followed livestock migration routes. And while fixed agricultural societies from this time have been found throughout the rest of the Mediterranean, North Africa has been overlooked as a source of archaeological significance.
