Maria Traspaderne |
Rabat (BLAZETRENDS).- The Sahara was not always a desert. It went through times when it had a string of lakes, river basins and meadows that made up a friendly landscape for human expansion. A Spanish-Moroccan archaeological project that has been excavating for 17 years in northern Morocco confirms this theory of the “green Sahara” and points out that the first humans expanded faster than previously thought.
In the now arid lands of the Jerada region, in the extreme northeast of the Maghreb country, since 2006 a team from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and another from the Mohamed V University of Oujda have excavated dozens of sites with animal remains and sometimes human presence, ranging from 2.5 million to 10,000 years old.
The findings confirm that in this area now bordering the Sahara, bordering Algeria, depressed and ex-mining, there was a cyclical green savannah through which the “hipparion” ran, an ancestor of the horse with three hooves; the “dinofelis”, a species of saber-toothed tiger, or a macaque ancestor of the Barbary that dates back 2.5 million years.
Tools from 1.5 million years ago
No human remains have yet been found in the different sites, but evidence of their presence has been found: stone tools and also marks left by these tools on animal bones.
Some of these finds are already dated and are from 500,000 years ago, the same time as the oldest human testimonies found in Algeria or in the sites near the Moroccan city of Casablanca.
But others are still pending analysis and the researchers believe that, due to the morphology of the tools, they could date back more than 1.5 million years. This date would be close to 3 million years old for the remains of man’s ancestors found in Kenya and Tanzania, or 7 million years old for Chad, areas considered the cradle of the human race.
For the archaeologist specializing in human evolution and director of IPHES, Robert Sala, who leads the project, what was found in Morocco confirms that “cyclically the Sahara disappears as a desert and there are connections throughout the continent”, which allowed ” humans spread very rapidly” and, in fact, “faster than previously thought”.
“Perhaps the cradle encompasses all of Africa”
“At the moment we are still talking about the cradle (of humanity) in the east and in Chad,” Sala told BLAZETRENDS in Rabat, although he added that “little by little we are seeing that perhaps the cradle is very large and encompasses all of Africa.”
“It will be very difficult -indicates the archaeologist- to know where the beginning is. At the moment, the oldest is in East Africa, but we are convinced that with a little time and work we will be able to show that here (in Morocco) it is as old as there”.
The most widely held theory is that humans appeared in East Africa and spread from there north across the Sahara on the one hand, and north through the Nile Valley on the other. These last groups of humans were the ones that reached Asia and Europe and there is no evidence at the moment, says Sala, that they “crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.”
Sala and his team resumed excavations in 2022, after the pandemic, but this year they have not yet been able to do so due to lack of permits. His intention is to carry out a new campaign in autumn, which would last between 15 and 20 days and in which between 15 and 30 people can participate.
Pending the pending dates, the archaeologist hopes to continue with the excavations to advance knowledge of the origins of man, but also to help the society of Jerada, a depressed agricultural and livestock area. “We want heritage and archeology to serve so that the region can move forward.”