The Sahara wasn’t always a desert. It lived through a series of lakes, river basins, and grasslands. friendly landscape for human expansion. A Spanish-Moroccan archaeological project excavated in northern Morocco for 17 years confirms this ‘green Sahara’ theory and suggests that early humans expanded faster than previously thought.
A team from the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution (IPHES) and the University of Mohammed I, Oujda, has excavated at dozens of sites since 2006 in the now arid territory of the Jerada region in the extreme northeast of the Maghreb country. With animal remains and sometimes human presence ranging from 2.5 million to 10,000 years old.
The findings are in what is now the border of the Sahara, on the border with Algeria, in this region where there are depressed and old mines, there was a circular green savanna ‘hipparion’, the ancestor of the three-toed horse, ran; a species of saber-toothed tiger or ‘dinofelis’, an ancestor of the Berber macaque dating back 2.5 million years.
Tools from 1.5 million years ago
In different deposits no human remains have yet been found, but evidence of their existence has been found: stone tools and also the marks these vessels left on animal bones.
Some of these finds are already ancient and date to 500,000 years ago, contemporaneous with the earliest human testimonies found in Algeria or at sites near Casablanca, Morocco.
But others still await analysis, and researchers believe: Based on the morphology of the tools, they can be dated to more than 1.5 million years ago.. This date would be close to 3 million years old for human ancestral remains found in Kenya and Tanzania, and closer to 7 million years old for Chad, considered the cradle of the human race.
“The cradle of humanity could be the whole of Africa”
For Robert Sala, an archaeologist specializing in human evolution and IPHES director of the project, Those found in Morocco confirm that “the Sahara has cyclically disappeared as a desert.” and there are continent-wide connections”, allowing “people to spread very quickly” and indeed “faster than previously thought”.
“At the moment we are still talking about the cradle[of humanity]in the east and in Chad,” Sala told EFE in Rabat. maybe the cradle is too big and covers all of Africa“.
“It will be very difficult to know where the beginning is,” says the archaeologist. Currently the oldest in East Africabut with a little time and work we believe we can show that it is as old here (in Morocco) as it is there.”
The most common theory is that humans originated in East Africa. and from there they spread north over the Sahara on the one hand and north along the Nile valley on the other. These last human groups were the ones that reached Asia and Europe, and there is currently no evidence that they “crossed the Strait of Gibraltar,” Sala says.
Sala and his team resumed excavations in 2022 following the pandemic, but have yet to do so this year as permits were not available. It aims to launch a new campaign in the fall that will last 15 to 20 days and attract 15 to 30 people.
Waiting dates are expected, The archaeologist hopes to continue excavations to advance knowledge about human origins., but also to help the community of Jerada, a troubled farming and livestock region. “We want heritage and archeology to help the region move forward.”
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