Garamantes Garamantes Edmund Berry Godfrey Category="Archaeological sites in Libya"Category="Berber"Category="History of Sahara"The Garamantes were Saharan people who used an elaborate underground Irrigation system, and founded a kingdom in the Fezzan area of modern-day Libya, in the Sahara Desert. They were a local power in the Sahara between 500 BC and 500.

There is not much information about the Garamantes, not even the name they used to call themselves; Garamantes was a Greek name which the Romans later adopted. Most of what we know comes from Greek and Roman sources, and recent archaeological excavations in the area, though large areas in ruins are still unexcavated. Another important source of information are the abundant rock paintings, many of which depict life prior to the rise of the realm.

Various authorities debate whether Garamantes were a Berber people or a Nilo-Saharan people. Claudius Ptolemis refers to the Garamantes as "Ethiopies" meaning they were not white skinned Berbers, and were probably related to the Negroid populations which once inhabited the Fezzan, as suggested by skeletal evidence and rock art.

Garamantian life

In the 1960's, archaeologists excavated part of the Garamantes' capital (modern Germa, about 150 km west of modern-day Sebha) named it Garama (An earlier capital, Zinchecra, was located not far from the later Garama.). Current research indicates that the Garamantes had about eight major towns, three of which have been examined as of 2004. In addition they had a large number of other settlements. Garama had population of some four thousand and another six thousand living in villages within a 5 km radius.

The Garamantes were farmers, engineers and merchants. Their religion was based on Egyptian models, and some of their dead were buried in small pyramids. They used the Libyco-Berber script for writing. The discovery of the "Black Mummy" by Professor Fabrizio Mori at the Uan Muhuggiag suggests that there may even have been a long tradition of mummification in the region.

The Garamantes' diet consisted of grapes, figs, barley and wheat. They traded Wheat, salt and slaves in exchange of imported wine and Olive oil, oil lamps and Roman tableware. According to Strabo and Pliny, the Garamantes quarried Amazonite in the Tibesti Mountains.

Archeological remains

The ruins include numerous tombs, forts, and cemeteries. The Garamantes constructed a network of underground tunnels and shafts to mine the Fossil water from under the limestone layer under the desert sand. It was built around 200 BC to 200. The network of tunnels is known to berbers as foggaras. The network allowed agriculture to flourish, but it required the use of slaves to maintain.

History

The Garamantes were probably present as tribal people in the Fezzan by 1000 BC They appear in the written record for the first time in the 5th century BC; according to Herodotus, they were a numerous people who herded cattle and hunted the "Ethiopian Troglodytes", or "cave-dwellers" who lived in the desert, from four-horse chariots. (These people may have been a Khoisan-like race of pygmies who local populations claim once inhabited the region.) Roman depictions describe them as bearing ritual scars and tattoos. Tacitus wrote that they assisted the rebel Tacfarinas and raided Roman coastal settlements.

The Romans kept close trade contacts with Garamantes; archaeologists have even found a Roman bathhouse in Garama. The Roman chronicler Maternus accompanied a Garamantian ruler on a four-month military expedition to what is now the border area of Nigeria. Still, despite of the trade relations, Romans did not really consider them civilized.

The Garamantians represented a challenge to Rome, never giving in to Roman power, while the coastal zones of today's Libya did. Despite this, Herodotus reported that they had no weapons of war, and did not know how to defend themselves.

In the 1st century BC, the Garamantes raided North Africa and clashed with Roman forces. According to Pliny the Elder, Romans eventually grew tired of Garamantian raiding and Lucius Cornelius Balbus captured 15 of their settlements in 19 BC. After a Roman punitive expedition in 70, the Garamantes were forced into an official relationship with Rome and might have become one of the Roman client states.

By around 150 the Garamantian kingdom (in today's central Libya (Fezzan), principally along the still existing Wadi l-Ajal), covered 180,000 square kilometres in modern-day southern Libya. It lasted from about 400 BC to 600.

The decline of the Garamantian civilization is said to be connected to worsening climatic conditions. What is desert today, was fairly good agricultural land and enhanced through irrigation 1,500 years ago. As the fossil water does not replenish itself quickly, over the six centuries of the Garamantian kingdom, the ground water level fell. The kingdom declined and fragmented. Its competitor, the Ghanian kingdom in the western Sudan, became its successor.

Byzantine records claim that the king of Garamantes made a peace treaty with Byzantium in 569 and accepted Christianity. Later Muslim records say that in 668 the king of Garamantes was imprisoned and dragged off in chains. The area was eventually absorbed into the Muslim sphere of influence.

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