Jdaid rock carvings – Taouz Morocco
Rock engravings are a very rich raw material that make it possible to write history. These rock documents dating back thousands of years are remnants and clues of human existence in such a region. As for the Bani-Dra region, specific territories of Tata province (South Morocco) occupied by Bani Mountain and Oued Dra, contains about 80 high-value rock sites. We cite as an example : Metgourine Adrar, Tircht, Tiggane, Ighir Ighnain, Melalg, Imaoun, Adroum, Tachoukalt…. Sites visited and studied by foreign researchers since colonial times, such as : o. Puigaudeau and M. Senones, R. The Fanechere, H. Lhote, Has. Rodrigue, Has. Simoneau. He said that with the High Atlas " … Draa Medium and Yagour (High Atlas) deserve to be studied comparatively from the point of view of neolithization, because these are the two most important rock sets south of Marrakech".
But despite all that has been edited, it is insufficient to know more about the content of this national heritage that will be able to focus more detail on the director man as an artist and as a narrator who had described in his own way his environment and his way of life.
To find out how important these engravings are in the field of writing history, we will make a chronological passage on the history of the Bani-Dra region based on analyses and interpretations of the contents of the engravings by our researchers quoted The ancient history extracted from the engravings is divided chronologically into several periods.
But despite these efforts this division sometimes poses problems especially the separation between the two in terms of its approximate dating and its characteristics..
The Hunters' Period
The rock figures belonging to this period are almost dominated by wildlife : Elephants, Rhinoceros, Giraffes, Ostriches, Antelopes… , Cattle are very rare.
The dog is present among hunters for the defence and hunting of wild animals. Traps and arrows are also means of hunting to attack prey. In addition, we see the presence of various symbols in several forms : Spirals, Mazes, Circles, serpentiforms… interpreted as traps especially when they are associated with animals, or as symbols that have a religious and spiritual aspect and role.
As for anthropomorphs, man was presented as a wildlife hunter by attacking them by bows, arrows, polished axes… The man's clothes, constituted a phallic case held by a belt that supports an animal tail at the back, A.Simoneau said that "Predynastic Egyptians and their neighbours in Libya are content with a phallic case, held by a belt that supports an animal tail at the back : This costume of "wild" that disappears from the lower Nile valley at the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy, persists among Libyan pastors of the desert steppe who have not changed their kind of life".
The appearance of some figures of cattle among hunters was interpreted by A Simoneau that we are in an environment of hunter-pastors where the two cultures mix, that is, we are in a world of the transition from hunting to pasteurization and domestication. For the majority, the dating of this period would be prior to 3000 Bc., for since then began the Bovidian period, i.e. the beginning of the Neolithic in southern Morocco.
The Bovidian period
Unlike the previous period when wildlife is ubiquitous, the Bovidian period had experienced a predominance of cattle figuration (Cows, Oxen, Buffalo…) presented with details, absent among hunters, such as udders for females the sexual limbs for males, cows on their knees (Tighzdarin to Assif n Tmanart), others with pendeloques at the collar (Tachoukalt in Imougadir)… all these details give us the meaning that man had at that time started the breeding of cattle. It is the transition to domestication and sedentary.
The representation of several figures in a single rock and "the serpentiform decorations are unrealistic and may suggest serifications or ferrades belonging to a herd", sometimes these bovids "wear pendeloques… These attributes have sometimes been interpreted as amulets, bells or more simply baleen… oxen are often in fact bulls, either because sex is duly represented". The lines that pass through the bodies are also interpreted as ropes that attach luggage, i.e.- say they are used as a means of transport. So we are in a domestication environment where man is very close to animals as a breeder.
This domestication began in a wild environment before the appearance of the "beef"
"The Ritual Beef". "So it seems that on the average Draa, beef has adapted to a semi-wild environment…we don't have beef that carries, nor mounted beef, nor oxcart… so we're at the ritual beef stage, between wild beef and carrier beef… This original domestication, uninsured, comes from the late arrival of domesticated bovids on the Draa… ». On the other hand,, mounted beef (4 examples in Adrar Metgourine Akka) represents an evolved era of domestication when man exploited them as a means of transport before the appearance of the horse and camel. This mounted beef is dated to Akka (South Moroccan) dice 2000 Bc, which means a delay in the dating of this beef in Tassili n-Ajer (Algerian Sahara) which goes back to 3500 Bc. From this point of view, neolithization in southern Morocco would be 2500 Bc. compared to tassili, where it dates back to 4000 Bc.
It is also clear that "the pastors of the bovids, Saharan origin, reached southern Morocco". This means that there was a permanent relationship between the Moroccan South and the Central Sahara (Tassili). On their part, O du Puigaudeau and M Senones announce that the Bovidian group is becoming more precise during the second millennium BC. And that's where we saw the dog as a defense and hunting, he was also next to the cattle, « … one of the pets that had a big role in the lives of the people of the South
Moroccan". "The neolithization of southern Morocco is therefore late : the Bovidian wave of the 3rd millennium touches the world still Mesolithic : breeding then begins in southern Morocco, but the pastor models himself on the hunter who retains his essential characteristics".
Man appeared in this environment covered with animal skins as a habit (example in Tamggert n tâyyalin Akka), sometimes he wore what is called the Libyan feather symbol of prestige at imazighen .
In the end, despite the Bovidian domination over the figurations, there is a presence of some characteristics from the previous period (Rhinoceros, Elephants, Ostriches…), which means that man had not quite changed his way of life.
By the way, it should be noted that "The Dra region- Bani was a refuge for Saharan hunters, Atlasic chains, The Atlantic proximity have long maintained in the piedmont valleys sufficient moisture for the great fauna. »
But with the deterioration of the climate towards drought, the majority of these animals had left the region by gaining other wetter ones such as the High Atlas.
The tank period
For H.Lhote, this period is undoubtedly late Bovidian because the figurations of the tanks still exist in a Bovidian environment, they are never accompanied by humans or animals, which poses a problem of knowing the animal used to pull them. For his part, G.Camps found that these tanks in southern Morocco and even throughout the Maghreb are not intended for transport or war, they bear witness to the prestige of a few characters or a particular group. It is also assumed that they are merely road signs engraved by passing travellers in order to locate their route to facilitate their return or to guide other travellers.
But the discovery of eight engraved tanks at the Tircht site (Assif n Tmanart) by O. Puigaudeau and M.Senones "brings a new argument in favour of R.Mauny's theory that makes one of his tank tracks pass through the Oued Tamanart". Knowing that " …R.Mauny has established the western route of these tanks from Figuig, 142 line a road that passes through Taouz, Foum El Hassan, Zemmour, Adrar Tmar, Tagant, Dhar Tichit, Walata and ends up in Mali, in Tondia near Goundam. A branch line connected to the Atlantic the crossroads of oued and tracks of Foum El Hassan, by Douroudi, Timguilcht and Tafraout, his head of line is in Biougra… ». But G.Camps has strongly criticized some maps that try to trace routes of tanks especially in mountainous regions difficult to cross.
On the other hand R.V.Valleverdu believes that Tata tanks accompany the western route to the Sub-Saharan regions in the middle of the 1st millennium BC.
"The Ait Ou Mribet have not lost all memory of the Carthaginians, they call Fniks, Phoenicians. One of their traditions attributes the construction of the Agadir to the top of the mountain…that's why, they say it is still called Agadir n Fniks…These Carthaginians having climbed the Drâa in their conges, came in the interior to exchange what we would call their junk-ceramics, verroteries, fabrics and perfumes- against cereals, oil, skins of wild animals and especially elephant ivory and rhino horns… ».
It was also believed that this western route was very important as the eastern route that passed through Tassili. It could be the same route that would be used with camels before the arrival of the Arabs in the 7th century AD.
The horse period
The figurations of the horse are very rare throughout southern Morocco and in Bani-Dra in particular (2 examples in Tighzdarin), and they are not of great importance compared to those of the Central Sahara (Algeria), where horses are associated with chariots. According to G camps the horsemen came from Egypt via Libya heading west by the Saharan Atlas. this appearance of the horse took place between the 2nd millennium BC. and the first centuries of the 1st millennium BC. They dominated the Bovidians. At first they used the tanks as conductors then they would be horsemen. From the point of view of O du Puigaudeau and M.Senones this period is dated to the Moroccan South of the 1st millennium BC. « …The horse made its appearance with the Hyksos and the peoples of the sea… ». (O du Puigaudeau and M Senones 1964, P 8). The same view is with A.Gaudio, who dated the
coming from the horse from Egypt to the west of about 1200 Bc. (Has. Gaudio 1992, P 5). For his part S.Searight dated the horse ridden throughout the Maghreb of the I millennium BC.
The libyco-amazigh period
Experts are used to linking this period to the previous, because it's hard to separate them. .« …The horse group that will blend without very specific limits with the libyco-Berber group" This period is characterized by inscriptions to the Amazigh character Tifinagh, who " …,In the current state of our knowledge,… can't be older than 750 Bc. ». these numerous inscriptions at the High Atlas are rare in Bani- Dra (2 examples in Assif n Tmanart). In this period appears the use of metal weapons as A. Rodrigue found 40 engraved examples in southern Morocco.
But this theme of metal weapons poses problems especially when they find themselves associated with wild animals. "The combination of rhinoceros and metal axe poses a problem for the time being insoluble. The only satisfactory hypothesis would be to make, at the end of Neolithic times, late hunting practices of a relic fauna with the use of the first metal weapons (Copper ?) ».
And what complexs this problem is that we find some types of axes in Bani- Dra unlike those of the High Atlas where we know that it has a great relationship with the Iberian Bronze Age. The first type to "fan-cutting" it is far from being stone. On the other hand, the second type, which is "bent weapons" is far from metal. The third type of "piriform weapons" similar to those found on the High Atlas Bronze Age station dated 4000 of our era. All we can say, is that
"The Metallurgical Centres of the High Atlas… would not have been exclusively dependent on technological innovations from Europe via Spain or the Middle East, but would have been in contact with populations of metal-weapon pastors of transatlasic origin (Saharan itself ?) ».
In this period the man became an armed horseman of the hallebards, daggers, shields… Very obvious at the High Atlas compared to the Bani-Dra where they are very rare. The very large hands one of the features in the engravings of this period (a single example has Touzirt Assif n Tmanart) dated to the Iberian Peninsula between the 10th and 7th centuries BC.
The Camel period
With climate change in North Africa allowing the dry climate to spread over a large part of this region, it is obvious that the species of animals would also change and replace themselves with others that would adapt to the new climate. Then in these circumstances had appeared the camel. This animal is brought into Egypt by Persians to 500 Bc. then it is stretched to North Africa from the last centuries BC. to be deemed at least at the beginning of the 4th century AD. The figurations of this animal as well as the horse are very rare in the engravings of the region we are talking about, except for a few examples at the rock site of Khaoui El Ktbane (Tata). Abdellah Mezegh |
Vikings in southern Morocco?
From our special envoy Christine Holzbauer
Before the Islamization of Morocco, men from Northern Europe are said to have come, by sea, in the south
of the country in search of the copper they needed to forge their weapons. A thesis that the recent discovery of funerary megaliths and rock paintings seems to accredit
It was July 2001. Fatimatou Malika bent Benata had planted her khaïma, the decorated tent that the nomads of the Sahara love, near the aouinet Azguer well. Arrival at the narrowest of the valley, where gazelles leave their paws in the sand, she had started to look for shelter: the sun was banging hard and she feared that her youngest son would take a hot shot. She had finally slipped, with the child, under one of those rock tables that cut the cliff like so many slices of cake. What was not then his surprise to see, painted on the ceiling, drawings in a perfect state of preservation. There were naked men, armed with a bow, dancing around an ox – azguer, Berber, means beef – and all kinds of wild animals: Antelopes, Ibex, Deer, Felines, Elephants, Ostriches. Who was the artist who had made such beautiful red ochre drawings in such a place not conducive to habitation and when all this could go back well? Fatimatou was perplexed. His first instinct had been to erase these paintings with water. She had failed to dilute them. She had then felt confused that the scenes that followed each other as she crept under the rock referred to rites dating back to the dawn of time.
"Where there were engravings, we could be sure that there was a mine"
Back to the village of M'seied, she hastened to alert the khalifa Babouzaid el-Mghafri, That, in turn, warns the caïd, which informs the governor of Tan-Tan province. Once the authorities in Rabat are notified, the "photos" that the nomad Fatimatou discovered by chance on the ceiling of her rock shelter are beginning to arouse lust. M'seied's khalifa, a friendly 50-year-old who later became a "discoverer" of prehistoric art, informs a journalist who has several specialized guides on the slopes of Morocco, Jacques Gandini, of the existence of rock paintings. The latter, who is in the process of completing one of his works on this region, decides to mount an expedition. He invites a French archaeologist who has been living in Morocco for nearly sixty years, Robert Letan. In addition to the paintings, exceptional for the region – so far, these are essentially engravings that have been found in this western part of the Sahara, unlike The Algerian Tassili or the Chadian Tibesti – they're going to find out, in the upper part of the Chebeika wadi, forty megalithic buildings and structures in the shape of large crescents. The presence of these "geoglyph" mounds – quite similar to those inventoried by Theodore Monod in 1948, found throughout the Moroccan and Mauritanian Sahara – is another major find. These findings raise fears of looting. Except to deny access to sites to researchers, the National Rock Heritage Centre, Marrakesh, which depends on the Ministry of Culture and Communication, does not have the means to control the area. Jacques Gandini is criticised for publishing the GPS coordinates of the paintings of Azguer and Robert Letan for commenting on them in the daily today Morocco… They defend themselves, by press interposed. "Promoting the region, says Jacques Gandini, overarchaeology." He claims to have received the approval of the Ministry of Tourism and the support of the regional governors to say all the good he thinks of the 350 prehistoric sites in Morocco.
Has 82 Years, Robert Letan keeps his feet up, good eye when it comes to crapahuter on archaeological sites. The right look, pinched nostril and cap securely riveted on his head as soon as he leaves home, this colonial artillery soldier, Second-year veteran
World War II, spent his life digging through the stony deserts of the Atlas and The Anti-Atlas. "At the time, we didn't have the comfort of a 4 X 4 air conditioning or GPS safety", does he remember. For this native of Lorraine, who belongs to a generation of self-taught forced to leave the school benches 'to learn to kill!», Africa, and in particular Morocco, where he got in 1944, awakened an inextinguishable thirst: that of a quest for the origins that his work in the mines has further sharpened. "Knowing the history of humanity reassures us, opens up avenues for us, because it puts into perspective the panics to come, shows us that the end of the world is not for tomorrow. In the end, the engineer always wins over the merchant!He insisted, at a conference to explain to his colleagues the rock art too long underestimated in Africa, while he's part of, according to him, beginnings of writing. Its purpose? Helping Moroccan authorities develop 'smart' tourism, which preserves archaeological sites while allowing people to take advantage of the benefits of discoveries from which they are often robbed or the last to be informed. "Without my writings, Tan-Tan's paintings would never have been attributed to a nomad!He says proudly. Even though he is the first to denounce the vandalism that endangers these treasures of humanity and which has forced, Like what, the discoverers of the Lascaut cave to create an artificial cave to satisfy the public: touch the paintings with his fingers; try to strengthen their colour by wetting them; mark their rim with a felt pencil or even paper; not to mention flights, especially in the tombs. "So many heresies that make me shudder when you know how little has been explored about the Sahara and especially Morocco so far.!He is outraged.
Preserving archaeological sites
To ward off a tormented personal history, including this former communist who took part in the trade union fights of 1936 'liberated' in his first two novels (The Blackfoot and Sofia, unsubmissive, published on an author's account and for sale in Casablanca), while conducting long-term historical research on his adopted country, "Mr. Robert" devoted an entire book to the protohistory of southern Morocco. Currently being reissued to include Tan-Tan's discoveries, he reiterates the thesis of a Scandinavian influence on copper metallurgy in the Anti-Atlas Mountains in the Bronze Age. Because, in addition to being a writer, historian and archaeologist, Robert Letan is also a metallurgist. Its main discovery, he owes it to an assignment in Irhem, in the Anti-Atlas Mountains, which are teeming with copper mines in which he has unearthed a great profusion of rock paintings. "So much so that, where there were engravings, we could be sure there was a mine." For him, copper trade occurred before and during the Bronze Age. "Red men from the heart of the sea", which the ancient Hebrew manuscripts of the upper Draa speak of, were probably the ancestors of the Vikings, Dan's, who came to look as far south as Morocco for the raw material they needed to forge their weapons. The use of copper has grown 3000 before Jesus Christ around the Mediterranean basin, thus contributing to the idea that an extension of civilization took place from the Middle East to the west. But, with the depletion of deposits, Scandinavian peoples came to refuel further south, first on the Almeria site, Spain, before going up the Draa River (Between 500 before Jesus Christ and 500 After), to Zagora, where copper bars and amber converged. "The Vikings' foray into the Draa Valley was not realized until after their conversion to Christianity, probably at the same time as their raids on southern Spain and northern Morocco. This also makes it possible to date this mysterious Seita, Christian queen, which the Hebrew manuscripts speak of, who could be the ancestor of the Tuareg."
Mysterious people in the eyes of Arab conquerors and Western explorers, The Tuareg have their origins in the Saharan Berber civilization. The myth of Amamellen, designer of a clean writing, ancestor of tifinagh, refers to a handwriting
cuneiform, not without similarity to that on display at the National Museum, Copenhagen. As for the founding myth of women, he says queen Ti-n-Hinan ("The tents") and his maid Takama, tafilalet (Morocco) on their white mehari, would have found on their arrival in the Haggar a primitive people, Isebaten, with whom they would have had daughters. As well, the noble tribes of Hoggar would descend from the three daughters of Ti-n-Hinan, while Takama's would be the mothers of the vassal tribes. According to this legend, Ti-n-Hinan would have been buried in the 5th century, long before the arrival of Islam in the Sahara. From her, The Tuareg would have inherited their language in addition to a matriarchal society organized in a tribal way.
The search for berberness, Lahoucine Faouzi, 32 Years, has made it the key to its success. For this explorer from Agadir, great lover of the desert and nomadic life, The jackpot arrived with the broadcast in 2001 on Moroccan television, for the first time in the Amazigh language, of a feature film that his production company, Faouzi Vision, produced and directed. "When I proposed a series of 24 documentaries as part of a new programme devoted to travel, Amouddou, RTM (Moroccan Radio-Television) signed right away", He says. The first episode, Tagmoute's memory, which tells the story of a prehistoric village, true living legend because of the presence of rock stones, ancient attics and the tomb of the prophet Daniel, received the best director award at the Cairo Film Festival in July 2002. A great lover of caving, Lahoucine Faouzi founded 1996 with some friends an association with about thirty members, which allowed him to explore a large number of caves. "It was normal for us to be interested in rock paintings", explains Aziz Iguiss, president of the association and official at the Ministry of Finance. Passionate about prehistory, he pushed for a show by Amouddou to be devoted to Azguer's paintings, which it considers to be a "unique heritage for Moroccan archaeology". With the complicity of Robert Letan, Faouzi Vision has set up a new expedition in Tan-Tan, November 2003. "The initiative of these young people is welcome because it will inspire. There is a shortage of volunteers in Morocco to undertake excavations", comments on the person concerned.
Close links between Berberity and Negritude
The expedition began with the blessing of M'seied's khalifa, very proud to show an inscription in tifinagh evoking recent times when elephants still lived in Tazzout Ouarkziz. Once there, she slipped under the shelters in the middle of the desert, crawling as best she could. The scattering of light, the cramped passage, scarcity of air, all this formed like a magical halo around the fragile millennial pictograms. Robert Letan seemed to have regained the dexterity of his 20 Years. He was inexhaustible.. Under the spell, we were blithely going through the centuries. We were amazed at the steatopyges forms – the development of a fat mass in the sacrum and buttocks region – characters depicted, most naked, with a penile case, dancing around animals. Were they Bochimans from South Africa?, hottentots or Bantous? The existence of natural barriers that are difficult to overcome made this unlikely. Even if the dancers of Azguer confirm that, like those whose traces were discovered in Neolithic deposits in southern Tunisia, Algerian or Moroccan, negroid pastors could have settled in the Draa Valley, remained very fertile after the drying up in the 3rd millennium BC.
More important to Robert Letan, the presence of painted tanks, That, unlike those found in the central Sahara, are not harnessed. This type of "human-drawn" tank reinforces, in his view, the hypothesis that Azguer's paintings are more recent than it appears – 'a date close to the final European bronze'. If these tanks are mainly intended for the transport of copper, as he claims, it is then possible to think that these populations (Black) have been in contact with surface megalith builders (Vikings) from northern Europe. In his book on the First
Berber. Between Mediterranean, Tassili and Nile, Malika Hachid of Algeria, Director of the Tassili des Ajjer National Park, asserts that there are "much closer ties than one might have thought between berberity and negritude". According to her, Libyans and Ethiopians of yesterday would be the Tuareg and The Izzegaren-Harratinof of today. Azguer's paintings add to the complex human mosaic of the Sahara Yemeni Jews and the Christianized Nordic populations that, at the time of the metallurgists who preceded the Islamization, auraient pu contribuer au chaînon manquant de la berbérité.
