Pre-
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mosaics at Volubilis
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Colonia, Chellah
History
Before there were dunes, mosques, or even carpet dealers in Morocco, this region was under
water. In the Atlas Mountains and Saharan steppes, strata mark the geologic time and place
where tectonic plates shifted billions of years ago and civilisation surfaced from a rugged
seabed. The earliest evidence of human settlement in Morocco dates from 75,000 to 125,000
BC, when most of North Africa was covered in lush semitropical forest, and the stone tools
used locally were highly advanced technology for the time. But what the proto-Moroccan
‘pebble people’ really needed were radiators: the ice age wasn’t kind to them, and left the
country wide open for settlement when the weather finally began to warm around 5000 BC.
LIVE FREE OR DIE TRYING: THE BERBERS
The fertile land revealed after the great thaw was a magnet for near-eastern nomads, early
ancestors of Morocco’s Amazigh (plural Imazighen, loosely translated as ‘free people’) who
may have been distant cousins of the ancient Egyptians. They were joined by Mediterranean
anglers and Saharan horse-breeders around 2500 BC, with Phoenicians showing up fashionably
late around 800 BC and East Africans around 500 BC.
When the Romans arrived in the 4th century, they didn’t know quite what to make of this
multicultural milieu. The Romans called the expanse of Morocco and Western Algeria
‘Mauretania’ and the indigenous people ‘Berbers’, meaning ‘barbarians’. The term has recently
been reclaimed and redeemed by the Berber Pride movement ( Click here ), but at the time it
was taken as quite a slur.
The ensuing centuries were one long lesson for the Romans in minding
their manners. First the Berbers backed Hannibal and the Carthaginians
against Rome in a protracted spat over Sicily known as the Punic Wars
(264–202 BC). Fed up with the persistently unruly Berbers, the new
Roman Emperor Caligula finally declared the end of Berber autonomy in
the Maghreb (North Africa) in AD 40.Defying Orders under Roman Noses
True to his ruthless reputation, Caligula divided relatively egalitarian Berber
clans into subservient classes of slaves, peasants, soldiers and
Romanised aristocrats. This strategy worked with Vandals and Byzantines,
but Berbers in the Rif and the Atlas drove out the Romans with a campaign
of harassment and flagrant disregard for Roman rules. Many Berbers
refused to worship Roman gods, and some practised the new renegade
religion of Christianity in open defiance of Roman rule. Christianity took
root across North Africa; St Augustine himself was a Berber convert.
Ultimately Rome was only able to gain a sure foothold in the region by crowning local
favourite Juba II king of Mauretania. The enterprising young king married the daughter of Mark
Antony and Cleopatra, supported scientific research and performing arts, and helped foster
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