THE BERBER MEDITERRANEAN HERITAGE
From Neolithic to Pre-Roman Antiquity
- ACADEMIA -
The roots of the North African Berbers have been deeply set within the Mediterranean cradle, way before any Islamic influence. The impact has profoundly left its mark on the nascent Berber identity. So much so that Islam has accepted to merge the creeds and particularities, which were largely planted inside a general sub-conscience. This perspective is now widely acknowledged by many fields, such as archaeology, sociology, history, or existing written records. Even more striking, the mitochondrial DNA or the latest technique of myth reconstruction offers another compelling proof.
To implement the weight of the Mediterranean heritage, it seems useful to recall briefly some of the existing main studies to get a clearer knowledge of this issue.
The historical resources existed even before the Christian Era. As a matter of fact, they originated in Prehistory. It is not a surprise if it is related to geolocation. The nearest islands in the Strait of Sicily serve as a relay for exchanges between the two coasts. ‘The Mediterranean lake is prone to storms, but at no avail: from one shore to the other, encounters have always existed with (obviously) by exchanging blows, women, foodstuffs, knowledge, gossip: and not only gossip, but also cereal seeds, pottery, goats and cows, poultry, horses, wheels, and even the zero. In a nutshell, ‘civilization’. Malta and the Italian islands are first serving this purpose. Gabriel Camps, an archaeologist, and anthropologist, also mentions this age-old heritage: ‘Prehistoric ties with Sicily, Malta, Italy, and Sardinia had introduced the first elements of a Mediterranean civilization’. Camps mentions the origin of the first Berber ceramic, mainly also of the first symbolic geometric design through the exchanges with the nearest Italian islands in the Strait of Sicily. A book by J-B Moreau, a ceramist artist, analyzes the art of the Berber pottery of Algeria, whose influence is: ‘that of a human culture born with the first agrarian civilization’. G. Camps’ researches converge on the role played by the Capsian 9,000 years ago. The Capsian culture flourished in south Tunisia near the former Capsa (today’s Gafsa). ‘We hold with the Protomediterranean Capsian, the first Maghrebins, we can - with no imprudence - set on the top list of the Berber lineage’. Regarding the Capsian, he also adds that: ‘their works of art remain the oldest in Africa and that we can be assured that they are the origin of the artistic wonders of the Neolithic, […] at the origin of the Berber art.
The North-South influence is strengthened by an East-West contribution, mostly originating from the Phoenician and Greek cultures.
The first influence originates from the city-States of Phoenicia. As great navigators, the Phoenicians have not only shipped technology and knowledge but also a lasting emblematic spirituality found with the sign of Tanit or the value of the number five symbolically embodied in Fatima’s Hand. These Master Mariners and Traders would play a solid regional impact both wide and irreversible, but mostly longstanding related to History. Its importance increased with the Canaanites who, forced to leave with the Hebrew invasion, join the Phoenicians and even stay in their trading colonies, set as far away as on the Atlantic coast: Gades (Cadix, in Spain) between the 12th and 11th c. B.C., or Lixus (Larache, Morocco) in the 12th century B.C.E. This is an open gate to the next Jewish migration, enabled by the existing linguistic and commercial ties between Tyr and Jerusalem.
Around the 10th century B.C.E., the Phoenicians adopted an alphabet, whose importance played a major role, in particular for the ancient Greek alphabet. Yet, the Libus [Λιβύη] had also their own alphabet. Up to now, it has been hard to know its origin with certitude. The Tifinagh alphabet may have been inspired by the Phoenician alphabet, at the same time as having a native origin. According to Mansour Ghaki: ‘If its signs or some of them are very old and could be dated back to Prehistory, its attested spelling in different alphabets remains historical’. Mr. Ghaki adds: ‘All the questions surrounding the Libyc language, its spelling and alphabetical script remain unanswered; yet this fact does not deprive this form of writing to be important knowing that it has been used since the 5th century B.C.E., according to some theories. This is an age-old form of writing, as the Tifinagh is still in use nowadays. It is a conspicuous achievement that this form of writing has existed at least since the middle of the 1st Millenium BCE.’
The roots of the Greek civilization come from the Minoans, but it has also been under the influence of the Egyptians and even more under the Phoenicians. Whatsoever, the Greek heritage has had a strong and lasting effect on the Arts, thoughts, and language, but also on the spiritual beliefs. A mark that shows through noticeable characters or anecdotes belonging to Greek Mythology. Ulysses stops for a while on the Lotophages Island (today’s Berber Jerba); Heracles plants firmly the columns of a strait named after him; Atlas, a Titan condemned to hold up the sky at the far end of the western world, where the sun god Helios takes his chariot down into an ocean we call ‘Atlantic’. This former end of the world is also the secret location where the Hesperides, nymphs of the evening kept a Garden of Golden Apples - fruits of immortality - owned by the goddess Hera. Another Greek myth comes up out of Lake Tritonis (in the southern part of Tunisia), where the goddess Athena spends her childhood with Pallas, the daughter of the marine god Triton, a sea messenger.
Then comes Perseus bound to slay the Gorgon Medusa within the den of the three monster-sisters in the Libyan desert. The Greek colony of Cyrenaica was founded by the inhabitants of Thera (Santorini) and Crete in 630 BCE. Later on, Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) came to Egypt and founded Alexandria in 331 BCE. To fully legitimate his title as a Pharaoh, the young Macedonian went to the Berber oasis of Siwa (in 331 BCE) to consult the Ammon’s oracle. The Greek influence lasts till the Punic colony of Carthage. Massinissa (c238-148 BCE), the Numidian King, is a great admirer of the Greek culture, and so is Hannibal (247-183 BCE), the Carthaginian, whose tutor was a Greek. Jean Servier reminds us of the Aegean influence of Kabila (during the 3rd - 2nd Millenium BCE): ‘we come across 'amendas' - the double-edged ax - the Aegean labrys’.
The myth and the symbols are not only a source of inspiration for ceramics, but also for jewelry, weaving designs, as well as for rugs, or even tattoo signs. The Numidian monumental architecture (mausoleums and cenotaphs) remains another source of inspiration from the Strait of Sicily. This is why Jean Servier tells that the Berber civilization is: ‘the expression of a Maghreb thought deeply rooted in the shared Mediterranean legacy […] since Neolithic times'.
G. Camps had previously analyzed the Mediterranean origins already attested by Science: ‘According to a recent study made by M.-C. Chamla in Kabylia, the Mediterranean type represents 70% of the population'. Since then, the human genome project has confirmed the heritage. National Geographic project on the Maghreb DNA concludes: ‘The Maghreb and North Africa are often considered as belonging to the ‘Arab world’. Yet, the results show that the Arab genome is in minority in Tunisia, whose population is identical to the rest of the Maghreb’. Only 4% of the Tunisians have an Arab genome, against 88% of the North African genome.’
This short retrospective, on the origins of the Maghreb area, shows that it is wrong to say that the south-Mediterranean culture is Arab. Nonetheless, it could be characterized as being Arabo-Berber by considering the impacts of religion, politics, and language. Lévi-Strauss had already pointed out that it was inconsistent to speak of various races since Mankind’s cradle was in Africa. A new study of Myths reconstruction, with the phylogenetic method, corroborates this ancient African heritage. An analysis of the Ovidian myth of Pygmalion by Julien d’Huy reveals that one of its origins could be dated back to the Prehistory of the Berber world. Undoubtedly, the North-African population shares a common Mediterranean heritage; a sea, which is a bridge between North and South, despite all the strong, common beliefs, which tend to elude a shred of scientific evidence.
Christian Sorand
English version in Academia.edu
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