Libyco-Berbers

 

◙ The Greeks gave the name of Libyans to all the peoples who lived in northern Africa, from the oases west of the Nile to the Strait of Gibraltar, the Columns of Hercules. 

 

◙ Herodotus had noticed that: ''... in Libya, the shores of the sea that border it northward from Egypt to Cape Soloeis, which marks the end of the Libyan continent, are inhabited from one end to the other by Men of Libyan race divided into many peoples...'' (Herodotus, Stories, II,32). 

 

◙ To the south, the Greeks did not know the boundaries of the areas occupied by these peoples. For them, the libyc world ended where the land of the Blacks began, the ones they called the Ethiopians (Aethiops: dark skin, burnt skin). 

 

◙ Wanting to map the establishment of the "Libyan" peoples is a difficult task because of the gaps in knowledge, and on the other hand because of their nomadism.

 

◙ In the Maghreb, the "Mauretanian" period that preceded Roman times saw the emergence, probably as early as the 4th century BC, of three main kingdoms:

1 - In the northwest of present-day Morocco, a federation of peoples and tribes was formed that gave birth to the kingdom of Mauretania, or kingdom of the Moors, which stretched from the Atlantic to the Mulucha River.

2 - Between the Mulucha and the Amsaga River (now Oued el-Kebir-Algeria), the kingdom of the Masaesyles stretched.

3 - Between the Amsaga River and the territories of Carthage stretched the kingdom of the Massyles. In the 3rd century BC, these last two kingdoms were reunited in the kingdom of Numidia.