Prehistoric Africa

Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 75. Chapters: Australopithecus, Archeology of Algeria, Mitochondrial Eve, Prehistoric Tunisia, Recent African origin of modern humans, Human mitochondrial molecular clock, Great Zimbabwe, Oldowan, Prehistoric Egypt, Matobo National Park, Homo erectus, Twyfelfontein, Drakensberg, Koobi Fora, Howiesons Poort, Australopithecus sediba, Sahara pump theory, Australopithecus africanus, Azaouad, Klasies River Caves, Olduvai Gorge, Neolithic Subpluvial, Tsodilo, Loropéni, Hofmeyr Skull, Cradle of Humankind, Laetoli, Olorgesailie, African archaeology, Tassili n'Ajjer, Omo remains, Homo sapiens idaltu, Acacus Mountains, Homo gautengensis, Tichit, Prehistoric North Africa, Kabwe skull, Senegambian stone circles, Taung Child, Stillbay, Saharan rock art, Middle Awash, Gobero, Bura culture, Eurasian Adam, Bura archaeological site, Tiya, Later Stone Age, Walls of Benin, Mousterian Pluvial, Bidzar, Abbassia Pluvial, Sangoan, Kondoa Rock Art Sites, Ileret, Aterian, Cekeen Tumulus, Taforalt Caves, Wilton culture, Saldanha man, Lupemban culture, Koro Toro, Magosian. Excerpt: Outlines of early Tunisia includes roughly chronological and topical subjects. These illuminate early epochs of Tunisia, especially in terms of its Berber people, who became this land's oldest inhabitants. The Berbers lived as an independent people in 'prehistory'. Later they became unassimilated 'hosts' to long-term settlers from Phoenicia, called here Punic, who ruled over the land for many centuries. Scattered evidence of the pre-Punic epochs sheds a rather dim light on the prehistoric and pre-Berber situation, and also on Berber origins and later development. Evidence from Berber language history provides a singular, ancient perspective: yielding a suggested reconstruction of remote millennia of prehistory; also, insight into the ancient cultural-linguistic relations of Tunisian Berbers not only with their neighboring Berber brothers, but with other peoples. With their more distant cousins in Egypt and in the Semitic world (including Phoenicia), the Berbers share affinities. Here, the prehistoric seamlessly entered the earliest historic, as described mostly by later Greek and Roman writers (surviving Punic writing being very scarce; Berber writing found being limited to inscriptions). Phoenician and Berber first met outside of Tunisia, well before the rise of Carthage. An invasion of Phoenicia was led by a pharaoh of a Berbero-Libyan dynasty (the XXII) of Ancient Egypt. History recorded for all Berbers of Northwest Africa begins approximal to the founding of Carthage, in present-day Tunisia. Within Punic territory, the Berbers persisted as a separate, submerged entity, as a culture of mostly passive urban and rural poor within the civil structures created under Punic rule. Berber peoples also formed quasi-independent satellite societies near the frontier, and continued as 'free republics' in the steppes beyond. Although the majority were a subject people in symbiosis with dominant Carthage, the Berbers followed their own traditions concurrently. Tunisia remained