Emily Chan
The remains of an ancient farming community were discovered in Morocco. The society was 5,000 years old and is the oldest of its kind to be found in Africa outside the Nile Valley.
Thousands of painted pottery fragments and stone axe heads were uncovered at the site, suggesting that hundreds of people lived there. The size of the community rivaled that of Bronze Age Troy.
Oued Beht, the site where the previously unknown 5,000-year-old farming community was discovered, is located in northern Morocco. It was first found by French colonists in the 1930s.
For 90 years, it was ignored until a Moroccan archaeologist named Youssef Bokbot decided to conduct excavations there.
Bokbot and colleagues analyzed samples of seeds and charcoal found around the site and dated the community back around 3400 B.C. to 2900 B.C.
The groups that lived there likely had diverse genetic backgrounds, including traditional pastoralists from the Sahara and people originally from the Middle East and the Iberian Peninsula.
“You really have Indigenous influxes all meeting in what we now realize is a melting pot,” said Cyprian Broodbank, a co-author of the study and an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.
The people who lived at the site farmed the land and traded with other societies across the Mediterranean. According to evidence of seeds from large pits, they grew wheat, barley, peas, pistachios, and olives.
Some remains belonging to goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle were also unearthed. The pits pointed to advanced agricultural practices and the ability to store extra food.
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