Rabat – “Clear evidence” points to Morocco’s Anti-Atlas Mountains as a possible “larger scale” site for prehistoric occupation.
According to a study in the scientific journals Almogaren issue 52, the discovery of debitage stone at Imaoun suggests the existence of a possible prehistoric community, which would have existed about twenty kilometers northeast of the Akka oasis in the Anti-Atlas.
While prospecting in the region in 2017 and 2018, researchers discovered Levallois lithic material in Imaoun. The Levallois material refers to the knapping technique, a sophisticated way of shaping stone tools in prehistoric times.
Julien Biver, Carmen Hause and Luc Hermann, researchers and co-authors of the study, believe that “The homogenous production based on the use of local raw material could indicate an important site.”
In the research paper, they underline that “Even if very few pieces were discovered, this site could shed light on human occupations in South-West Morocco due to the absence of data for the Middle Palaeolithic in that area.”
The study notes that the region is defined by its “complex geological systems,” and its substrate, mainly consisting of sandstone and quartzites, which go back to the Paleozoic period.
Read also: Scientists Discover World’s Oldest Starfish Fossil in Morocco
Among the recorded discoveries lay “two nuclei, as well as five flakes all belonging to Levallois technology,” which were not collected “in order to preserve the little contextual information associated with the latter,” notes the research paper.
Ultimately, the researchers believe that due to the homogeneity in its techniques, combined with the raw material used, the discovery “suggests a site of larger scale and is therefore clear evidence of prehistoric occupation.”
Morocco has been the home to many historic and prehistoric discoveries such as rare materials, tools, and fossils.
There were two noteworthy discoveries in February 2021. A team of Moroccan and Spanish scientists discovered a 2.5 million-year-old macaque fossil in Guefait, Morocco. Meanwhile, another team of scientists discovered a crushed ossified lung of a 66 million years old coelacanth in Oued Zem, in Morocco’s Beni Mellal-Khenifra region.
