The Iberomaurusian is a backed bladelet lithic industry found near the coasts of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. It is also known from a single major site in Libya, the

Haua Fteah Haua Fteah () is a large karstic cave located in the Cyrenaica in northeastern Libya. This site has been of significance to research on African archaeological history and anatomically modern human prehistory because it was occupied during the Mid ...

, where the industry is locally known as the Eastern Oranian.The "Western Oranian" would refer to the Iberomaurusian in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, but this expression is seldom used. The Iberomaurusian seems to have appeared around the time of the

Last Glacial Maximum The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), also referred to as the Late Glacial Maximum, was the most recent time during the Last Glacial Period that ice sheets were at their greatest extent. Ice sheets covered much of Northern North America, Northern Eur ...

(LGM), somewhere between c. 25,000 and 23,000 cal BP. It would have lasted until the early

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

c. 11,000 cal BP. The name of the Iberomaurusian means "of

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

and

Mauretania Mauretania (; ) is the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern present-day Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Its native inhabitants, ...

", the latter being a Latin name for Northwest Africa. Pallary (1909) coined this termPallary, P., 1909. Instructions pour la recherche préhistorique dans le Nord-Ouest de l'Afrique, Algiers. to describe assemblages from the site of La Mouillah in the belief that the industry extended over the strait of Gibraltar into the

Iberian peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

. This theory is now generally discounted (Garrod 1938), but the name has stuck. In Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, but not in Morocco, the industry is succeeded by the

Capsian The Capsian culture was a Mesolithic and Neolithic culture centered in the Maghreb that lasted from about 8,000 to 2,700 BC. It was named after the town of Gafsa in Tunisia, which was known as Capsa in Roman times. Capsian industry was concentr ...

industry, whose origins are unclear. The Capsian is believed either to have spread into North Africa from the

Near East The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

, or to have evolved from the Iberomaurusian. In Morocco and Western Algeria, the Iberomaurusian is succeeded by the Cardial culture after a long hiatus.

Definition

Alternative names

Because the name of the Iberomaurusian implies Afro-European cultural contact now generally discounted, researchers have proposed other names: *Mouillian or Mouillan, based on the site of La Mouillah (Goetz 1945-6). *The Oranian, based on the Algerian region of

Oran Oran ( ar, وَهران, Wahrān) is a major coastal city located in the north-west of Algeria. It is considered the second most important city of Algeria after the capital Algiers, due to its population and commercial, industrial, and cultural ...

(Breuil 1930, Gobert et al. 1932, McBurney 1967, Barker et al. 2012). *The Late Upper Palaeolithic (of Northwest African facies, Barton et al. 2005).

Timeline of sites

What follows is a timeline of all published radiocarbon dates from reliably Iberomaurusian contexts, excluding a number of dates produced in the 1960s and 1970s considered "highly doubtful" (Barton et al. 2013). All dates,

calibrated In measurement technology and metrology, calibration is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy. Such a standard could be another measurement device of known a ...

and

Before Present Before Present (BP) years, or "years before present", is a time scale used mainly in archaeology, geology and other scientific disciplines to specify when events occurred relative to the origin of practical radiocarbon dating in the 1950s. Becaus ...

, are according to Hogue and Barton (2016). The Tamar Hat date beyond 25,000 cal BP is tentative.

Genetics

In 2013, Iberomaurusian skeletons from the prehistoric sites of

Taforalt Taforalt or Grotte des Pigeons is a cave in the province of Berkane, Aït Iznasen region, Morocco, possibly the oldest cemetery in North Africa (Humphrey ''et al.'' 2012). It contained at least 34 Iberomaurusian adolescent and adult human skele ...

and Afalou were analyzed for ancient DNA. All of the specimens belonged to maternal clades associated with either North Africa or the northern and southern Mediterranean littoral, indicating gene flow between these areas since the

Epipaleolithic In archaeology, the Epipalaeolithic or Epipaleolithic (sometimes Epi-paleolithic etc.) is a period occurring between the Upper Paleolithic and Neolithic during the Stone Age. Mesolithic also falls between these two periods, and the two are someti ...

. The ancient Taforalt individuals carried the mtDNA Haplogroup N subclades like U6 and M which points to population continuity in the region dating from the Iberomaurusian period. Loosdrecht et al. (2018) analysed genome-wide data from seven ancient individuals from the Iberomaurusian ''Grotte des Pigeons'' site near

in north-eastern Morocco. The fossils were directly dated to between 15,100 and 13,900 calibrated years before present. The scientists found that all males belonged to haplogroup

E1b1b E-M215, also known as E1b1b and formerly E3b, is a major human Y-chromosome DNA haplogroup. It is a division of the macro-haplogroup E-M96, which is defined by the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation M215. In other words, it is one of ...

, common among Afroasiatic males. The male specimens with sufficient nuclear DNA preservation belonged to the paternal haplogroup E1b1b1a1 (M78), with one skeleton bearing the E1b1b1a1b1 parent lineage to E-V13, one male specimen belonged to

(M215*). These Y-DNA clades 24,000 years BP had a common ancestor with the

Berbers , image = File:Berber_flag.svg , caption = The Berber ethnic flag , population = 36 million , region1 = Morocco , pop1 = 14 million to 18 million , region2 = Algeria , pop2 ...

and the E1b1b1b (M123) subhaplogroup that has been observed in skeletal remains belonging to the Epipaleolithic

Natufian The Natufian culture () is a Late Epipaleolithic archaeological culture of the Levant, dating to around 15,000 to 11,500 years ago. The culture was unusual in that it supported a sedentary or semi-sedentary population even before the introduction ...

and

Pre-Pottery Neolithic The Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) represents the early Neolithic in the Levantine and upper Mesopotamian region of the Fertile Crescent, dating to years ago, (10000 – 6500 BCE).Richard, Suzanne ''Near Eastern archaeology'' Eisenbrauns; il ...

cultures of the

Levant The Levant () is an approximate historical geographical term referring to a large area in the Eastern Mediterranean region of Western Asia. In its narrowest sense, which is in use today in archaeology and other cultural contexts, it is eq ...

. Maternally, the Taforalt remains bore the U6a and M1b mtDNA haplogroups, which are common among modern

Afroasiatic The Afroasiatic languages (or Afro-Asiatic), also known as Hamito-Semitic, or Semito-Hamitic, and sometimes also as Afrasian, Erythraean or Lisramic, are a language family of about 300 languages that are spoken predominantly in the geographic su ...

-speaking populations in Africa. A two-way admixture scenario using Natufian and modern sub-Saharan samples (including West Africans and the Tanzanian Hadza) as reference populations inferred that the seven Taforalt individuals are best modeled genetically as of 63.5% Natufian-related and 36.5% sub-Saharan ancestry (with the latter having both West African-like and Hadza-like affinities), with no apparent gene flow from the

Epigravettian The Epigravettian (Greek: ''epi'' "above, on top of", and Gravettian) was one of the last archaeological industries and cultures of the European Upper Paleolithic. It emerged after the Last Glacial Maximum around ~21,000 cal. BP or 19,050 BC, ...

culture of Paleolithic southern Europe. The scientists indicated that further ancient DNA testing at other Iberomaurusian archaeological sites would be necessary to determine whether the Taforalt samples were representative of the broader Iberomaurusian gene pool. Martiniano et al. (2022) later reassigned all the Taforalt samples to haplogroup E-M78 and none to E-L618, the predecessor to EV13.

Notes

References