As the desert surrounding them began to dry up around 2000 BC,the people who occupied the plains and mountains of northwestAfrica became virtually isolated. They remained at an early formof cultural development, hunting wild animals, herding stock, orsettling to simple agriculture. The Greek called them Libyans,Romans referred to them as Africans, Numidians and Moors; theArabs would dub them Berbers.
The Berber were fair skinned people, closer to Indo-Germanicthan Semitic, who gathered in tribes and practiced subsistenceeconomy, either through basic farming or transhumance herding(the movement of flocks and herds from winter and summerpastures, some up to 200 miles apart!). It is thought that loosealliances were formed between farming and herding tribes to avoidthe conflict of one tribe bringing their cattle through the cropsof another.
Around 1000 BC, the Phoenicians began to use the North Africancoastline as a trade route to Spain from Syria. The Phoenicians,who preferred to sail by day and in sight of land, began to buildcoastal settlements for their ships to rest at. These ports werechosen by the ease a small population would have defending it.The Phoenicians had no interest in Africa as a resource (otherthan murex: a shellfish from which purple dye could beextracted), and thought the interior land to be quite hostile.
To the Berber, however, even the smallest settlement became afascinating place where they could trade and gain knowledge ofsettled living. The Phoenicians, never being able to turn downthe opportunity to wheel and deal, began interacting with theBerber tribes. It was not long before the Berbers had adaptedtheir own form of writing from their civilized neighbors, andgained their first taste of city living.
By the sixth century BC, the Greek had begun to heavily musclein on Phoenician trade. Eventually, the Greek city states inSicily attempted to push the nearby Phoenician settlements offthe island. A wholly Greek Sicily was unthinkable, and soonCarthage, the largest of the Phoenician port cities, became theleader and protector of the Phoenician people. The strugglebetween the Phoenicians and the Greeks lasted over one hundredyears.
In the end, it was the Greeks who triumphed. The Phoenicians,having been dealt a heavy blow, and looking for a place of newresource, began exploring their own African backyard. The successof this fifth century exploration becomes apparent in therenaming of the Phoenicians, to the Carthaginians.
It was not long before the Carthaginians implemented Berbermanpower in their plans, using their farming as a resource andtheir manpower in the army. This gave the Berbers a smattering ofcivilization. Word spread, and not long thereafter, chieftainswere organizing their tribesmen into agricultural kingdoms in theNumidian mountains.
Upon this cultural mix eventually landed the heavy hand ofRome.
