Capsian culture
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The Capsian culture (named after the town of Gafsa) was a Mesolithic culture of the Maghreb, which lasted from about 10000 BC to 6000 BC. It was concentrated mainly in modern Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, with some sites attested in Cyrenaica (Libya). It is traditionally divided into two variants, often contemporaneous rings or passes.
During this period, the area's climate was open savanna, much like modern East Africa, with Mediterranean forests at higher altitudes. The Capsians' diet included a wide variety of animals, many no longer present in the area, ranging from aurochs and hartebeest to hares and snails; there is little evidence on what plants they ate.
Anatomically, the Capsians (to use a loose expression) were modern Homo sapiens, classed in two "racial" types: Mechta-Afalou and Proto-mediterranean. Some (eg Ferenbach 1985) have argued that they were immigrants from the east, whereas others (eg Lubell et al. 1984) argue for population continuity based on physical skeletal characteristics.
It was in the early Capsian period that the first domesticated sheep and goats appear in the area.
Nothing is known about Capsian religion, but their burial methods suggest a belief in an afterlife. Decorative art is widely found at their sites, including figurative and abstract rock art, and ocher is found coloring both tools and corpses. It has been suggested that several rock paintings from Tassili n'Ajjer depict the shamanic use of hallucinogenic mushrooms [1], however, this interpretation remains controversial. Ostrich eggshells were used to make beads and containers; seashells were used for necklaces. The Iberomaurusian practice of evulsion of the central incisors continued sporadically, but became rarer.
The Capsian culture is identified by some historical linguists as a possible ancestor of the speakers of modern Berber languages in North Africa.
The Eburran culture of the 13th-8th millennia BC in Kenya is also termed the "Kenya Capsian", due to similarities in the stone blade shapes; it is unclear whether this culture is to be linked with the North African Capsian culture.
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[edit] Bibliography
- 2001D. Lubell. Late Pleistocene-Early Holocene Maghreb. In, P.N. Peregrine & M. Ember (eds.) Encyclopedia of Prehistory, Volume 1: Africa. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, pp. 129-149.
