Prehistory and Antiquity
The area of present-day Morocco has been inhabited since Paleolithic times, at least since 200,000 BCE.[citation needed] During the Upper Paleolithic, the Maghreb was more fertile than it is today, resembling a savanna more than today's arid landscape.[11] 22,000 years ago, the Aterian was succeeded by the Iberomaurusian culture, which shared similarities with Iberian cultures. Skeletal similarities have been suggested between the Iberomaurusian "Mechta-Afalou" burials and European Cro-Magnon remains. The Iberomaurusian was succeeded by the Beaker culture in Morocco.
Studies have discovered a close link between Berbers and the Saami of Scandinavia which confirms that the Franco-Cantabrian refuge area of southwestern Europe was the source of late-glacial expansions of hunter-gatherers that repopulated northern Europe after the last ice age.[12]
Ruins of Chellah, Salé
North Africa and Morocco were slowly drawn into the wider emerging Mediterranean world by the Phoenicians who established trading colonies and settlements in the early Classical period. Substantial Phoenician settlements were at Chellah, Lixus and Mogador,[13] with Mogador being a Phoenician colony as early as the early 6th century BC.[14][page needed]
Morocco later became part of a North African empire head-quartered in Carthage. The earliest known independent Moroccan state was the Berber kingdom of Mauretania under king Bocchus I. This kingdom in northern Morocco, not to be confused with the present state of Mauritania, dates at least to 110 BCE.[15]
From the 1st century BCE the region was part of the Roman Empire as Mauretania Tingitana. Christianity was introduced in the 2nd century CE and gained converts in the Roman towns, among slaves and some Berber farmers.
In the 5th century CE, as the Roman Empire declined, the region was invaded from the north first by the Vandals and then by the Visigoths. In the 6th century CE, northern Morocco became part of the East Roman, or Byzantine Empire. Throughout this time, however, the Berber inhabitants in the high mountains of the interior of Morocco remained unsubdued.
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