Garamantes

Among the Garamantes is a spring so cold by day that you cannot drink it, so hot at night that you cannot put your finger into it. '

The Age of Erasmus Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London 1901

They first appeared in the historical record in the fifth century B.C., when Herodotus noted the Garamantes were an exceedingly numerous people who herded cattle (that grazed backward!) and who hunted "troglodyte Ethiopians" from four-horse chariots.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

The success of the Garamantes was based on their subterranean water-extraction system, a network of tunnels known as foggaras in Berber.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

Luckily for the Garamantes -- but less so for their neighbors -- Garamantian population growth gave the new Saharan power a demographic and military advantage over other peoples in Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, enabling them to expand their territory, conquer other peoples, and acquire vast numbers of slaves.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

"The new archaeological evidence is showing that the Garamantes were brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers, and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization," says Mattingly.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

Descended from Berbers and Saharan pastoralists, the Garamantes were likely present as a tribal people in the Fazzan by at least 1000 B.C.

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More information on the Garamantes can be found in The Archaeology of Fazzan (2003), published by the Society for Libyan Studies, London and the Department of Antiquities, Tripoli.

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But prior to recent investigations, most scholars still thought of the Garamantes as little more than desert barbarians living in one small town, a couple of villages, and scattered encampments.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

During the past six years, an archaeological survey in the Fazzan area of southern Libya, led by David Mattingly of the University of Leicester, has revealed that a remarkable, yet obscure desert civilization known to the Romans as the Garamantes constructed almost a thousand miles of underground tunnels and shafts in a successful bid to mine long-buried fossil water.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004

The research, however, now suggests that the Garamantes had about eight major towns (three of which have now been examined) and scores of other important settlements, and that they controlled a substantial state.

Kingdom of the Sands 2004