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The Garamantes (; ) were ancient peoples, who may have descended from Berbers tribes, Toubous tribes, and Saharan Pastoral period (2025). 9781900971027, Department of Antiquities, Tripoli. The Society for Libyan Studies. . ISBN 9781900971027 that settled in the Fezzan region by at least 1000 BC and established a civilization that flourished until its end in the late 7th century AD. (2019). 9780190277734, Oxford Research Encyclopedias. ISBN 9780190277734 The Garamantes first emerged as a major regional power in the mid-2nd century AD and established a kingdom that spanned roughly in the Fezzan region of southern Libya. Their growth and expansion was based on a complex and extensive qanat irrigation system (Berber: foggaras), which supported a strong agricultural economy and a large population. They subsequently developed the first urban society in a major desert that was not centered on a river system; their largest town, Germa, had a population of around four thousand, with an additional six thousand living in surrounding suburban areas. At its pinnacle, the Garamantian kingdom established and maintained a "standard of living far superior to that of any other ancient Saharan society" and was composed of "brilliant farmers, resourceful engineers, and enterprising merchants who produced a remarkable civilization."
Besides Herodotus, historic references to the Garamantes also appear in several other Greco-Roman sources. After conducting a comprehensive review of quotes on the Garamantes from various sources, including Strabo, Arnobius Adv. Gentes, Ptolemy, and Solinus, David Mattingly et al. (2003) concluded:
Clearly, the perception of some of the Roman writers was that some Garamantians were negroid or very Dark skin, whilst others saw them as essentially aligned with the . This mixed picture most likely reflects the ancient reality ... On the evidence of the sources alone, the likelihood is that the Garamantes encompassed a mixture of racial types: Berber, negro and various levels of miscegenation.
Roman depictions describe the Garamantes as bearing ritual scars and tattoos. Tacitus wrote that they assisted the rebel Tacfarinas and raided Roman coastal settlements. According to Pliny the Elder, in response to continuous Garamantian raiding, Lucius Cornelius Balbus and other Romans captured fifteen of their settlements in 19 BC. In 202 AD, Septimius Severus captured the capital city of Garama.
The decline of the Garamantian culture may have been connected to Climate change, or overuse of water resources. Present-day desert in the Sahara was once agricultural land of fairly good quality that was further enhanced through the Garamantian irrigation system. As fossil water is a non-renewable resource, over several centuries of the Garamantian kingdom, the ground water level fell, (2016). 9780884024088, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. ISBN 9780884024088 thereby, contributing to its end in the late 7th century AD.
Nikita et al. (2011) indicated that the skeletons of the Garamantes do not suggest regular warfare or strenuous activities. Nikita et al. (2011) states: "The Garamantes exhibited low sexual dimorphism in the upper limbs, which is consistent to the pattern found in agricultural populations and implies that the engagement of males in warfare and construction works was not particularly intense. ... the Garamantes did not appear systematically more robust than other North African populations occupying less harsh environments, indicating that life in the Sahara did not require particularly strenuous daily activities."
Archaeological ruins associated with the Garamantian kingdom include numerous tombs, forts, and cemeteries. The Garamantes constructed a network of tunnels, and shafts to mine the fossil water from under the limestone layer under the desert sand. The dating of these Qanat is disputed, they appear between 200 BC to 200 CE but continued to be in use until at least the 7th century and perhaps later. The network of tunnels is known to Berbers as Foggaras. The network allowed agriculture to flourish, and used a system of Slavery to keep it maintained.
According to David Mattingly et al. (2003):
The Garamantes contained a significant component of light-skinned Libyans and some at least of these people were buried in monumental graves. This picture differs from the situation in the Sahara in the late Neolithic, as Chamla's work suggests a higher proportion of negroid types at that date, which might suggest that the creation of Garamantian civilisation involved the in-migration of at least some part of the population from regions to the north or northeast. The cemeteries contain a substantial number (over 50 percent) of individuals of either mixed blood or full negro physionomy. Some of these individuals may have been in poorer graves, but not all of them, suggesting that some individuals of mixed race or black skin were prominent within Garamantian society. Given the literary testimony of Garamantian raids against their 'Ethiopian' neighbours, it is likely that some of the negroes present were slaves or descendants of slaves. The maintenance of strong non-negroid traits into late and post-Garamantian contexts would seem to indicate that intermixing of the races was not completely open and may have been structured within Garamantian society.(2025). 9781900971027, Department of Antiquities, Tripoli. The Society for Libyan Studies. ISBN 9781900971027
Francesca Ricci et al. (2013) analysed skeletal samples from the Garamantian site of Fewet in the Fezzan and found that they were similar to the Mediterranean 'Euroafrican' type identified by Sergi, but with some evidence for gene flow from (probably) sub-Saharan populations, "similarly to what Sergi (1951) suggested discussing the possible hybridization between the “Mediterranean” Group I and the “Negroid” Group IV." This gene flow was more evident in the female skeletons, suggesting an influx of non-local females possibly from the Sahel region. (2025). 9788878145948, Edizioni All'Insegna del Giglio. ISBN 9788878145948
Marta Mirazón Lahr et al. (2010) conducted research on skeletons from Fezzan dating from the Roman era and found that the skeletons clustered most closely with Neolithic Sahelian samples from Chad, Mali, and Niger, and secondarily to Roman Egyptians from Alexandria and Nubians from Soleb. 1st millennium BC samples from Algeria and Tunisia were somewhat more distant but still rather close to the Fezzan skeletons. Lahr et al. concluded that the Garamantes had connections with both the Sahel and North Africa. (2025). 9781900971027, Society for Libyan Studies. ISBN 9781900971027
Efthymia Nikita et al. (2011) examined the biological affinities of the Garamantes using cranial nonmetric traits and the Mean Measure of Divergence and Mahalanobis D(2). They were compared to other North African populations, including the Egyptian, Algerian, Tunisian and Sudanese, roughly contemporary to them. Overall, three clusters were identified: (1) the Garamantes, (2) Gizeh and Kerma, and (3) Soleb, Alexandrians, Algerians and Carthaginians. The analysis concluded that the Garamantes were isolated, with the Sahara playing a role as a barrier to geneflow. The distance between the Garamantes and their neighbors was high and the population appeared to be an outlier.
The remains of a young sub-Saharan African woman, which has been dated to the 1st millennium BC and possessed a lip plug that is associated with Sahelian African groups, was buried among other Sub-Saharan Africans that were part of the heterogenous Garamantian population. Power et al. (2019) states: "This ornament demonstrates that some Garamantes individuals shared aspects of their material culture with Sahelian societies more broadly, either through migration or contact, while their burial within Garamantes cemeteries shows their integration into the normative funerary rituals of contemporary Garamantian society. The combination of morphometric and isotopic work further reinforces the view that Garamantian society included individuals of diverse geographical origin, some of whom may have been first generation Trans-Saharan migrants." The craniometric results also identified another sub-group within the Garamantes buried in the Wadi al-Ajjal, with a morphology that is widely observed among Mediterranean people. (2025). 9781108474085, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108474085
One of the most problematic aspects is the language and inscriptions attributed to the Garamantes...Sites in the vicinity of Jarma, the Garamantian capital of what is now known as Fazzan, have abundant inscriptions (Fig. 14.7). 67 They are found cut or painted on dark grey amphorae, in the tombs of Garamantian cemeteries, such as those of Saniat bin Huwaydi.68 A recent project under the auspices of the British Library has digitised most of the known inscriptions and these are described in Biagetti et al.69 Although the inscriptions are in Berber characters, only some are decipherable. Various reasons for this have been suggested; either the messages were deliberately coded, so that only specific readers could understand them. Alternatively, they may have had a ‘ludic’ nature. The most exciting possibility is that they were in a non-Berber language, perhaps Nilo-Saharan or something unknown.(2019). 9781108474085, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108474085
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