page_title: Garamantes
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Garamantes / History
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context_page_description: The Garamantes were an ancient civilisation based primarily in present day Libya. They most likely descended from Iron Age Berber tribes from the Sahara, although the earliest known record of their existence dates to the fifth century BC. Little remains of their civilization, as their epigraphy is nearly indecipherable; much of what is known comes from contemporaneous Greek and Roman foreign accounts and modern archaeological findings.
  The Garamantes emerged as a major regional power in the mid second century AD, establishing a kingdom that spanned roughly 70,000 square miles in the Fezzan region of southern Libya. Their growth and expansion rested on a complex and extensive qanat irrigation system, which supported a strong agricultural economy and large population. They subsequently developed the first urban society in a major desert that was not centered on a river system; their largest town, Garama, had a population of around four thousand, with an additional six thousand living in surrounding suburban areas.
  At its height, the Garamantian kingdom enjoyed a "standard of living far superior to that of any other ancient Saharan society."
context_section_description: The Garamantes were probably present as a tribe in the Fezzan by 1000 BC. They appear in the written record for the first time in the 5th century BC: according to Herodotus, they were "a very great nation" who herded cattle, farmed dates, and hunted the Ethiopian cave-dwellers who lived in the desert, from four-horse chariots. Roman depictions describe them as bearing ritual scars and tattoos. Tacitus wrote that they assisted the rebel Tacfarinas and raided Roman coastal settlements. According to Pliny the Elder, Romans eventually grew tired of Garamantian raiding and Lucius Cornelius Balbus captured 15 of their settlements in 19 BC. In 202, Septimius Severus captured the capital city of Garama.
  By around 150 AD the Garamantian kingdom (in today's central Libya (Fezzan), principally along the still existing Wadi al-Ajal), covered 180,000 square kilometres in modern-day southern Libya. It lasted from about 400 BC to 600 AD.
  The decline of the Garamantian culture may have been connected to worsening climatic conditions, or overuse of water resources. What is desert today was once fairly good agricultural land and was enhanced through the Garamantian irrigation system 1,500 years ago. As fossil water is a non-renewable resource, over the six centuries of the Garamantian kingdom, the ground water level fell. The kingdom declined and fragmented.
  The last news about Garamantes dates back to the VI-VII century. From Byzantine sources it is known that in 569 their king, probably a client king of the Byzantines, accepted Christianity. Muslim documents later state that in 668 the king of the Garamants was imprisoned and dragged away in chains. Eventually the whole region was absorbed into the area of Islamic influence.
caption: Location of the Garamantes in the Fezzan c. 600 AD, before the Islamic conquest.
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