ABSTRACT
The story of Libya is one of successive invasions, of armies marching through sand from the east and arriving by ship from the north. Even the Berbers, usually regarded as the original Libyans, were invaders who probably arrived from Southwest Asia around 3,000 B.C. The earliest evidence of human life on the Libyan coastal plain—and in the areas to the south, which were eventually to become the great Saharan Desert—dates from around 8,000 B.C. Prehistoric rock art, painted and carved in profusion in some areas of Fessen and the Tibesti Mountains, illustrates the daily life of the Neolithic hunter, who sought animals now found only in tropical Africa.
