Iberomaurusian in the context of "Mauretania (Roman province)"

Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad to the south, Niger to the southwest, Algeria to the west, and Tunisia to the northwest. With an area of almost 1.8 million km (700,000 sq mi), Libya is the fourth-largest country in Africa and the Arab world, and the 16th-largest in the world. The country claims 32,000 square kilometres of southeastern Algeria, south of the Libyan town of Ghat. The capital and largest city is Tripoli, located in the northwest and contains over a million of Libya's 7 million people.

Libya has been inhabited by Berbers since the late Bronze Age as descendants from Iberomaurusian and Capsian cultures. In classical antiquity, the Phoenicians established city-states and trading posts in western Libya, while several Greek cities were established in the East. Parts of Libya were variously ruled by Carthaginians, Numidians, Persians, and Greeks before the entire region became a part of the Roman Empire. Libya was an early centre of Christianity. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the area of Libya was mostly occupied by the Vandals until the 7th century when invasions brought Islam to the region. From then on, centuries of Arab migration to the Maghreb shifted the demographic scope of Libya in favour of Arabs. In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire and the Knights Hospitaller occupied Tripoli until Ottoman rule began in 1551. Libya was involved in the Barbary Wars of the 18th and 19th centuries. Ottoman rule continued until the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, which resulted in Italy occupying Libya and establishing two colonies: Italian Tripolitania and Italian Cyrenaica, later unified in the Italian Libya colony from 1934 to 1943.

The Halfan industry is one of the Late Epipalaeolithic industries of the Upper Nile Valley that seems to have appeared in northern Sudan c. 22.5-22.0 ka cal BP. It is one of the earliest known backed-bladelet industries in Northern Africa, dating between 22.5 and 16 ka cal BP in Nubia. The Halfan is restricted to the north of Sudan. A parallel industry discovered in Egypt, which is in all respects similar, is known as the Kubbaniyan.

It has been suggested that the Halfan was related to the Iberomaurusian industry in the Maghreb. The earliest Iberomaurusian is dated to c. 26.0-22.5 ka cal BP and it is not clear whether the Iberomaurusian or the Halfan is more ancient. The Halfan is believed to have descended from the Khormusan Culture which depended on specialized hunting, fishing, and collecting techniques for survival.

The history of human habitation in Morocco spans since the Lower Paleolithic, with the earliest known being Jebel Irhoud. Much later Morocco was part of Iberomaurusian culture, including Taforalt. It dates from the establishment of Mauretania and other ancient Berber kingdoms, to the establishment of the Moroccan state by the Idrisid dynasty followed by other Islamic dynasties, through to the colonial and independence periods.

Archaeological evidence has shown that the area was inhabited by hominids at least 400,000 years ago. The recorded history of Morocco begins with the Phoenician colonization of the Moroccan coast between the 8th and 6th centuries BCE, although the area was inhabited by indigenous Berbers for some two thousand years before that. In the 5th century BCE, the city-state of Carthage extended its hegemony over the coastal areas. They remained there until the late 3rd century BCE, while the hinterland was ruled by indigenous monarchs. Indigenous Berber monarchs ruled the territory from the 3rd century BCE until 40 CE, when it was annexed to the Roman Empire. In the mid-5th century CE, it was overrun by Vandals, before being recovered by the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.