"The problem in archaeology is when to stop laughing." --Dr Glyn Daniel, _Antiquity,_ December 1961
(This page is a heavily abridged version of "The Berber Project," (c) 1996 by R. Ben Madison, M.A., and available for purchase. Sources for all information and quotations are presented in the original.)
The Kingdom of Talossa has an ethnic mythology involving Berbers. In 1984, I began work on what the History of the Kingdom of Talossa later called a "two-year comic delusion." Inspired in part by Jewish history, I began to wish wistfully that Talossa, like the Jews and like so many European nations, had an "ancient history." I announced that Talossans were, as a nation, somehow "descended from" ancient Celtic warriors who lived around the French city of Toulouse (get it?). These ancient Celts later migrated across the Atlantic, built Indian mounds in Lake Park, and were somehow the "ancestors" of the Talossan "civilization" which was "restored" in 1979, just like Israel had been restored in 1948.
Serious work on "ancient Talossan history" didn't begin until the spring of 1985, by which time my Celts had transmogrified into North African Berbers. The first (1985) edition of my History of the Kingdom of Talossa spent 45 pages outlining how Berbers had migrated from North Africa to Western Europe, and also mentioned that they had some hand in building Indian mounds. The case was, needless to say, pretty weak, but ever since the spring of 1985 there has been this "Berber Hypothesis" floating around Talossa:
"The Berber Hypothesis: Ancient North African Berbers, with offshoots in Europe (especially around Toulouse, France), contributed to the ancient history of Talossa by participating in the ancient Moundbuilder culture on Talossan soil, and therefore count among Talossa's spiritual (and possibly even physical) ancestors."
By 1985 the Berber Hypothesis had become Talossa's official "orthodoxy." Its precepts could be found in the official History, and in the pages of Stotanneu. Berber words like l'itri, "star," began infiltrating the Talossan language, and while John Jahn denounced all this "rubbish and lies," the Talossa-Berber connexion became a permanent fact of Talossan culture. Mostly in the form of jokes or rolled eyes, Talossans forevermore would talk about Berber origins and Berber ancestry. Only Talossans can say "brrr-brrr!" on a cold day and get the pun.
Around 1988, amateur archaeologist Sandee Prachel discovered on Talossan soil a 1,500 year old coin from the Byzantine Empire. It rekindled my whimsy about an "ancient Talossa." After all, this coin was "proof" that there was some connexion between the ancient Mediterranean and the very soil of Talossa. The jokes and speculation about Berbers and Berberdom escalated, and at last, in November of 1994-- with the extreme right and the extreme left voting in opposition--the Cosa narrowly approved the "You Are What You Talk About, And You Talk About Berbers, Act":
"WHEREAS, for the past decade, Talossans have argued about, lampooned, supported, written about, denounced, or backed, various wild theories about our supposed 'Berber Ancestry'; and WHEREAS, whether we believe what Dan called all this "pseudo-racial-lingual horseshit" or not, it has become part of the experience of being Talossan; THEREFORE: The Cosa hereby resolves and proclaims, that in whatever vague and mysterious way, the Talossan people are inexplicably and inextricably connected somehow to Berbers and that such jokes, debates, and passionate nonsense about Berber heritage have become part of Talossa's folk identity.
Laugh or genuflect; this ridiculous fusion of Talossans and Berbers has become part of our national identity. Whether The Berber Project represents Talossan scholarship or Talossan literature is for you to decide. In either case, I hope The Berber Project is a major contribution to our real or imagined culture.
Our ancestors the Berbers are part of the great Afro-Asiatic family of peoples, who are divided among some 240 language groups, spread across the northern third of Africa, from Morocco and Mauritania on the Atlantic seaboard to Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia on the east coast. In addition, languages of the Semitic branch (including Hebrew and Arabic) are spoken in many countries of the Middle East. There are approximately 175 million speakers of Afro-Asiatic languages, and of those, some 12,000,000 speak an estimated two or three hundred Berber dialects, in about a dozen North African countries: Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and Chad.
The Berber language is closely related to Semitic and Ancient Egyptian, and both Berber and Egyptian were once lumped together as "Hamitic" languages (a term now out of date, but still found occasionally). Many Berber tribes call themselves Amazighen; the language is Tamazight. As I pointed out as early as
1985, the word Tamazight is equivalent, phonetically, to Tolosati, the tribe who inhabited southern France in pre-Roman times and who lent their tribal name to the city the Romans called Tolosa, and which the modern French call Toulouse.
In temperment, Berbers and modern Talossans have much in common. Both peoples lack a literary genius (witness our newspapers, and perhaps this book) but both are known to be industrious and hard- working (witness the amount of time and effort we spend on Talossa, and this book). In North Africa, it is said, one can easily tell Arabs and Berbers apart by the fact that the Berbers are the ones who work. Talossans and Berbers both nurse the memory of hurts and slights, and Talossan politics so often displays the institution of the vendetta which is dear to both peoples. Berbers and Talossans alike are extremely suspicious, but at the same time they are essentially democratic--so much so that most Talossans, like most Berbers, are fundamentally unfitted by their sense of individualism to sink their differences and to form national organizations. We both have reputations for being quarrelsome and argumentative; in the words of Dan Lorentz, "Long live trivial partisanship--Talossa's life blood!" Even in Roman times, North Africa was considered a paradise for lawyers, while in Talossa, some 10% of the population are judges. "Like the Irish," ethnographer David Hart concludes, the Berbers are "extremely pragmatic, argumentative and quarrelsome."
Between 12000 and 10000 BC, Berber-speakers making up the so-called "Dabba Culture" had established themselves in Tunisia. The stone-age Dabba Culture began to evolve and by 7350 BC, a clearly-defined "Capsian" culture (named for the town of Gafsa, in southern Tunisia) had begun to replace Dabba in North Africa, where it exercised great influence. The Capsian culture spread quickly to Spain. McBurney characterizes it as a "most vigorous" culture. It was marked by a new kind of silhouette art with very spirited human and animal figures, readily distinguished from the more realistic Cr“-Magnon art. Capsian burials utilized red ochre to decorate the bodies of the dead, a cultural trait which will assume greater importance as this story progresses. The early Capsian culture was widespread over southern and eastern Spain, and probably indicates the first invasion of the Mediterranean race into Spain. The later and final phases of the Capsian culture extended northward into France, where its miniature flint implements appear in the Azilian stations of Ariege, and in the Tardenoisian fishing flints of France, Belgium, and the British Isles. This Capsian culture was undoubtedly developed in Africa and brought from there.
At least in Africa, the Capsian culture was famous (or, depending on your palate, infamous) for what Gabriel Camps calls its "escargotieres"--enormous fields of snail shells! After the Saharan climate began to dry out and the large game died off, the humble snail became the staple diet for the Capsian Berbers, who consumed them by the millions. Talossans are encouraged to dine on escargots in their honour. Eventually the Berbers figured out how to farm--and indeed it may have been the Berbers who taught the Egyptians how to farm.
By about 5000 BC, North Africa and the Iberian peninsula shared a common culture and language, which was doubtlessly Berber. At this point the focus of our story shifts north to Iberia. Agriculture reached Iberia around 5000 BC, and the peninsula became the focus of two great social movements which affected all of prehistoric Western Europe. The first was the "Megalithic" culture responsible for the great monuments or "Megaliths" (i.e. "Big Rocks") at Stonehenge and elsewhere; the second was the "Beaker Groups" who left archaeological traces of themselves all over the region.
The so-called "Megalithic" culture began to develop among the Iberians in what is now Portugal, sometime around 4500. Though there was undoubtedly a North African component to the culture it was an indigenous development, not inspired by the cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean. It spread rapidly by sea, up and down the Atlantic seaboard of Europe. The Greek philosopher Plato's account of "Atlantis" may in fact be a distorted memory of Megalithism; Plato remembered "Atlantis" as ruling over Europe west of Tuscany, and North Africa west of Egypt, a remarkably accurate appraisal of the greatest extent of Megalith culture.
The spread of Megalith culture seems to coincide with the spread of agriculture; the first neolithic farmers reached the British Isles at the same time as Megaliths began to be constructed in that region. Ethnically speaking, the Megalith builders were Iberian Berbers. G.B. Adams identifies them as "Hamitic," i.e. Berber, and even sceptics consider the idea of Berber Megalith-builders "a not unreasonable working hypothesis."
Megalithism was almost certainly an "evangelical" religious movement, dominated by a stable caste of professional priests and wise men who settled among, and over, the neolithic peasant populations of Atlantic Europe. This priesthood lived in "monasteries," supported by tithing from the farmers.
"Megalithism" spread across not only North Africa, but the whole of Western Europe, from Iberia to France, the Italian Alps, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, the Balearic Islands, Switzerland, the Low Countries, Germany, lower Scandinavia, and the British Isles. Virtually every person who has ever become a citizen of Talossa can trace his or her ancestry back to one or more of these regions. In a very real sense, we may all be physically, genetically descended from the North African Berbers who added their genes to the pool wherever they went. Perhaps Talossa today is a kind of long-dormant Berber racial memory crying out for reunification?
At some point between 4000 and 2600, the Spanish Capsian culture--the less-developed Berber neolithic culture of eastern Spain who had been left behind by the dramatic expansion of their western Megalithic cousins--began to evolve into a new force, called the Almerian. This was a "chalcolithic" culture, meaning that it used copper in addition to stone for making tools. The Megalith culture had resisted the use of copper, and remained mired in its primitive, stone-age ways. Around 2600, the Megalithic social network collapsed and its heartland, southern Portugal, adopted the chalcolithic lifestyle. Megalithic culture survived longest in the British Isles, where it finally went extinct around 2000 BC--at about which time it left its most magnificent monument, Stonehenge.
According to V. Gordon Childe, the Almerian culture of Spain was the direct source for the social movement we know today as the "Beaker Groups." Trump, however, suggests that the Beaker Groups originated in western Spain or Portugal, and attacked the Almerian cities. Cunliffe suggests a harmony of the two theories, wherein the Beaker Groups originated in Portugal--spreading quickly back to North Africa--and then moved east to encounter the already complex chalcolithic cultures of the Almerians, in their elaborate fortified centres; the two cultures then peacefully merged. Whatever the case, early Beaker culture artifacts are found in Tunisia, and the ethnic and cultural roots of the Beaker Groups were self-evidently Berber. Many cultural traits, such as the design of their arrowheads, link North Africa's Berbers to the Beaker Groups. G.B. Adams refers to them as "Libyco-Berber."
The new wave of Berbers expanded rapidly; around 3000 the Beaker Folk with their "tastefully decorated" pottery had already invaded southern France, settling thickly in the Aude, Herault, and lower Rhone. Here some of their tribes continued into Roman times, especially the Tolosati, who lent their name to the city of Tolosa (French: "Toulouse"); and the Tolossae, who lived between the Rhone and what is now the French-Italian border. That the tribes of this region were not Celtic (as is often supposed) is revealed by the fact that the Celtic Gauls--who always called themselves the Com-broges, or "fellow-countrymen" (whence Cymru, "Welsh")-- referred to one of the local tribes as Allo-broges, or "other-countrymen," i.e. "Foreigners."
In the Iberian Peninsula itself, Beaker Groups became famous for their construction of "motillas," which were a kind of fortified burial mound. The building of mounds was a hallmark of Berber and Berber- inspired cultures around the globe. Known today among African Berbers as "djidar" (this appears to be an Arabic word), these mounds were built not only in Africa but throughout the first Berber expansion known as Megalithism. While the ancient cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean buried their noble dead in rock-hewn tombs, the Megalith-builders built rock tombs but sealed them inside large earthen mounds.
The Beaker Groups' beakers, of course, were more famous than their mounds. According to some archaeologists, the beakers themselves were simply pottery versions of drinking vessels which had long been woven in North Africa out of esparto grass. The beakers were used for "something like mead, flavoured with herbs such as meadowsweet or wild fruits." The brewing of alcoholic drinks was clearly a major factor in the expansion and social acceptance of the Beaker Groups. In North Africa, contemporary Berbers produced beakers in exactly the same style and fashion as their European relations. They were decorated with distinctive "hatched triangles" and similar designs. The classic Beaker design was somewhat bell-shaped, and thus most Beaker People are referred to as "Bell-Beaker People." This is in distinction to the "Funnel-Necked Beaker People," who arose in Germany and Scandinavia as a fusion between the Berber Beaker People and native Indo-Europeans. (Presumably it was their beakers, rather than the people themselves, who were funnel-necked.)
The Beaker Folk were fundamentally traders, and wherever they went, they were welcomed not as hated conquerers but as friends. They formed stable outposts, and their tombs contain multiple generations of family members. Beaker people tended not to settle in large numbers, except in certain places such as the Rh“ne valley and the Gulf of Lyon region, i.e. Toulouse. But what they lacked in population density they made up for in geographic reach. The Berber Beaker People established complex trading networks, and the diverse regions of Western Europe and North Africa were united as never before. Ivory and ostrich egg shells were highly prized luxuries, and the only source was North Africa, where eager Beaker traders did a booming business. Of more importance to our story, as we shall see, was their lucrative trade in copper; they brought chalcolithic culture to Western Europe and in doing so, imported vast amounts of copper. Where did it all come from? We shall all see.
After approximately 2000 BC, the Beaker people of Spain began to decline, though related groups remained active and left an impressive archaeological legacy. In the Balearic Islands, for example, the local inhabitants were building fortified towers, known as "talayots"; these so-called "Talaiotic" people survived well into the first millennium AD. A similar culture flourished in next-door Sardinia. It is important to remember that the native, pre-Roman inhabitants of Sardinia were in all likelihood Berbers. If the ancient inhabitants of the Balearics were also Berbers, which seems likely, then the name of their towers--"talayots"--may preserve a reminder of what these ancients called themselves.
In 1979, I derived the name "Talossa" from a Finnish word meaning "inside the house," "talo" being "house." At first it seemed only a fortuitous coincidence that the word Talossa bore some superficial resemblance to Tolosa or Tamazight. The truth is, it now seems likely that the root talo was used by our Berber ancestors both to describe the structures (talayots) they built, and also to describe themselves-- the people who built those structures. The Afro-Asiatic root word tuul- means "to rise; to form a heap, mound." From this root come both the Arabic tell (mound, artificial hill) and the related word tuul (hill, heap) in the Cushitic languages of East Africa. In Ireland, the native word tulach ("small hill") is cognate with the Arabic tell, meaning a man-made hill or mound. In Iberia the meaning shifted to "tower" (talayot). In Karok, a language of North America which may be related to Berber, the form is tuy (mound). The same root apparently entered Finnish, where its meaning ("to raise up") shifted to house (i.e. what one raises up). Perhaps "talo" originally meant any artificial mound or structure built by man. The ancient Talossans, therefore, would be "The Builders," who could look down, literally, on their primitive neighbours, the ones who did not build. It will not surprise us to find major Beaker Culture sites at ATALAyuela, Spain, and ATALaia, Portugal.
Alas, the Berbers of Iberia and Western Europe generally were eventually reduced to little more than a collection of place-names, after the massive Celtic invasion from the east which began around 1500 BC. But these invasions generated an enormous wave of refugees who fled to a place which is near and dear to our modern Talossan hearts.
Shortly before Talossan Megaliths began springing up all over Atlantic Europe, Scandinavian cod fishermen seem to have opened the New World to European influence--and vice versa. According to historian Alice Kehoe, travellers using the Irminger Current past Iceland and Greenland helped carry trade and cultural influences both ways across the North Atlantic. The impact from this trade was quickly felt all over the St. Lawrence River valley and down the American East Coast. Around 4500 a new culture known as the "Late Archaic" emerged "suddenly," with no discernable predecessor. All its traits, including gorges, adzes, plummets, ground slate points and knives, barbed bone harpoons and peculiar chipped stone projectile points, occur in northwestern Europe at an earlier date.
The Megalith Builders touched off this transatlantic trade. As they brought agriculture to Western Europe, they sold grain to the fishermen who provided the Berber Megalith folk with fish. The increased demand for fish drove the Scandinavians further and further out to sea--in this case, all the way to America. But the Megalith Builders being evangelical religious zealots, they too soon began to accompany these Scandinavian pioneers on the northern route to America. Huge stone Megaliths identical to those that were being built in Europe, suddenly popped up in New England. Distinctive "dolmens" (multi-ton boulders balanced precisely on three smaller stones) were constructed on both sides of the Atlantic. Received opinion holds this to be pure coincidence, but it is hardly plausible that these enormous and distinctive structures should "just happen" to be invented on two different continents at exactly the same time, especially in the one part of America most accessible to the Megalith builders of Europe. After 3500, when Megalithic influence had apparently become more pronounced, the first small burial mounds begin to appear on the American East Coast--in imitation of the Berber practice.
The impact of the Megalith Berbers on North America is not all that clear; those interested in the Megalithic aspect of American prehistory should consult Trento in the bibliography. While Megalithic influence may have been important, there do not appear to have been substantial numbers of Megalithic settlers. And no Megalithic sites have been uncovered near Talossa. However, when Megalithism waned in Europe and the Beaker Groups began their expansion, they set into motion a chain of events which would transform the life of the New World, and give the Kingdom of Talossa a genuine, Berbercentric prehistory.
Ca. 3000 BC, the Berber-speaking Beaker Groups rolled across Western Europe and knit that region together by a network of trading posts. Ideas were traded just as easily as goods, and the Berbers undoubtedly became aware of the presence of suppliers or customers across the Atlantic. And the crucial trade item was copper. Beaker Groups, keen to exploit copper deposits wherever they could be found, began to navigate to the New World. They possessed a geographic advantage the Scandinavian cod fishermen lacked--the easiest route to North America was the Atlantic Current from Iberia or Northwest Africa to the Caribbean. I submit that around 3000 BC, North America was indeed treated to a large and substantial wave of Berber immigrants who brought their culture with them when they settled around the copper mines of Lake Superior and northern Wisconsin.
The Berber Beaker colonists, it should be remembered, were initially traders, and came in search of wealth. They found it in copper, huge amounts of it, around Lake Superior, and especially on Ile Royale (the large island in Lake Superior), which is reputedly the best source of copper on the entire planet. To mine, process, and transport this copper, large numbers of Berbers descended on the American Midwest and the St. Lawrence River valley. Not long after 3000, a new culture appears suddenly around Lake Superior. Archaeologists have called it the "Old Copper Culture." Their so-called "Vinette 2" style of pottery shows clear Iberian (Beaker) influence. It is interesting to note that the Old Copper Culture would ritually "kill" (break) artifacts placed in burial sites, a cultural trait that would become widespread in North America.
The chief artifact of the Old Copper Culture is, of course, copper; a vast range of copper tools appears suddenly in the archaeological record with no apparent antecedent. Mason remarks: "Incredible numbers of copper artifacts--tens of thousands in eastern Wisconsin alone--attest to a use of the metal that is at variance with historical and ethnographic descriptions of Indian life." The mines these Berbers established yielded mind-boggling amounts of copper--an estimated 500,000 tons! Only a tiny fraction of this can be accounted for in New World archaeological sites, so where did the rest of it all go? The best explanation is that it went to the growing civilizations of the Mediterranean, to fuel the growing "chalcolithic" economies of the Old World. The Berbers who settled the New World have left records of their first appearance; sculptured stones north of Lake Superior closely resemble those found in the Berber-speaking Canary Islands.
The Old Copper Berbers mined copper and were fruitful and multiplied for some 1500 years before a major revolution took place. As we saw in the previous chapter, around 1500 BC the Berber cultures of Western Europe were savagely disrupted by the invasion of the headhunting Celts. A stream of refugees--first a trickle, then a flood--began to flee from the ceaseless predations of these red-haired invaders from the East. Thousands boarded their curraghs and set sail for America--tired, tempest- tossed, huddled masses of Berbers yearning to breathe free. A massive surge of Berber immigration to North America from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula was underway, as proven by a whole host of cultural innovations from the Beaker Group culture which burst upon the North American scene. Harvard Professor Barry Fell dates a major wave of "Iberian" (i.e. Berber) colonists to the New World to this period.
As a result, Berber cultural traits appeared mysteriously in the eastern United States and in the Caribbean. North African bent-stick and split-stick hafting techniques for grooved stone axes, for example, spread throughout the region. Agriculture, pottery, earthen mounds, and "new artifacts" arrived suddenly. In Central America, pottery dating from this period is virtually identical to that being produced by North African Berbers. At the same time, burial rites in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Indiana begin to employ the use of red ochre in such quantities that archaeologists can speak of a "Red Ochre Culture," although the Old Copper and Red Ochre "cultures" were probably a single entity. This use of red ochre in burial rites is a well-known feature of North African Berber culture.
It is equally possible that Berbers in the New World adopted "native" American Indian cultural traits and brought them back to Africa, though it seems more likely that the traits were brought from the Old World to the New. Nevertheless, both sides were truly forging a "Pan-Atlantic culture." North African Berbers had buffalo and raised them. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, Berbers wore what we call "Mohawk" haircuts like many American Indian tribes. Berbers also engaged in the same kind of kind of "vision quest" commonly found in Native American cultures. Berbers had the same kind of animal legends as North American Indian mythology. Berbers had arrowheads, atlatls (spear-throwing devices), wore feathers in their hair, and wore fringed leather clothing, exactly like the Native American peoples of North America. It seems that long before the "Spaghetti Western," there was the Couscous Western!
It seems the only reasonable explanation for this sudden, massive infusion of Berber cultural traits is a sudden, massive infusion of Berbers. At the very same time--1500 BC--we find the construction of the first real "city" on the North American continent, at a site archaeologists call "Poverty Point," along the Mississippi River in Louisiana. Here, Berber-style mound-building in the New World begins with startling suddenness. Poverty Point was a trading city--a chalcolithic Berber Singapore--through which the copper wealth of the Mississippi Valley and the Great Lakes was funnelled; it has been proven that Lake Superior copper made it all the way to the Gulf Coast. Utilizing Megalithic ideas, Poverty Point's mounds were aligned so as to predict the vernal and autumnal equinoxes. At its peak, between 1000 and 700, Poverty Point had a population of more than 5,000 people, and its direct territorial control seems to have encompassed the Mississippi Valley in Missisippi, Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. The modern name, "Poverty Point," is most unfortunate; it was an enormous and thriving city--perhaps "Prosperity Point" would be more appropriate. Interestingly, the city was divided into two districts, indicating some kind of social distinction. Possibly one part was the "Indian Quarter" and the other, the "Berber Quarter."
Some trade may have been conducted via the St. Lawrence River as well, as implied by the presence of Lake Superior copper in sites along the Ottawa valley between Ontario and Quebec. At one of these copper sites in Ontario, petroglyphs were found showing pictures of sea-going vessels, with captions written in tifinagh, the ancient but clumsy alphabet the Berbers often employed.
Down at Poverty Point, pottery began to be produced, possibly for the first time in North America. The Beaker Folk were noted for their manufacture of alcoholic beverages --that's what the beakers were for-- and in several areas settled by Beaker Berbers in ancient times, from the southeast to the southwest United States, and in parts of Mesoamerica, the knowledge of how to manufacture alcoholic drinks persisted until historic times. While a kind of mead was the drink of choice in Europe, Indians of the southeast made a kind of persimmon wine, while cactus wine prevailed in the west. The manufacture of beer is, of course, a famous component of the Talossan-area economy even today, and citizens like Josh Macht with their home-brewed beer keep alive this ancient Berber art.
The scope of Berber maritime operations is breathtaking. Not only were Berber colonists sailing down the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes, and into the Gulf of Mexico to settle in Louisiana, but there was regular Berber contact with Central and even South America. Berber potters brought their techniques to Central America. Pottery found in El Salvador, and dated to around 1500 BC, is virtually identical to Berber pottery of the same period found in Morocco, near the Canary Islands.
After 1100, the Urnfield Celts invaded Spain and began destroying the last of the Beaker civilization. Without a doubt, this disrupted what was left of the Beaker trade with the New World, and by 1000, the Old Copper Culture had collapsed; the Isle Royale copper mines were abandoned, and around Lake Superior, the focus of Berber colonization in those days, modern Ojibwe Indian legends say that their ancestors drove out a white race of miners. The Celts completed their task of wiping out the Berber Beaker culture by 700 BC, when the Las Cogotes culture was finally destroyed. At exactly the same time--700 BC--the Poverty Point culture, that Berber Beaker trading outpost in the New World, also collapsed, probably because it lost touch with the homeland and succumbed to Indian attack, or simply "went native." Its inhabitants seem to have dispersed to the west where they became the ancestors of the Tonkawa and other tribes of Texas.
But New World Berber culture ultimately survived; the "Red Ochre" culture continued to thrive, and from the ruins and traces of the Great Migrations, an indigenous, American Berber civilization was beginning to emerge, a culture which we can call Talossan. I can call it anything I want; after all, I discovered it.
Even while Poverty Point was fading back into the Louisiana bayou country--and its inhabitants fleeting to Texas--Berbers were returning to the New World, in Carthaginian ships, to begin regular trade with the American Northeast. As early as 700, according to Harvard Professor Barry Fell, Carthaginian ships began sailing the Atlantic to the New World.
Diodorus Siculus, an early Greek historian living in Sicily, records that Phoenician ships were lost in the Atlantic during a storm. "West of Africa" they found "an enormous island that was fertile and finely watered by navigable rivers." The Carthaginians made it back home, and later on Carthaginian explorers "reached this region and there made a settlement." Ultimately, however, the Carthaginian government withdrew its support from the settlement and prohibited emigration to it, possibly to avert a population drain. Such a settlement, if it was actually made, would have been largely Berber in origin; wherever the Carthaginians planted colonies, North African Berber speakers settled in huge numbers. Berbers in fact dominated both the Carthaginian infantry and cavalry, and were great guerilla fighters. Most Carthaginian coins discovered in America date to the 4th and early 3rd centuries BC, indicating that this was the main period for Carthaginian trade with the New World.
By 500 BC the Berber descendants of the Red Ochre Culture had expanded into what is now Ohio, and Libyan Berber colonists were arriving in greater and greater numbers, perhaps to staff the trading posts that sprang up in the river valleys east of the Mississippi, especially the valley of the upper Ohio River in Ohio and West Virginia--probably the very colony Diodorus Siculus wrote about. Beginning around 500 BC, a new, Berber-derived culture called "Adena" began to flower in Ohio. The Adena folk emerged from the Berber-dominated "Late Archaic" tradition, the descendants of the very people whose ancestors had first mined copper on Lake Superior. Political leadership in Adena was probably provided by Berbers from Africa; as Harvard Professor Barry Fell claims, waves of "Iberian Punic Colonists" settled in North America at this time.
In 1838, an Iberian (Berber) inscription was discovered in Mammoth Mound, an Adena site at Moundsville, West Virginia. It was immediately pronounced by French and American linguists to be Berber, Libyan, or Numidian. Similar inscriptions are found in other Adena mounds. This and another nearby stone inscription were written in the Punic language, in Iberian letters.
Old World contemporaries apparently regarded America as simply an overseas extension of North Africa. Herodotus describes "a place in Libya," beyond the Pillars of Hercules (i.e. out past the Straits of Gibraltar) where the Carthaginians traded for precious metals. According to his account, the natives of the region used smoke signals to communicate over long distances--an obvious reference to the famous Native American custom. Later on, the Vikings, evidently on the basis of the profound and obvious similarities between North American and North African inhabitants, their languages and cultures, formed the impression that North America was simply a peninsula or extension of North Africa itself!
Corn was certainly the staple crop of the Adena, but their other agricultural products included sunflowers, gourds, pumpkins, goosefoot (a kind of spinach) and tobacco. Still, much of their food was attained by hunting and gathering in an environment which was still rich enough to support a sedentary rather than nomadic lifestyle. Despite this limitation, Adena culture radiated from the Ohio River Valley into territory that is now Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York. Adena migrants, probably displaced by invaders, later settled in the Chesapeake Bay area and in Alabama as well. There were trading networks centered on the Adena homeland, and Adena artifacts have even been discovered in or around Talossa itself.
Their high degree of social organization is affirmed by their earthworks. Conical and dome-shaped burial mounds grew larger and more ambitious over the centuries. In the early stages of the culture, low earthen hillocks were built up, basketful by basketful, over the burial pits of honoured individuals. Later, high mounds were constructed over multiple burials, with the corpses usually placed in log-lined tombs. Often these earthworks were surrounded by other earthworks--rounded walls or ridges of earth, usually circular in shape and generally known as "Sacred Circles." The Adena also constructed earthen "effigy mounds," in the shape of animals or symbols. The largest is the Great Serpent Mound at Peebles, Ohio. This low, rounded embankment, about four feet high and 15 to 20 feet across, extends some 1,330 feet in the shape of an uncoiling snake with jaws and tail.
The burial mounds themselves give us an exceptionally clear glimpse into the Berber identity of the Adena culture and its successors. Adena was a religious faith; while the Indians had their "earth-bound animal gods," Adena Berbers looked toward the sky. The "Sacred Circles" around the mounds served as holy "meeting places" for people, and thus the mounds themselves served--in the time-honoured Berber tradition--as maraboutic shrines. Like Adena society, Berber society in ancient times (and even, in some places, today) was not an organized "state," but rather "a state of nature mitigated by hereditary saints... anarchy mitigated by holiness." The archaeologists tell us that the men buried in Adena mounds were those who established their utility to the community through ritual powers and mechanisms of economic exchange, just like the Berber marabout. The French term "marabout" refers to a Berber "holy man"; Berbers themselves use the word "agurram" (the plural is "igurramen").
The marabout is a holy man with a holy genealogy, but genealogy alone does not guarantee his holiness. He is holy if he has baraka--divine powers, "charisma" in the theological sense. He has magical powers, is good and pious, generous, hospitable and pacifistic. He accepts donations from those who seek his acts of blessing. The marabout is not a warrior, but he provides political leadership in times of crisis or to resolve disputes between warring factions. This seems to be the precise role of those who were interred in the Adena burial mounds, and because the burial place of a marabout would preserve some of his "baraka," or "holiness," it became a focal point for the community, a kind of shrine for those who revered him and vowed to live by his example and keep alive his memory through tale and song.
Berber religion from time immemorial--whether pagan, Roman, Christian, or Muslim--has retained its essential characteristics. Their faith has always tended towards monotheism, the cult of a single great and all-powerful deity. Coupled with this has been veneration for a host of lesser saints and holy men-- marabouts, or Christian martyrs. Seers, prophets and soothsayers had popular followings, and pilgrimages have always been made to their shrines. Fatalism and a belief in the influence of evil spirits prevail as well, and Berbers show great concern for the dead. Offerings are made for them, libations poured on their tombs, and feasts for them are held in cemeteries today. People slept at the tombs of ancestors or marabouts in Herodotus' time, in Christian times, and do so at the present day.
This ritual concern for the dead was manifest among the Berbers of North America as well, in ways that clashed with Native American cultures up to that point. Adena burial practices were a mixture of old and new; bodies of the dead were often sprinkled with red ochre, a practice extending back generations through the Red Ochre and Old Copper Cultures, all the way back to North Africa's Capsian period. Adena marabouts were also buried with quantities of grave goods, the varying amounts indicating the either the social inequalities in the culture, or perhaps varying degrees of "baraka." Relics included engraved stone tablets, often with raptorial bird designs; polished gorgets (throat armour) of stone and copper; pearl beads; ornaments of sheet mica; tubular stone pipes; and bone masks. Animal masks are found in Adena sites, but only in LATE Adena. This most likely shows an increasing "Indianization" of the culture. In addition to these ceremonial and ornamental objects, the Adena people also made a wide range of stone, wood, bone, and copper tools, as well as incised or stamped pottery and cloth woven from vegetable fibers.
The Adena civilization prospered for five centuries, but in 149 BC, Rome and Carthage went to war for the last time. Carthage withdrew the last of its merchants and was destroyed; contact with the New World was cut off completely. Within a century, the Berber-dominated Adena culture, cut off from its homeland, collapsed. But it was not the end of Berber culture in America--far from it. The stage was set for a fully indigenous American Berber civilization to emerge: the Hopewell Culture.
At the same time as the fading of Adena, power in the Berber-settled Midwest began to shift to a new force, a culture known to archaeologists as the "Hopewell." Hopewell, whose base of operations was the Ohio River valley from Illinois to Ohio, either absorbed or grew out of both Adena and the descendants of the Red Ochre people who had survived in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. According to Barry Fell, the Hopewellians seem to have been "mainly Libyans" of Berber stock, with, he suggests, some Negroid admixture.
Hopewell possessed many of the same elements as Adena culture, but these were generally on a grander scale--more, larger earthworks; richer burials; intensified ceremonialism; greater refinement in art; a stricter class system and increased division of labour; and more agriculture. And the Hopewell culture covered a much greater area, spreading from its core in the Ohio and Illinois River Valleys throughout much of the Midwest and East--there was even an outpost at Marksville, Louisiana, not far from Poverty Point. Moreover, the Hopewell Berbers established a far-flung trading network. At Hopewell sites have been found obsidian from the Rockies and the desert Southwest, copper from the Great Lakes, shells from the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, mica from the Appalachians, silver from Canada, and alligator skulls and teeth from Florida. Like modern industrialized nations, the Hopewell purchased raw materials from their primitive neighbours, then Hopewell craftsmen turned those materials into useful ornaments or tools, and sold them back to the primitives at a profit. All evidence implies that the "Hopewell Interaction Sphere," as some archaeologists call it, spread not by conquest, but through trade and religion. Hopewell is sometimes considered a religion as well as a culture.
Hopewell marabouts probably had the highest social ranking, with merchants and warlords beneath them. Supporting even greater concentrations of people than the Adena Berbers, the Hopewell Berbers depended more on agriculture and grew a variety of crops. Their extensive villages, usually near water, consisted of circular or oval dome-roofed wigwams, as opposed to the round African-style huts used by the Adena. This is probably evidence of a greater "Indianization" in Hopewell, and a greater willingness to break with Old World Berber precedent.
The Hopewell Berbers, like the Adena Berbers, constructed a variety of earthworks. Many of their mounds, covering multiple burials, stood 30 to 40 feet high. Large animal-shaped "effigy" mounds often stood nearby, as did geometric enclosures. Some of these earthen walls were 50 feet high and 200 feet wide at the base. The enclosure at Newark, Ohio, once covered four square miles.
Hopewell Berber craftsmen mastered both the realistic and the abstract styles. The plentiful and beautiful grave furnishings found by archaeologists include ceramic figurines, copper headdresses and breast ornaments, obsidian spearheads and knives, mica mirrors, conch drinking cups, pearl jewellery, hammered gold silhouettes, incised and stamped pottery, and stone platform pipes with naturalistic human and animal sculptures. The Hopewell also used pan pipes; we can only hope their music sounded like that of Peru.
A Hopewell mound at Davenport, Iowa, even contained a carving of an elephant--unknown in the New World, but remember Hannibal! Experts on both sides of the Atlantic concluded that a nearby inscription was North African Libyan tifinagh. Other Libyan or Iberic inscriptions have been found in Tennessee, Arkansas, and New Hampshire.
According to my hypothesis, these Moundbuilding Berbers would have spread their Berber-derived language throughout Wisconsin, and in the Mississippi and Ohio valleys as far south as Memphis, Tennessee. Do we find evidence of such a language being spoken by historic Indians in this region? No-- and for a good reason. In comparatively recent times, all of this area was overrun by two waves of invaders from the northwest. Both the Siouans (Iroquois) and the Algonquians remember how they drove out "the Snakes," the mound-building inhabitants of this country.
Is there evidence that a Moundbuilder Berber language was spoken anywhere in North America? Yes, there is! By comparing basic Berber vocabulary with vocabulary from dozens of American Indian language families, I tried to see if one or more such families had any significant resemblance to Berber. To my surprise, there was no such similarity--in the Midwest. Instead, I was forced to conclude that there is indeed a relict Berber population in the New World, but far away in the desert Southwest-- exactly where I least expected to find it. Their languages are known to linguists as the "Hokan" languages. Attempts to link Hokan to other American Indian language families (especially Siouan) have all failed, and the vast majority of American Indian language specialists today maintain that Hokan is not genetically related to any other family of languages in the New World, and that any similarities are due either to coincidence or borrowing.
Unlike such close-knit families as Algonquian and Iroquoian, Hokan is an ancient grouping of several sub-families and isolated languages. Speakers of Hokan languages are spread through California, Arizona, New Mexico, Baja California, Texas, and northern Mexico; with outlying groups in southern Mexico, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Colombia. There are no well-known Hokan languages, but important ones include Karok, Pomo, Diegue¤o, Washo, Tonkawa, Havasupai and Maricopa--the latter commemorated in Talossa's own Maricopa Province.
Using a basic 200-word vocabulary of Berber, I quickly found Hokan cognates ("related words") for 48 words on the list. These include not just simple nouns, but also verbs, pronouns and numerals--the kind of words that prove genetic relationship (for the complete list, see "The Berber Project.")
Glottochronological testing of the words indicates that Hokan and Berber were one single language prior to about 2946 BC, when they began to separate. This is, of course, amazingly close to the 3000 BC date when the Beaker Berbers established their first colonies around Lake Superior. I conclude that Berber has been spoken in North America since around 3000 BC, and that its modern descendants are called Hokan languages.
The Hokan Berbers of the American Southwest are not directly relevant to Talossan prehistory per se, since they lived far away from our native soil. Nevertheless, as the only surviving Berber-speaking nations of the New World, they form an interesting part of our history.
At some point, there was a mass migration of Hokans from their homeland in or near Wisconsin, to California and the American Southwest. Exactly when and why this migration took place is a matter of conjecture, although for many good reasons I believe that it took place in approximately 400-300 BC. This was, I emphasize, a direct migration from the Midwest--in fact, from the Adena Culture itself. Harvard Professor Barry Fell suggests that Libyan colonists migrated directly from North Africa to the area now inhabited by the Zu¤i, Pima, and Tohono O'odham (Papago) tribes at about the same time. Although this seems unlikely, a mixture of two migrations could account for interesting similarities between the Southwestern Hokans and North African Berbers (such as the use of adobe) which are hard to account for if all the desert Hokans originated in the Midwest.
Evidence for a midwestern origin is reflected in the fact that Hokan tribes of the Southwest still preserve cultural ties to the homeland. The Hohokam, a Hokan culture of the Mojave Desert, like later Southwest tribes, ritually "killed" (broke) pottery placed in graves; this tradition goes all the way back to the Berber Old Copper Culture of Wisconsin. Most southwestern tribes are matrilineal, but Hokans are mostly patrilineal--just like the tribes of Wisconsin and the Mississippi valley. Similarly, several Hokan tribes build domed dwellings of bark, mat, thatch, or hide (the so-called "wigwam" or "wickiup"), just like the Indians of the Great Lakes region. Their neighbors, however, prefer tipis, pueblos, or other kinds of dwellings. Other cultural similarities exist with Berbers of North Africa, which might indicate a more direct transfer of population from Africa to the Southwest.
The only real Berber "civilization" in the Southwest was called the Hohokam culture. "Hohokam" strictly speaking refers only to the most advanced form of this culture, the primitive parts of which are sometimes regarded as a different "Hakataya" or "Patayan" culture. For our purpose we shall regard both aspects--which stretched from southern California through almost all of Arizona and a good part of the Baja--as a single culture, the Hohokam.
At some time before 300 BC, a large group of Hokan-speakers from the Adena cultural realm set out on a migration of approximately 2,000 km to the American Southwest. No one knows what compelled them to undertake such a journey, but many Native American peoples made similar migrations to California in ancient times. Small disconnected groups of Hokans from the Midwest, Athabaskans (Hupa) from British Columbia, Penutians (Yuki, Wappo) from the Gulf of Mexico, Algonquians (Wiyot, Yurok) from the northern prairies, all at one time or another broke off from well-established families in other parts of the continent to seek their fortunes far away in the west.
The Hohokam appeared suddenly around 300 BC in the river valleys of southern Arizona. Not only were they one of the first agricultural peoples of the region, but they built an impressive system of canals to utilize the available water. Unlike all their neighbours, they cremated their dead--a trait shared by the Adena, from whom they presumably came. Like the Adena, they were moundbuilders, and they enclosed their ritual areas with wooden stockades.
After 550 AD, the Hohokam fell under Mesoamerican (Mexican) cultural influence, and began building such things as ball courts, resembling those found further south. At this time, speakers of Uto-Aztecan languages (the ancestors of the present-day Pima and Tohono O'odham) probably began infiltrating Hohokam society and took on some of the accoutrements of Hohokam civilization. After 1100 the Hohokam declined and contracted, possibly as the result of invasion from outside, or because of overpopulation. "Puebloid" structures were erected in imitation of non-Hohokam cultures and by 1450, when the Hohokam way of life seems to have given out, they were "no longer... truly Hohokam." Their descendants are the modern-day Yuman tribes, including the Maricopa.
Although it ultimately failed, Hohokam civilization endured for some 1,800 years and represented "an amazingly successful effort to produce a good livelihood for a large population in the deserts of southern Arizona." They are worthy cousins for Talossa, a fact Talossans have instinctively sensed. Long before any scholarly connexion was made between Talossa and the peoples of the Southwest, Talossans innately developed a south-western orientation and proclaimed Taco Bell to be their "official national cuisine." Its corn tortillas, beans, and hot peppers recall for us our ancient Berber ancestors of the Southwest, and to a lesser extent, the Berber Adena and Hopewell moundbuilding cultures as well.
Meanwhile, back in the Midwest, the Hopewell "interaction sphere" began to decay and eventually fell apart around 400 AD. A number of explanations have been offered for the collapse of Hopewell, including unchecked population growth, warfare, climate change, and "cultural fatigue." Another possibility is Hopewell's isolation from the Eurafrican homeland. Only a handful of Berber inscriptions have actually been found at Hopewell sites, and it is likely that the Hopewell civilization became illiterate. At their final collapse, Fell postulates some kind of "slave revolt," in which "the few literate aristocrats were eliminated."
The Talossan Berbers of the Midwest--the ones who had remained behind after the great migrations to the Southwest--were about to enter upon the last phase of their existence, a period called "Effigy Mound" or "Oneota" by the archaeologists. As Hopewell was declining, around 300 AD there appeared in north-western Wisconsin a distinct cultural tradition called the Effigy Mound, so named because these Berbers built most of their mounds in the form of "effigies," shaped like animals, birds, or people. Their culture was in many ways a simpler variety of Hopewell, and persistent Berber elements of the Old Copper/Red Ochre Culture, which had managed to endure all the way up to the formation of Effigy Mound, played a role in its formation. The earliest Effigy Mound sites indicate that these Berbers largely reverted to a semi-nomadic, hunting-and-gathering lifestyle, but they may have relied in some marginal ways on agriculture.
These early Talossans, who flourished in the area centred on Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota between 300 and 700, often used simple rockshelters but also built "semi-subterranean" houses reminiscent of the pit houses of the desert Southwest and North Africa. In later times, they preferred "arched and gabled- roofed small rectangular houses," or domed circular wigwams, the latter similar to their distant cousins among the Hokans in the desert Southwest.
Effigy Mound burial customs were distinctive. They often cremated their dead (as did the Hopewell) and buried them in mounds. Like their predecessors, the Beaker Groups, these Berbers practised flexed burial. There were no "cemeteries"; rather, mounds were erected in isolated areas. Men, women, and children were all buried, a sign of egalitarianism; every known Effigy Mound burial is in a mound. This probably shows that the burials had less "maraboutic" significance than the Adena or Hopewell burials. It is likely that the mounds were constructed once a year during spring or summer, when the ground was soft, and all those who died during the preceding year would be interred during that season. The effigy mounds themselves could be quite large--from 60 to 300 feet, although one was measured at 575 feet long. They were constructed on high ground, ridges or bluffs overlooking rivers, streams and lakes. It was common for stone altars to be buried with the dead in mounds.
Certain elements of the Effigy Mound culture indicate a new and benevolent influence from abroad. Not only did the burials become more egalitarian (as noted above), but the Effigy Mound Talossans abandoned the disgusting practice of head deformation. It was not only a simpler way of life but a kinder and gentler one as well. There is evidence that Christianity made the difference--specifically Donatist Christianity, the native Christian faith of North African Berbers, which the Roman Catholics regarded as a "heresy."
In North Africa, an inscription in Berber script records that Christian refugees had sailed to America. According to Harvard Professor Barry Fell's translation, it tells of a band of Christian refugees who fled North Africa at some time after the Vandals invaded North Africa in 429 AD. The inscription records that "the Vandals, a contemptible race of no consequence," persecuted the "followers of the true faith," who "fled into exile" and sailed away to "where the sun sets in the evening," reaching their destination after a journey of many days. At least one of the party returned to Africa to tell the tale. This agrees closely with the records of the Catholic Church, which reveal that in 502 AD, there was indeed a wave of Donatist Christian refugees from Berber North Africa, some of whom attempted to settle in Gaul, where they were again repressed by the local Catholic bishop, "so as not to allow the African heresy to plant itself in Gaul."
Were these the Christians who sought refuge in the New World? There is evidence that these Christian Berbers reached Wisconsin and amalgamated with the Effigy Mound culture on Talossan soil. In approximately 1987, Sandee Prachel, a Talossan citizen, discovered a coin from the Byzantine Empire in Vuode Province. The coin is a copper "follis," and was minted soon after 498, during the early part of the reforms of the Emperor Anastasius, who reigned from 491 to 518. The Donatist wave of emigration, which reached Gaul in 502, took place at EXACTLY the time that this coin would have been in circulation. It is only reasonable to assume that this same migration of Donatist Christian refugees was responsible for transporting this irrefutable proof of a direct connexion between the Mediterranean and the very soil of the Kingdom of Talossa.
There is no way to know how deeply Christian thought or liturgy influenced the Effigy Mound Berbers; it is difficult to trace the history of ideas from dirt piles and pottery. However, the Kickapoo Indians of Wisconsin were discovered in historic times to possess "prayer sticks," wooden slats with the "Kyrie Eleison" inscribed in North African Punic letters. Apparently, they had been taught something of Christian doctrine and worship by Carthaginian Christians. We can suppose that they were taught by the Effigy Mound Berbers, into whose territory they were migrating. As late as the 7th century, African Berbers were still building mounds of their own, so Berber refugees from North Africa would have felt at home among the Effigy Mound folk. It is also interesting to note that the dominant language of North Africa by the 5th century was Latin. Christian Berbers would have brought a Latin-derived language or dialect with them--very close in many respects to modern Talossan!
Beginning about 700, perhaps as a result of the aforementioned Christian influences, the Effigy Mound Berber culture began to flower. The size and quantity of mound groups being constructed increased, as did the quantity and quality of artifacts produced. Some innovations began to appear in their pottery and lifestyle, and these culminated, after 900, in what some call an "Oneota" culture. Experts argue about the relationship between "Effigy Mound" culture and "Oneota" culture, whether the two ought better to be thought of as a single culture with regional or class differentiations, whether one evolved into the other or whether they were two separate cultures that somehow "coexisted" in the exact same territory. Gibbon argues cogently that the two were a single culture, the "Oneota" aspects arising in areas where increased corn cultivation allowed for population expansion. We concur that they were a single civilization, responsible for the construction of a magnificent capital at Aztalan, Wisconsin.
Aztalan, easily the most impressive archaeological site in Wisconsin, is located about 100 km (60 miles) west of the RT-US border in American territory. Aztalan was a flourishing community from about 900 until 1200, at which time all the inhabitants left; no one knows why. The 70 hectare (172 acre) site is maintained as a state park by the State of Wisconsin, which has reconstructed a number of the mounds. Oddly, the mounds were not used at all for burial. Aztalan's most impressive feature was its external wattle-and-daub stockade, a wall that stretched for half a mile around the village. Some scholars doubt whether the wall was a defensive feature, and point out that walls can be built to keep people out, to keep people in, or to control the number and type of people who go in and out.
The name "Aztalan" is curious. Allegedly, it was given this name by N.F. Hyer, who named the site after "Aztatlan," the mythical place of origin of the Aztec Indians. Why he thought the Aztecs had any connection to this site is unknown. I suspect local Indians related to him tales of the great Hokan Berber migration to the Southwest, and believed this to be connected with the Aztec myths. It is also possible that they told him the name of the site was Talan, a name which preserves the "tala" root. Since this is vaguely reminiscent of "Aztatlan," Hyer tacked on the "Az-" and created the hybrid form, "Aztalan." The proper name of the village was probably just Talan. But this is all, needless to say, speculation. Aztalanic influence--in the form of pottery design--radiated all over Wisconsin. Aztalan remains the single most impressive Berber site within easy driving distance of the Kingdom of Talossa, and for that reason we should revere it.
Between 1000 and 1300, Talossan culture attained its last great flowering, during what some archaeologists call its "Late Effigy Mound" period. Map 7 illustrates its enormous extent. Most Talossans had a seasonal lifestyle, gathering into villages for the spring and summer, but reverting to less sedentary patterns during the winter when game was scarce. Fish, beaver, and waterfowl were the dominant staples. Some of the larger villages were semi-permanent, maintaining a continuous settled population for periods of up to 15 years. These villages were great conglomerations of nuclear family dwellings, mostly mat-covered wigwams with a few walled structures. Whole villages were surrounded by defensive stockades. A well-preserved example is Carcajou Point, Wisconsin. Such villages traded extensively with their neighbors.
After about 1300, the Talossans went into decline, and lost the overwhelming majority of their territory in the west, probably to Siouan (Iowa, Winnebago) invaders from the west. Talossan civilization retreated into its eastern Wisconsin heartland, including the Fox River Valley and the area from Waushara County southwards--approximately the south-eastern third of Wisconsin (including the present territory of Talossa). Their culture maintained its high standards in this period, despite its restricted range. There were, nevertheless, great changes; perhaps as a result of intermarriage with Native Americans, the traditional Berber patrilineal system began to break down, and the more "Indian" matrilineal descent system was introduced around 1300. These changes took place against a backdrop of steady prosperity. Talossan villages at this time were large, and the population farmed extensively, mainly corn. Villages were occupied for long periods of time, as demonstrated by their extensive trash heaps.
The central historical question of Talossan archaeology must be, where did the Talossan Berbers go? It is clear that the Effigy Mound/Oneota people, who were their last representatives on the native soil of the Kingdom of Talossa, were not preserved into historic times as any of the known Indian tribes of the region. In fact, who the Talossans were, and where they went, is a total mystery to most archaeologists. Certainly many if not most fell victim to the European diseases which reached America after 1492; Shaffer points out that by 1550, much of the Mississippi watershed (which includes most of the Talossan Berber realm) was "devoid of people."
In the past, some claimed that these ancient Talossans were actually the Winnebago Indians. There was, evidently, intense cultural contact between the Winnebago and the Talossans. An example can be seen on the Talossan Home Page: Figure 1 shows a prehistoric Berber pot bearing the distinctive emblem of Tanit, the nurturing mother-goddess of the Berber people. Figure 2 shows the very same emblem, but this time found centuries later on a Winnebago Indian mat. Obviously the Winnebago derived a part of their culture from Berber influence, and the Winnebago even maintained claims on Talossan lands up until 1831, when they pretended to "cede" the modern-day territory of the Kingdom of Talossa to the United States Government. This was despite the fact the Winnebago lived nowhere near Talossa and could not legally "cede" it. It has since been proven conclusively that the Winnebago did not build the mounds in question, and that there is no direct connection between the Talossans ("Oneota") and the Winnebago. So who were the Talossans? The first Jesuit Relations written by French missionaries in the New World, report an unidentified tribe living near the Winnebago on the shore of Lake Michigan as late as 1648-49:
"With these [various tribes on Lake Huron] we have considerable intercourse, but not with the following, who dwell on the shore of the same Lake farther toward the West [i.e. on Lake Michgan], namely, the Ouchaouanag, who form part of the Nation of fire; the ONDATOUATANDY; and the Ouinipegong [Winnebago], who are part of the Nation of the Puants" (Jesuit Relations, 33:151; Report of Fr. Paul Rageneau, 1648-49).
Here the "mystery tribe" are the ONDATOUATANDY, who are neither Winnebago nor "Nation of Fire" (i.e. Potawotami). Linguistically, this word is evidently a French and Indian corruption of something on the order of On-Tatlouatsan-dy, or On-Talossan-dy, i.e., Talossans. It is inspiring that the Talossan Moundbuilders kept their name, "Talossans," right up to the end. The Algonquian Indians referred to their moundbuilder enemies as the Tellegwi, again showing the ancient tell or talo root which is found in Finnish Talossa, the Talayotic culture of the Balearic Islands, and the Beaker cultures of Toulouse, France.
Perhaps what happened to the Talossans is remembered in a Winnebago legend about a great and terrible battle. Paul Radin, the anthropologist, attempts to use this myth to explain how the Winnebago, who did not live in mound country and had no memory of ever having lived along Lake Michigan in the classic Talossan area actually built the Indian mounds of Wisconsin but later abandoned them. According to this myth, the whole Winnebago tribe, except one survivor, was killed off in a fierce battle with the Illini-- Algonquian invaders from the south--around the year 1640. We know this is not the case; after all, the French were doing deals with the Winnebago just a few years later, and there were a lot more than just one of them around. So who got killed off, save one survivor, in a war against the Illini around the year 1640?
The answer seems obvious: It was the ancient Talossan Berbers, who had been in decline for hundreds of years. As Hurley notes, it is a total mystery what became of the Talossan people. Sometime after 1640--and probably shortly after 1648, when Father Paul Rageneau recorded the existence of a mysterious unknown tribe of Talossans--the up-and-coming Illini took advantage of Talossan weakness and utterly exterminated those last Hokan-speaking Berber moundbuilders who had maintained their culture and identity in eastern Wisconsin for five thousand years. This is, incidentally, without a doubt the reason we hate Illinois drivers.
OUR ANCESTORS THE BERBERS settled North Africa from the Middle East about 12,000 years ago. From here their snail-eating Capsian culture radiated to Spain and beyond, spawning the great Megalithic culture after 4500 BC, whose monuments are found all over Western Europe and New England. They sailed the Atlantic spreading their Megalithic faith, as did their successors, the Beaker Groups, whose trade networks united Western Europe with the Great Lakes and Mississippi Valley between 3000 and 700 BC and created the Old Copper and Red Ochre cultures which flourished on Talossan soil. After their demise, Berber contact with America was renewed in Carthaginian ships until 149 BC, during which time native Berber-speaking civilizations arose in the New World, the Adena and Hopewell cultures. Great migrations of Berbers planted colonies in the distant Southwest, a fact recorded in the name of a Talossan province and in Talossans' innate predilection for Taco Bell food. After the decline of Hopewell around 400 AD, the last remnant of Berber civilization, the Effigy Mound or Oneota culture, infused with Berber Christians from North Africa, survived precariously into the seventeenth century, built a magnificent capital at Aztalan, and was exterminated by the Illini Indians shortly after 1648. Remnants of their culture, including mounds and a Byzantine coin, remain in Talossa to this very day as reminders to us of their presence and our ancient Berber heritage as Talossans.
What does it all mean?! All across the world today, nations of immigrants are reaching out to their aboriginal inhabitants for cultural stimulus. Canadian products use Eskimo names to be fashionable; the Australian government is debating whether to use Aboriginal designs on its new flag, and puts that weird-sounding Aboriginal bamboo pipe music in its tourism commercials; American states and cities by the hundreds have Indian names, and their inhabitants insist that the "Atlanta Braves" and the "Marquette Warriors" are meant to honour the unbowed spirit of those who came before. There is no good reason for Talossa to be any different. We are inexplicably and inextricably connected to Berbers, for better or for worse. It's part of being Talossan. I, for one, think it's neat. Berber, Megalithic, Beaker, Adena, Hopewell, Effigy Mound, Oneota and Hohokam symbols and customs are waiting for us to use, to build our own unique national identity. Laugh or genuflect; this ridiculous fusion of Talossans and Berbers is very much a part of that identity. It is such an oddball association that even if it is not true, it ought to be.
(c) 1996 R. Ben Madison (all rights reserved) * * *