Giants in North Africa: the dark past of the Cromlech of M'zora
The megalithic site of M'zora is one of the most famous megalithic monuments in northwestern Morocco. It is a unique testimony of its kind that has no similar throughout the Maghreb and the Sahara. In addition to the resemblance to the renowned site of Stonehenge, M'zora is very reminiscent of the megalithic monuments of the south of the Iberian peninsula. According to legend, M'zora is the tomb of the giant Antaeus.
The word “cromlech” is of Welsh origin and indicates prehistoric megalithic structures, where “crom” means curved and “lech” means flat stone. Therefore, Cromlech is the name given to particular megalithic monuments, made up of stones of varying sizes, stuck into the ground in a circular shape.
The most famous is certainly Stonehenge. But in Morocco there is one of the most interesting testimonies of an ancient megalithic culture even in North Africa.
We are talking about the Cromlech of M'zora, an imposing circle made up of 167 megaliths located near the village of Chouahed, 15 km south-east of Asilah. The stones are arranged around a funerary mound cut in the shape of a semicircle.
Overall, the arrangement of the stones describes an ellipse with the largest diameter 58 meters long and the smallest one 54 meters long. The largest megalith is almost 6 meters high. The megaliths, arranged to mark the cardinal points, are marked with engravings that Catalan archaeologist Miquel Tarradell considers to be of anthropogenic origin.
The characteristics of M'zora make it a place that has no equal in all of North Africa. The only similarities are found in comparison with the typical style of the megalithic monuments of the southern Iberian peninsula.
The dating of the site is disputed. M'zora is estimated to date back to 1600/1500 BC, but could be much older. Unlike sites such as Stonehenge, the buried remains of people of high social status have been found in M'zora.
During Roman domination, the site was associated with various legends. The best known, reported by both Plutarch and Strabo, makes M'zora the tomb of the giant Antaeus, king of Libya, son of Poseidon and Gaea.
He was practically invincible as long as he remained in contact with his mother (the Earth), who restored his strength every time he touched her. The giant was defeated by Heracles (or Hercules) who suffocated him by lifting him from the ground, depriving him of the element from which he drew his strength.
The two authors report on the inspection of the M'zora site by the Roman general Quintus Sertorius. Plutarch, in the "Life of Sertorius", recounts what the general found before his eyes:
"He [Sertorius] stormed the city of Tangier, where Ascalius had fled with his brothers. There, say the Africans, Antaeus is buried. Sertorius, who did not believe the story of the enormous size of this giant, ordered the tomb to be opened, finding the body of a being sixty cubits tall [26.64 metres!]. Surprised by its monstrous size, Sertorius had victims sacrificed and ordered the tomb to be carefully covered. By crediting the rumors about him, [Sertorius] increased the respect due to this giant."
The site was then forgotten, at least from the historical documentation. In contemporary times, M'zora has aroused the curiosity of European travelers and archaeologists. In the 19th century, the site was described by many travelers and geographers such as the Englishman Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke, the Frenchmen Charles Tissot, Emilien Renou and Gustave Bleicher. The latter offered the most complete description of the site.
In the 20th century, the Asilah area came under Spanish administration. For this reason, the site was excavated by archaeologist Cesar Luis Montalban from 1935 to 1936, shortly before he was imprisoned during the Spanish Civil War, without managing to deliver any archaeological reports.
Montalban's excavations significantly damaged the site, with deep trenches visible today. The most interesting conclusions on M'zora will arrive around 1950, with the publications of Miquel Tarradell.
A sacred site
“M'zora” in Arabic means “sacred place”. But what was the original name of this holy place before the arrival of the Arabs? In reality, the origins and meaning of M'zora are completely unknown.
The sacred site of M'zora is associated with a series of ancient myths, legends and mysteries that no one has ever tried to solve, because most of these stories refer to giants, a theme largely overlooked by modern historians.
The area of Morocco has been inhabited since at least 8 thousand BC.
As Peter Kolosimo reports in his book “Land without Time”, in Agadir, Morocco, the French captain Lafanechère discovered a complete arsenal of hunting weapons, including five hundred double-edged axes weighing 8 kg each, that is, about 20 times heavier of those that can be handled by a normal human being.
Aside from the weight issue, using an ax like this effectively also requires appropriately sized hands. In this case, in relation to the necessary size of the hands, the user would have had to be almost 4 meters tall. Who, then, could handle such instruments?
Is it possible that M'zora is yet another clue to the existence of a race of giant men who walked our planet in the distant past? Is it possible that the builders of M'zora belonged to a global culture that built Stonehenge and all the other megalithic sites around the planet?
The sacred circle of M'zora was erected on the territory once inhabited by the Berbers. The Berber people believed that the mysterious megaliths were erected by giants with magical powers. But where did they get this information?
As far as is known, Berbers are the indigenous people of North Africa. The Paleolithic human fossils similar to the Berbers proper, are known in paleo-anthropology with the name of Mechta-Afalou man, a variant of the paleo-Europoid of the Cro-Magnon type, dating back to around 20 thousand BC.
The Berbers are a Europoid population of Northern Africa (Tamazgha). It seems that at least until the Bronze Age (around 1200 BC), depigmentation, i.e. blond hair and blue eyes, was quite widespread among the Berber populations as a genetic trait, also documented by rock paintings by Tassili and in Egyptian inscriptions.
Depigmentation survives in a residual form even today, particularly among the Berbers of the Atlas in Morocco and is also witnessed by the Spaniards for the Guanches of the Canary Islands, who according to some descend directly from the Atlanteans.
The origins of the Berbers are still a real mystery today, just like the megalithic circle of M'zora. Both have a long and dark past behind them yet to be discovered.
