Jebel Irhoud holds the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils
Remains from Jebel Irhoud, redated in 2017, are at least 300,000 years old—the earliest Homo sapiens yet found. Morocco’s later story runs from Phoenician ports through Berber Mauretania to the Idrisid state that historians call the first Moroccan kingdom.
A Salé fossil about 400,000 years old shows earlier human ancestors; Taforalt’s perforated shell beads near 82,000 years old rank among the oldest personal ornaments. Mesolithic Morocco was savanna, not desert; Neolithic Cardium pottery coastal cultures herded cattle and raised crops until desiccation after 5000 BCE. Phoenicians planted salt and ore depots from the eighth–sixth centuries BCE at Chellah, Lixus, and Mogador. Carthage dominated coasts in the fifth century BCE, paying inland Berbers annual tribute, until the late third century BCE.
Mauretania emerged as a Berber kingdom by about the third century BCE; King Baga is attested near 225 BCE. It became a Roman client in 33 BCE and a province after Caligula executed Ptolemy of Mauretania in 39 or 40 CE. Rome governed through tribal alliances as Mauretania Tingitana with Volubilis as capital, founding Atlantic colonies under Augustus and later shifting the regional seat to Tangier around 278 CE. Christianity spread from the second century; by the late fourth, Romanized zones were largely Christianized beside substantial Jewish communities. Vandals overran the area in the mid-fifth century before Byzantine recovery in the sixth.
Muslim armies completed Maghreb conquest in the early eighth century, organizing Morocco as a province under Kairouan. Berbers adopted Islam yet kept customary law—then erupted in the 740 Kharijite-led revolt that permanently broke Umayyad and later Abbasid hold west of Ifriqiya. Fragmented polities followed: Barghawata on the Atlantic (744–1058), Midrarid Sijilmasa (founded 757) as a Saharan trade hub, and the Kingdom of Nekor in the Rif (from 710), briefly raided by Vikings in 859. Idris ibn Abdallah, a descendant of Hasan ibn Ali, fled Abbasid conflict, settled at Walili (Volubilis) by 788, and founded the Idrisid dynasty (788–974)—reckoned the first Moroccan state—before Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, Saadi, and enduring Alawi (from 1667) successions.
Source: History of Morocco
