The world is officially rid of one particularly insidious fossil fuel that for decades was a major cause of public health problems in developing countries, especially in Africa.
The Kingdom of Numidia was born in 202 B.C.E., when the Berber king Masinissa united two long-rival confederacies into North Africa’s first unified state. After years as a mountain fugitive, he allied with Scipio Africanus, defeated his rival Syphax, and built a kingdom that would endure over a century as a regional power in its own right.
The Amazigh — “free people” — were shaping life across North Africa long before Rome or the Arab conquests arrived. Their ancestors painted elephants and hippos on Saharan rock walls when the desert was still green, around 5000 B.C.E. Today, an estimated 30 to 40 million people carry that lineage forward, one of the world’s longest continuous cultural threads.
