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Archaeologists have documented 24 previously unrecorded rock-art sites on Morocco’s Tangier Peninsula, along with two standing stones and evidence from a dated burial. The “4,000-year-old” date applies to the use of one stone cist burial at Daroua Zaydan—not to every painting or standing stone in the study. Human bones found outside that cist yielded a radiocarbon date of 2119–1890 BC, calibrated at two sigma.
What rock art was found in Morocco?
A 2025 field survey on the Tangier Peninsula recorded 24 previously undocumented rock-art sites: 16 painted rock shelters, five shelters with cup marks, and three open-air locations with cup marks. The work raised the known number of painted shelters on the peninsula from one to 17. The researchers combined field survey and visits to known places with targeted excavation; the 24 figure refers to documented sites, not 24 excavated structures.
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The imagery includes geometric designs, dots, wavy lines, humanlike figures, and cup marks—small depressions worked into rock. These forms add to evidence that the peninsula’s prehistoric landscape included a range of places and practices, rather than a single monument type.
How old are the discoveries?
The dated Daroua Zaydan cist
The clearest date concerns use of a burial structure at Daroua Zaydan. The cist is made of four upright sandstone slabs supporting a large horizontal slab. Human bones recovered outside the structure—not from inside it—provided the radiocarbon sample. The study reports a calibrated date of 2119–1890 BC at two sigma, approximately four millennia ago. The authors describe it as the first radiocarbon-dated cist burial in northwestern Africa.
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The rock art and standing stones
The cist date does not date the paintings or the two standing stones. Rock art is difficult to date directly, and the authors allow for a potentially multiperiod chronology, possibly reaching as early as the Late Stone Age. The standing stones’ dates are also uncertain. The paper does not establish that all these features were made or used at the same time.
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Where are the standing stones?
The two recorded stones are positioned along potential routes across the Tangier Peninsula in northwestern Morocco, near the Strait of Gibraltar. One is a pointed stone more than 2.5 metres long. Their location could matter, but the study does not demonstrate why they were placed there or what they were used for.
Lead author Hamza Benattia told Live Science that standing stones have often been viewed as territorial markers and may also have served as places for gathering or ritual activity. These are possible interpretations, not confirmed functions; the evidence does not establish that the stones were altars, astronomical devices, or markers with a specific meaning.
What do the sites suggest about regional connections?
The peninsula sits between the Atlantic and Mediterranean and between Africa and Europe. The study compares some imagery and material evidence with traditions in southern Iberia, the Sahara, and elsewhere in Morocco. The authors argue that these parallels make the Tangier Peninsula relevant to long-term regional connections, while the evidence does not prove a single shared culture, a particular migration, or direct contact in every case.
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The article describes a wider prehistoric landscape spanning roughly 3000–500 BC. Its main contribution is to show that cemeteries, rock art, standing stones, and other possible ritual places were more extensive and varied than previously recognized. That broader context should not be confused with a precise date for an individual painting or stone.
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The authors report damage to known and newly documented places from looting, urban development, and agriculture. Those pressures make the record more difficult to study and preserve. Because the evidence is vulnerable, site-level details should be handled carefully rather than treated as an invitation to disturb or visit sensitive archaeological locations.
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The findings appear in Hamza Benattia, Jorge Onrubia-Pintado, and Youssef Bokbot’s peer-reviewed 2025 paper, “Cemeteries, Rock Art and Other Ritual Monuments of the Tangier Peninsula, Northwestern Africa, in Wider Trans-Regional Perspective (c. 3000–500 BC)”, published in African Archaeological Review on May 13, 2025.
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