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Since Neolithic times the climate of North Africa has been drying. A reminder of the desertification of the area is provided by megalithic remains, which occur in great variety of form and in vast numbers in presently arid and uninhabitable wastelands: dolmens and circles like Stonehenge, cairns, underground cells excavated in rock, barrows topped with huge slabs, and step-pyramidlike mounds. Most remarkable are the trilithons, some still standing, some thrown down, which occur isolated or in rows, and consist of two squared uprights standing on a common pedestal that support a huge transverse beam. In the Terrgurt valley "there had been originally no less than eighteen or twenty megalithic trilithons, in a line, each with its massive altar placed before it" according to Cowper.

In ancient times, the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, the armies of Alexander the Great and his Ptolemaic successors from Egypt, then Romans, Vandals, and local representatives of the Byzantine Empire ruled all or parts of Libya. The territory of modern Libya had separate histories until Roman times, as Tripoli and Cyrenaica.

Tripoli, was originally a group of Phoenician colonies dependent on Carthage. Phoenicians founded the three great cities (tri + polis) of Oea, Sabrata and Leptis Magna (site of magnificent Roman ruins). Carthage and its dependencies fell to Rome after the Third Punic War. Tripoli is the ancient sea port at the terminus of three great caravan routes linking the coast with Lake Chad and Timbuktu across the Sahara. Near the port of Tripoli stands a Roman triumphal arch with four richly sculpured fronts of white marble. It was begun in the reign of the emperor Antoninus Pius, according to a still-unmutilated dedicatory inscription, and finished under Marcus Aurelius.

Cyrenaica, by contrast, was Greek before it was Roman. It was also known as Pentapolis, the "five cities" being Cyrene (near the village of Shahat) with its port of Apollonia (Marsa Susa), Arsinoe (Tocra), Berenice (Bengazi) and Barca (Merj). From the oldest and most famous of the Greek colonies the fertile coastal plain took the name of Cyrenaica.

• Ancient Libya

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