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Just learn something new recently : based on rock engravings which depict unique axes with no parallel elsewhere, some researchers hypothesized that the Draa Valley in Morocco might have seen local populations developping independently metallurgy during the 3rd millenium B.C. before the importation of iberian weaponry (el Argar/ Carrapatas) in northern Morocco. What's even more interesting is that L. Auclair also propose that these people were black hunters based on rock paintings, ancient/medieval testimonies of the draa valley being inhabited by black people and ethnoarchaeology but him and other scholars also emphasize the ethnic diversity of the whole atlantic sahara region which can be seen from the paintings themselves.
Here I translated some parts :
quote: This axe presents, with great realism, a solid, strongly curved blade (sometimes described as "spatulated") fitted at the end of a handle probably made of wood. Chenorkian emphasized that this type of axe had no Mediterranean counterpart, appeared only in the "Saharan" environment and could be an indigenous metal weapon. [...] The sites where images of the two types of axes, Metgourine and axe-pelts, appear are sufficiently numerous now to support with certainty that there was indeed the independent invention of metal weapons in the southern High Atlas. This invention seems to have originated somewhere along the Middle Draa wadi, and perhaps further south, with the production of the Metgourine axe. [In the present state of our knowledge, the production of these axes would have begun in the 3rd millennium BC with the Metgourine axe , to continue with the pelted axes in the 2nd millennium BC.
Susan Searight-Martinet, Archéologie des Haches du sud Marocain, L'Harmattan, "L'ouest Saharien", 2019, Vol. 9, pp. 239 et 244
quote:Several elements support the hypothesis of a black settlement of nomadic hunters established on the northern shore of the Moroccan Sahara. This settlement probably assimilated by the Paleoberber society from the end of the Neolithic would be the inventor of the axe "Metgourine" and metallurgy.
Auclair et al., Les chasseurs du Sahara atlantique ont-ils inventé la métallurgie ? Les haches "à tranchant en éventail" dans l'art rupestre du sud marocain, 2015
quote: The "Metgourine" axe thus appears in an "archaic" environment, leading Robert Chenorkian to formulate the hypothesis in 1988 that this weapon, of non-European origin, could be prior to Iberian weapons. The presence of this axe would then imply the development of an early indigenous metallurgy "unless it significantly rejuvenates what is known as the hunters' style (Tazina)" (Rodrigue, 1994: p. 29). The absence of a link with the Mauritanian Chalcolithic productions of Akjoujt, 3000-2500 BP (Vernet, 2012), as well as the Aïr Metal Age in Niger (Paris et al., 1992; Dupuy, 2010), argues in favor of an autochthonous metallurgical production localized on the banks of the Drâa, between Anti Atlas and Seguia el-Hamra.
Auclair et al., Les chasseurs du Sahara atlantique ont-ils inventé la métallurgie ? Les haches "à tranchant en éventail" dans l'art rupestre du sud marocain, 2015
Here the Metgourine type :
and here the "axe-pelt" type which might derive from it and date back to the 2nd millenium B.C. :
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