"The Dawada (Duwwud, Dawwada) is an Afro-Arab ethnic group from the Fezzan region of southern Libya. They live around the Gabraoun oasis where they harvest brine shrimp in the salty lakes. They dry the brine shrimp and sell them to caravans. The name Dawada means "worm-folk" in Arabic due to this practice. The appearance of the Dawada is distinctive and has been likened to the Khoisan, perhaps a relict population. They are mostly an endogamic group which rarely marry outside of their tribe. They speak an Arabic dialect.[1]"
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The most ancient written reference to the name David is Daudum (or dawada.ym), written on a pottery sherd, found around Elba/Elam/Ebla (I forgot which); it probably meant Da'ud's land or dome/home zone, (similar to House of David), but very plausibly, Lands of the Dawada.
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With water comes life, and nowhere is this more true than in the hyper-arid Sahara desert.
Over the last two million years, dramatic changes in climate have been vital to the evolution of mankind and now play a pivotal role in maintaining the frail livelihood of the Dawada people.
In evolutionary history the climatic cycles led to the development of “migration corridors”; motorways of fertile green land flanking rivers and lakes that crisscrossed the Sahara.
Early humans used the hospitable condition of the corridors to traverse the Sahara which would otherwise be impassable during dry climates.
The mass migration of early humans from the cradle of human evolution in East Africa to North Africa using these migration corridors was a vital stage in the spread of humans across the globe.
Now the Dawada, whose Arabic name means ‘Worm Eaters’ in English, live off the salty oases left by Lake Mega-Fezzan.
This indigenous tribe harvest the small brine shrimps that flourish in the salty oases, grinding them into a dry edible paste for sale at local markets.
The Dawada show how humans can cleverly adapt to the unforgiving desert climate.
However other local farmers have physically engineered the conditions of the desert for financial profit.
Pivot irrigation systems on the north edge of Messak Settafet bring millions of litres of water to the desert allowing for crops to be grown.
These geometric patterns can be recognised from the air as great clusters of discoloured circles up to one kilometre in diameter.
Once in North Africa humans were able to spread to the rest of the world by land through the Middle East and Spanish peninsula.
Group of people, either understood as a tribe or as an ethnic group, living in the central of Libya, mainly around the Gabraoun oasis in the Fezzan, in an area of 11 lakes, called the Dawada lakes. There are no data to their number, but considering the size of their communities it is very small, in the hundreds, perhaps counting 1,000 individuals.
Ethnically they appear to be sub-Saharan blacks mixed with Arabs, and they speak a dialect of Arabic, but their dialect is neither classified nor described.
Dawada is a derogatory term, meaning "worm eaters". The "worms" are small red shrimp, that Dawada women trawls for along the shallows of the lakes. The shrimp are dried in the sun and made into a form of cake with long conservation. Dawada men collect natron from the same lakes, which is exported to tanneries and bakeries. The Dawada are mainly endogamic, rarely marrying outside their tribe
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IG: "You think this the oldest reference to the name/ word David? Being so, from a etymological point of view, proto-Semitic originated in Africa."
I'm not stating it as fact, just saying the sherd's scrawl "Daudum" might be linked to House of David / (D/Home)Land of Dawada.
I note that Phoenicians and Hebrews made royal purple and sacred blue dyes from murex snails, a very profitable enterprise. Also that tortoises were consumed (and probably kept in cane/canal/canyons/Canaan) for a very long time. So shrimp culturing in Fezzan oases is reasonably linked by a common environment. I don't know if ancient Egyptians did these, but would expect so.
"We have in Wadi Ameyra (Sinai desert) an inscription giving for the first time the name of this city, the White Walls,and it is associated to the name of Iry-Hor, a king who ruled Egypt two generations before Narmer," Tallet said. The inscription shows that the ancient capital was around during the time of Iry-Hor and could have been built before even he was pharaoh.
Archaic boats
Among the drawings discovered at Wadi Ameyra are several that show boats. On three of these boats, the archaeologists found a "royal serekh," a pharaonic symbol that looks a bit like the facade of a palace. The serekh looks "as if it were a cabin" on the boats, Tallet said.
In later times, boats were buried beside Egypt's pyramids, including the Giza pyramids. The design of the boats depicted at Wadi Ameyra "are really archaic, much older" than those found beside the pyramids, Tallet said.
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