February 27 is Independence Day of The Sahrawi (or Saharawi) Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), also known as Western Sahara, is a partially recognized state, recognised by 45 UN member states, located in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.

The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front (a former socialist liberation force that has since reformed its ideological and political views) on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara. The SADR government controls about 20–25% of the territory it claims. It calls the territories under its control the Liberated Territories or the Free Zone. Morocco controls and administers the rest of the disputed territory, and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The SADR government considers the Moroccan-held territory to be occupied territory, while Morocco considers the much smaller SADR-held territory to be a buffer zone. The claimed capital city of the SADR is El-Aaiún (Laayoune) (the former capital of Western Sahara). Since SADR does not control El-Aaiún, they have a temporary capital that moved from Bir Lehlou to Tifariti in 2008. The seat of the SADR government is located in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria.

The SADR maintains diplomatic relations with 45 United Nations states, and is a full member of the African Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahrawi_Arab_Democratic_Republic

It's easy to imagine the Sahara as a lifeless and timeless place, where the relentless forces of nature rule supreme over any sense of human history. However, that’s far from the truth.

Odd corners of the Western Sahara, found along the northwestern coast of Africa, are littered with hundreds of ancient stone monuments from centuries worth of human culture, some of which date back to over 10,000 years ago.

Between 2002 and 2009, the Western Sahara Project, led by the University of East Anglia in the UK, documented the archaeology and environment of northwestern Sahara around the oasis town of Tifariti. As first reported by Live Science, their findings were published in the book The Archaeology of Western Sahara: A Synthesis of Fieldwork, 2002 to 2009.

The monuments come in a variety of forms and were constructed by a number of different cultures across the centuries. Many appear to be little more than long rows of heaped rocks, while others are purposefully placed large stones standing proudly in a circular pattern. Others, like the "bazina," are imposing 5-meter-high (16 feet) dry stone wall constructions that could have only been built by human hands.

It’s unclear what most of the monuments are meant to signify, although most are assumed to be burial mounds, used as part of a funerary ritual, or hint at the presence of a grave. This desire to construct burial mounds is something that can be found in countless cultures across the planet, from the Scythians of ancient Siberia to the sea-faring Vikings of northern Europe, and it looks like the ancient people of Western Sahara were not different.

For one reason or another, this natural basin area managed to remain a hive of human activity over the millennia, especially when times became tough in the surrounding areas.

“One of our theories is that as the Sahara dried in the mid-Holocene—between five and six thousand years ago—this is one of the refugia, an area where water remained,” research Joanne Clarke, prehistoric archaeologist at the University of East Anglia, told Atlas Obscura.

Part of the reason this neck of the woods has remained relatively unexplored by archaeologists is due to ongoing armed conflict between Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, both of whom lay claim to the region. However, as these inticing monuments clearly show, there is much to learn about this land and its numerous run-ins with humans.