text: It was employed by medieval geographers such as Muhammad al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi.The Ottoman Empire extended the name of al-Jazā'ir over the entire country, deriving it from the name of the capital city.Thus, it shares its etymology with numerous other places, such as Alzira in Valencia, Algeciras in Andalusia, Lezíria in Portugal, Cizre in Turkey, Gżira in Malta, the Nile island of Gezira in Egypt, and the state of Gezira in Sudan.History Prehistory and ancient history Around ~1.8-million-year-old stone artifacts from Ain Hanech (Algeria) were considered to represent the oldest archaeological materials in North Africa.Stone artifacts and cut-marked bones that were excavated from two nearby deposits at Ain Boucherit are estimated to be ~1.9 million years old, and even older stone artifacts to be as old as ~2.4 million years.Hence, the Ain Boucherit evidence shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought.The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa, or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa.Neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles (43,000 BC) similar to those in the Levant.Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques.Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian (after the archaeological site of Bir el Ater, south of Tebessa).The earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian (located mainly in the Oran region).This industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC.Neolithic civilization (animal domestication and agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb perhaps as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC.