A Libyan Town Comes Together to Make a Beloved Ramadan Dish 

A Libyan volunteer shows a just made traditional unleavened Libyan bread made out of barley in Tajoura, east of Libya's capital Tripoli, Tuesday, March 11, 2025, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP)
A Libyan volunteer shows a just made traditional unleavened Libyan bread made out of barley in Tajoura, east of Libya's capital Tripoli, Tuesday, March 11, 2025, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP)
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A Libyan Town Comes Together to Make a Beloved Ramadan Dish 

A Libyan volunteer shows a just made traditional unleavened Libyan bread made out of barley in Tajoura, east of Libya's capital Tripoli, Tuesday, March 11, 2025, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP)
A Libyan volunteer shows a just made traditional unleavened Libyan bread made out of barley in Tajoura, east of Libya's capital Tripoli, Tuesday, March 11, 2025, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP)

Every year during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a Libyan town comes together to prepare — and share — one of their all-time favorite dishes: bazin.

In Tajoura, just east of Libya's capital of Tripoli, it's the perfect food for iftar, the evening meal when Muslims break the dawn-to-dusk fasting of Ramadan.

Savory and rich, bazin is usually made of unleavened barley flour and served with a rich stew full of vegetables and — hopefully — mutton. If those aren't available, which they often haven't been in the past decade and a half due to Libya's violence and turmoil, a simple tomato sauce will do.

Volunteers prepare Bazin, traditional Libyan dough bread made of barley or whole wheat flour and often served with stew in Tajoura, east of Libya's capital Tripoli, Tuesday, March 11, 2025, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (AP)

Preparing it is a joint effort, and Tajoura residents of all ages are eager to help with roles from making the bread, handing it out to the poor or donating ingredients to the community.

Typically, the men of Tajoura volunteer to make the bread in a makeshift communal kitchen, using long wooden sticks to stir the barley flour water in large pots to make the dough.

Others then knead the dough, shaping it into large clumps that look a bit like giant dumplings, to be baked or steamed. Once ready, other volunteers hand out bazin to a people lined up outside, who eagerly wait to take it home for iftar.

Ramadan is a time of intense prayers, charity and spirituality.

And in Tajoura, it's also time for bazin.



Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Known Partial Face Fossil of Human Ancestor in Western Europe

This photo provided by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025, shows archaeological excavation work at the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain, where a fossil from a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old was found. (Maria D. Guillén/IPHES-CERCA via AP)
This photo provided by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025, shows archaeological excavation work at the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain, where a fossil from a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old was found. (Maria D. Guillén/IPHES-CERCA via AP)
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Archaeologists Uncover Oldest Known Partial Face Fossil of Human Ancestor in Western Europe

This photo provided by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025, shows archaeological excavation work at the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain, where a fossil from a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old was found. (Maria D. Guillén/IPHES-CERCA via AP)
This photo provided by the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in March 2025, shows archaeological excavation work at the Sima del Elefante site in Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain, where a fossil from a hominin between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old was found. (Maria D. Guillén/IPHES-CERCA via AP)

A fossil of a partial face from a human ancestor is the oldest in western Europe, archaeologists reported Wednesday.
The incomplete skull — a section of the left cheek bone and upper jaw – was found in northern Spain in 2022. The fossil is between 1.1 million and 1.4 million years old, according to research published in the journal Nature.
“The fossil is exciting," said Eric Delson, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History, who was not involved in the study. “It's the first time we have significant remains older than 1 million years old in western Europe.”
A collection of older fossils from early human ancestors was previously found in Georgia, near the crossroads of eastern Europe and Asia. Those are estimated to be 1.8 million years old, The Associated Press reported.
The Spanish fossil is the first evidence that clearly shows human ancestors “were taking excursions into Europe” at that time, said Rick Potts, director of the Smithsonian’s Human Origins Program.
But there is not yet evidence that the earliest arrivals persisted there long, he said. “They may get to a new location and then die out,” said Potts, who had no role in the study.
The partial skull bears many similarities to Homo erectus, but there are also some anatomical differences, said study co-author Rosa Huguet, an archaeologist at the Catalan Institute of Human Paleoecology and Social Evolution in Tarragona, Spain.
Homo erectus arose around 2 million years ago and moved from Africa to regions of Asia and Europe, with the last individuals dying out around 100,000 years ago, said Potts.
It can be challenging to identify which group of early humans a fossil find belongs to if there's only a single fragment versus many bones that show a range of features, said University of Zurich paleoanthropologist Christoph Zollikofer, who was not involved in the study.
The same cave complex in Spain's Atapuerca Mountains where the new fossil was found also previously yielded other significant clues to the ancient human past. Researchers working in the region have also found more recent fossils from Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens.