How did Amazigh languages spread from the Nile valley into the Maghrib?

Starting around 2000 BCE, Amazigh languages—which belong to the Afro-Asiatic language family—spread westward from the Nile River valley across the northern Sahara into the Maghrib.12

By the 1st millennium BCE, speakers of these languages were established as the native inhabitants of the region, eventually forming various kingdoms under the influence of Carthaginians and Romans. While these languages were once written in scripts such as the old Libyan script, the subsequent expansion of Arabic during the Islamic period and the arrival of warrior Arab nomads from the 11th century onward led to the gradual Arabization of the region, pushing many Berber speakers into mountainous enclaves and desert regions.1