From the dol¬men graves on the ridge above the ruins of Dougga (Thugga) , we knew that the city had been occupied since the 2nd millennium BC . It became under the Carthaginian control throughout the 3rd century BC then went under the domination of the kingdom of the Numidian king Massinissa at the end of the Second Punic War . It remained a Numidian town until 46 BC , when the last Numidian king , Juba I , backed the wrong side (Pompey) in the Roman Civil War . Later ,
Thugga
became Dougga , and it starts its way towards Romanization . Doug¬ga's prosperity escalated when it was populated by more than5000 people during the 2nd and 4th centuries . However , it witness a great degradation during the Vandal oc¬cupation and its inhabitants kept decreasing until disappeared by the time the
Byzantines
ar¬rived in AD 533 and made of Dougga a huge
Byzantine
fortification . People continued to live among the ruins until they were moved in the early 1950s to nearby Nouvelle Dougga (New Dougga) .
