Algeria, Tassili n'Ajjer

At the heart of the Sahara, Tassili n'Ajjer dominates the top of its steep cliffs, the desert, beyond the oasis of Djanet, extends to infinity such a calm or troubled ocean. Sandstone plateau extensively eroded by thousands of years of rain, it offers its grandiose landscapes, always renewed, with its canyons, major wadis, but also its massive sandstone evoking dead cities, stone forests, castles fortified, and once covered large areas of savannah vegetation type, enabling environment for abundant animal and human life. Thus this plateau is the largest museum in the world open ... Pierre Colombel evokes for us rock paintings and engravings that tell us "before the Sahara desert. "

The Holocene is the beginning of the Neolithic Sahara, about 10 000 BC the beginning of that time back probably the oldest engravings plateau n'Ajjer, particularly those of the Wadi Djerat the period Ancient hartebeest, wild ox which the encornure could reach almost three meters wide.
Besides hartebeest characterizing this period, large wild animals, called "Ethiopian" is abundantly represented by representations of hippos, elephants, rhinos and giraffes, but also ostriches, antelopes, wild donkeys, hyenas, crocodiles and fish, waterfowl and showing cattle ... maybe early domestication. This fauna is often associated with spirals and human figures. Engravings, very realistic, are usually large, carefully executed and of great artistic quality. Apart from the period of the "round heads" which has only painted figures, Bovidian periods, horse and camel are also represented in engravings.
If engravings are often located along major wadis on boulders or stones, paints mainly adorn the walls of shelters dug at the base of large sandstone formations eroded plateau.

Djerat ... the wadi.

Located in the northwest of the Tassili, it offers both engravings and rock paintings. In ten kilometers, over four thousand prints fall on its banks lined with cliffs that reach up to a hundred and fifty meters. The bottom of the river hides many gueltas or water points, as in small groves of Nafeg today uninhabited. There are dates, oleanders, vines, of castor beans and some wild figs among the reeds. Some water points still harbor fish. Some natural shelters located several meters above the ground, are decorated with paintings. One of them is decorated with palm trees regimes: this is the oldest testimony to the culture of this tree that we had for the entire Sahara.

... To major southeastern sites tray

It is accessed starting from Djanet, the "pearl of Tassili" oasis thirty thousand date palms which shelter from the sun lights the many gardens irrigated by hundreds of sources.
The most important sites are Jabbaren and Sefar, each home to more than a hundred painted panels, several thousand figures.
Sefar is at the heart of a deeply eroded rock mass, with areas and very tormented levels, only a few stretches for the access of cattle. The most important water sources are the heart of rocks inaccessible to cattle. It is certain that this morphological configuration explains why scenes of Bovidian period are fewer than elsewhere, while populations of hunters of the period "round heads" have left their mark by numerous paintings where the characters are often carry a mask in scenes ritualistic / religious. Two days' journey, during which we see Shale outcrops the many nuances that provided the range of prehistoric painters, leading to the site Jabbaren near a collar, the Akba Aroum, which can descend to Djannet.

Jabbaren looks like a city carved in sandstone, with many streets, alleys and easy access seats. We discover huge shelters, circuses, whose sandstone walls are decorated with a multitude of figures painted above periods "round heads" and Bovidian in animated scenes of daily life or religious, sometimes up to a surface nearly fifty square meters. One of the finest, most famous as the "polychrome oxen Jabbaren" shows, over a length of three meters, a herd of thirty cattle on, accompanied by his guardian. The ensemble is remarkable for its aesthetic qualities and use, rare green color.

The major periods

The choice of denomination has been done depending on the elements that characterize them. Thus the period of the "round heads" is due to the shape, the most frequent, the heads of the characters represented, whose facial features are rarely depicted. The other three periods: beef, horse and camel are marked by the successive appearance of these domesticated animals.
The period of "round heads" presents a wide variety of style, twenty, including the oldest shows monochrome characters who barely exceed ten or twelve feet high. Later, certain figures reach five to six meters high; painted white and surrounded by a purplish brown line, these characters were baptized by H. Lhote "gods". Often painted in special places by their size and morphology of human appearance although faceless, they generally occupy a predominant position and are surrounded by the same invoice characters but of much smaller size, turned to them in attitudes of praying. All these elements mentioned in no doubt, the practice of religious ceremonies.
The long evolution of the "round heads" more than 2000 years, retains its main characteristics: round head characters, wearing a small kilt for every garment, a few ornaments elements and body paint; armament is limited to single curvature arch, stick or a club, sometimes a kind of long fork. The abundance of nature scenes ritual / religious highlights the place they were to occupy in the cultural system of these peoples. The end of this period is marked by the style of "masks" which appear Negroid character profiles with a rich polychrome that more widespread.
A drought of several centuries, around 5 500-5 000 BC, probably causes the end of the period in which people lived on fishing, hunting and gathering.
The fifth millennium BC saw the arrival, with the return of the rains, a new population from the east which has domestic cattle herds and sheep and goats.
Like its predecessor, the Bovidian period has many specific characters that evolve over time due to the successive penetration of Tassili n'Ajjer several successive ethnic groups that make all graze their cattle in a privileged area that has found an abundant flora and rich wildlife, confirming favorable climatic conditions and the presence of permanent water bodies. This period, which marks the summit of Saharan rock art, provided the largest number of paintings. The multiplicity of styles and themes treated present a true ethnographic chronicle. If the negroid kind remains present, newcomers, more numerous, owners of pets, lanky Peul are copper-colored. Usually dressed in a loincloth, they are represented in all aspects of their collective or private activities: hunting wild animals, accompanying their herds returning from the harvest of berries and fruit with a hood on the back or a basket to hand at the camp with their animals or near oval huts in intimate scenes of couples fighting archer but also participating in religious ceremonies which we know, for some, the meaning was us Ampaté provided by Mr. and Mrs. Germaine Dieterlen Ba "These interpretations are related, on the one hand with the traditional initiation Fulani herdsmen, secondly with the rites performed by these pastors." The domestic beef used as a mount or pack animal, is then mounted bareback. Later, with the arrival of new populations Europid characters, vast ornate saddles will richly dressed women with elaborate hairstyles and ornaments. Men also wear clothes diversified and are often adorned with body paint. The color palette ranges from yellow ocher to purple ocher, chrome yellow, dark brown, white, black and green. The average size human figures is between twenty and thirty centimeters. The artists have achieved great mastery, as the drawing of the composition, and some have made real masterpieces on the sandstone walls.

But around 2000 BC, climatic conditions deteriorated again, resulting in a gradual southward migration in search of pasture.
Usually cites the introduction of the domestic horse in the course of the thirteenth century BC It was first shown hitched to a chariot and, soon enough, mounted. The period of the horse is related to the penetration of a new Caucasian population from the north-east - the ancestors of today's Tuaregs. At that time, large wild animals, except the giraffe, is no longer represented, but the domestic beef remains visible on the painted walls of the wadi Djerat, and human figures, often monochrome, are treated schematically; are appearing writing, old tifinagh leading to the current script used by the Tuaregs.
The period of the camel: at the end of the first millennium BCE, the arid climate results in the gradual replacement of the horse. The "camel" is, with the donkey, goats and some breeds, the only pet small nomadic Tuareg groups still circulating today in the heart of Tassili n'Ajjer.