Already a subscriber? Sign in here
Read this article now for free!
Enter your email below to read the full article, and to receive our weekly newsletter with a round-up of The Past's top stories.
Or, subscribe for unlimited access
In the heart of the Sahara: Rock art of Wadi Djerat
A narrow wadi in Algeria contains a remarkable concentration of rock art. Christoph Baumer reveals how these images offer a glimpse of a changing world, as a land of lakes and grasslands transformed into the Sahara Desert.
The Sahara has a surface of 9.2 million km², making it the largest hot desert in the world. About 20% of the Sahara is covered by sand, and 70% by stone plateaux and mountains that could in principle be sites for rock art. In contrast to Central Asia and Arabia, where rock carvings predominate and paintings appear relatively rarely, in the Sahara the proportions are reversed. Pictographs are widely spread, but petroglyphs are mainly concentrated in a couple of sandstone regions of the central Sahara. One of them is Wadi Djerat in the Tassili n’Ajjer, in today’s south-eastern Algeria. It is one of the world’s most extraordinary petroglyph sites, for in this deep, narrow valley – c.70
-- or --
Or, subscribe for unlimited access
Or, subscribe for unlimited access
Latest from World Archaeology
