In the highlands of Niger, Libya, and Algeria, and among other nations surrounding the Sahara west of the Nile, many rock drawings, paintings and engravings are found, revealing much about culture and climate change from Prehistoric times. Petroglyphs abound in the highlands and mountains, and one of the richest areas for rock carving and painting is Tassili N'Ajjer in Algeria. The Tuareg who dwell in the area at this time are thought to be the descendants of these ancient rock artists.
The Sahara Experiences a Wet Climate and Rich Environment
From about 9000 B.C. to 2500 B.C., the Sahara had a much wetter climate during the Neolithic period which was quite habitable for humans and animals, similar to the savannah of East Africa today. Nine thousand years ago the surroundings were green with lakes and forests and with large herds of wild animals not present in the area today as witnessed by petroglyphs in the area. This was known as the Green Sahara. The Sahara at that time was able to sustain a large number of hunters.
Rock art from about 8000 B.C. drawn apparently by hunting peoples depict large, undomesticated animals in the wet Neolithic age show an area rich with giant buffalo, elephants, ostrich, antelopes, giraffes, and rhinoceros. Lakes formed in the basins which also included fish, crocodiles, and hippopotamus. Oxen and domesticated cattle are then shown in rock art. Horses were later drawn along with horses and chariots, and later came camels. The rock art drawings paint a broad record of the history of the Prehistoric Sahara. A new dating technique, accelerator mass spectrometry, now allows for dating of pictographs with a very small sample which has advanced the study of historical geography and occupation of the area. The rock art of the Sahara has been found to predate the pyramids by thousands of years, which argues for influences in ancient Egypt from the Sahara people.
Five Periods of Rock Art in the Sahara
The rock art in the Sahara can be categorized into five general periods:
- Bubalus petroglyphs: large wild animals such as Buffalo, Elephants, Rhinoceros; 9,000 to 6,000 B.C. During the period from 10,000 to 6000 B.C. the Nile Valley was uninhabitable with tremendous flooding from glacier runoff into the Blue and White Niles from Ethiopia. From about 10,000 B.C., any settlements in the Nile Valley were wiped out with the inundations. As the meltdown began to slow, people from the Sahara moved back into the Nile Valley.
- Roundhead people petroglyphs: approximately 6000 to 4000 B.C.; humans are depicted with rounded heads and have a rather alien look about them.
- Cattle herding petroglyphs: 4,500 to 2,500 B.C.
- Horse and horses with chariots rock art: from 1200 B.C.
- Camel petroglyphs: from 500 B.C., sometimes accompanied by the tifnar script of the Tuaregs
The Sahara, with its evolving climate, is seen through rock paintings to have been home to many cultures from Neolithic times onwards. Wallis Budge, Wilkinson, McKenna and Lhote who studied the paintings of Tassili n’Ajjer and other regions in North Africa all came to similar conclusions that the people who created the Prehistoric rock paintings in the Sahara, southern Egypt and along the Red Sea all came from the same semi-nomadic peoples who may have had their origins in Ethiopia. These people spread their shamanic religion (displayed in rock art motifs) to the Predynastic Egyptian people (prior to 3100 B.C.). Some similar scenes and motifs (solar disc between horns of cattle, men with animal masks or headdresses, and hunter-god) found in Algerian and Libyan rock art are later seen on temples and monuments in Egypt.
Sources:
American Chemical Society “New Technology For Dating Ancient Rock Paintings,” ScienceDaily. (2009, March 16).
Bahn, Paul G. The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art Cambridge University Press. (1998)
Coulson, D and Campbell, Alec African Rock Art: Paintings and Engravings on Harry N Abrams (2001)
Holl, Augustin F.C. Saharan Rock Art, Archaeology of Tassilian Pastoralist Icongraphy (2004)
Lajoux, J.D. The Rock Paintings of Tassili Thames & Hudson (1963)
Wilkinson, Toby Genesis of the Pharaohs: Dramatic New Discoveries Rewrite the Origins of Ancient Egypt Thames and Hudson (2003)
Paula I. Nielson - Paula I. Nielson, Ph.D., holds credentials and interests in anthropology, archaeology, religion, the Middle East and Asia.
