ROCK ART IN THE GREEN SAHARA

The Sahara covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger,
Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. It covers 9 million square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi),
amounting to 31% of Africa. If all areas with a mean annual precipitation of less than 250 mm
(9.8 in) were included, the Sahara would be 11 million square kilometres (4,200,000 sq mi). It is
one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division.
Sahara is so large and bright that, in theory, it could be detected from other stars as a surface
feature of Earth, with near-current technology.[10]

The Sahara is mainly rocky hamada (stone plateaus); ergs (sand seas – large areas covered
with sand dunes) form only a minor part, but many of the sand dunes are over 180 metres (590
ft) high.[11] Wind or rare rainfall shape the desert features: sand dunes, dune fields, sand seas,
stone plateaus, gravel plains (reg), dry valleys (wadi), dry lakes (oued), and salt flats (shatt or
chott).[12] Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania.

Several deeply dissected mountains, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr
Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red
Sea Hills. The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi, a shield volcano in the Tibesti range of
northern Chad.

The central Sahara is hyperarid, with sparse vegetation. The northern and southern reaches of
the desert, along with the highlands, have areas of sparse grassland and desert shrub, with
trees and taller shrubs in wadis, where moisture collects. In the central, hyperarid region, there
are many subdivisions of the great desert: Tanezrouft, the Ténéré, the Libyan Desert, the Eastern
Desert, the Nubian Desert and others. These extremely arid areas often receive no rain for years.

To the north, the Sahara skirts the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt and portions of Libya, but in
Cyrenaica and the Maghreb, the Sahara borders the Mediterranean forest, woodland, and scrub
eco-regions of northern Africa, all of which have a Mediterranean climate characterized by hot
summers and cool and rainy winters. According to the botanical criteria of Frank White[13] and
geographer Robert Capot-Rey,[14][15] the northern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the
northern limit of date palm cultivation and the southern limit of the range of esparto, a grass
typical of the Mediterranean climate portion of the Maghreb and Iberia. The northern limit also
corresponds to the 100 mm (3.9 in) isohyet of annual precipitation.[16]
To the south, the Sahara is bounded by the Sahel, a belt of dry tropical savanna with a summer
rainy season that extends across Africa from east to west. The southern limit of the Sahara is
indicated botanically by the southern limit of Cornulaca monacantha (a drought-tolerant
member of the Chenopodiaceae), or northern limit of Cenchrus biflorus, a grass typical of the
Sahel.[14][15] According to climatic criteria, the southern limit of the Sahara corresponds to the
150 mm (5.9 in) isohyet of annual precipitation (this is a long-term average, since precipitation
varies annually).[16]

Important cities located in the Sahara include Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania;
Tamanrasset, Ouargla, Béchar, Hassi Messaoud, Ghardaïa, and El Oued in Algeria; Timbuktu in
Mali; Agadez in Niger; Ghat in Libya; and Faya-Largeau in Chad

Round Head rock art is the earliest painted,monumental form of Central Saharan rock art,which
was largely created from 9500 BP to 7500 BP and ceased being created by 3000 BP.The Round
Head Period is preceded by the Kel Essuf Period and followed by the Pastoral Period.Round
Head rock art number up to several thousand depictions in the Central Sahara.Human and
undomesticated animal (e.g., Barbary sheep, antelope) artforms are usually portrayed, with a
variety of details (e.g., dancing, ceremonies, masks, spiritual animal forms), in painted Round
Head rock art.Painted Round Head rock art and engraved Kel Essuf rock art usually share the
same region and occasionally the same rockshelters.The Round Head rock art of Tassili and the
surrounding mountainous areas bear considerable similarity with traditional Sub-Saharan
African cultures.[4]

At the start of 10th millennium BP, amid the Epipaleolithic, the walls of rockshelters (e.g., Tin
Torha, Tin Hanakaten) were used as a foundation for proto-village huts that families resided in,
as well as hearths, which may have been suitable for the mobile lifestyle of semi-sedentary
Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers.Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers built a simple stone wall, dated to
10,508 ± 429 cal BP/9260 ± 290 BP, which may have been used for the purpose of serving as a
windbreak.[9] In 10,000 BP, Epipaleolithic hunter-gatherers, to some extent, engaged in
processing of flora, and were specialists in the use of Barbary sheep (Ammotragus
lervia).Though uncommon, ceramics and lithic complexes were also utilized. Hunters of the
Epipaleolithic especially hunted Barbary sheep, among other animals, as well as utilized
ceramics and basic lithic constructs between 10,000 BP to 8800 BP. Hunters of the
Epipaleolithic, who possessed a sophisticated social organization, as well as exceptional stone
tools and ceramics, created the Round Head rock art. Amid an early period of the Holocene,
semi-settled Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic hunters, who created a refined material culture (e.g.,
stone tools, decorated pottery) as early as 10,000 BP, also created the engraved Kel Essuf and
painted Round Head rock art styles located in the region (e.g., some in the Acacus, some in the
Tadrart) of Libya, in the region (e.g., some in the Tadrart, most abundant in Tassili n'Ajjer) of
Algeria, in the region (e.g., Djado) of Nigeria, and the region (e.g., Djado) of Niger.

Amid the early Sahara, Round Head rock artists, who had a sophisticated culture and engaged in
the activity of hunting and gathering, also developed pottery, used vegetation, and managed
animals. The cultural importance of shepherded Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) is shown
via their presence in Round Head rock art throughout the Central Sahara (e.g., Libyan region of
Tadrart Acacus, Algerian region of Tassili n’Ajjer).Barbary sheep were corralled in stone
enclosures near Uan Afuda cave. From up to 9500 BP, this continued until the beginning of the
Pastoral Neolithic in the Sahara.Between 7500 BCE and 3500 BCE, amid the Green Sahara,
undomesticated central Saharan flora were farmed, stored, and cooked, and domesticated
animals (e.g., Barbary sheep) were milked and managed, by hunter-gatherers near the Takarkori
rockshelter, which is representative of the broader Sahara; this continued until the beginning of
the Pastoral Neolithic in the Sahara.
Between 8800 BP and 7400 BP, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers hunted different kinds of animals
and used numerous grinding and flaking stone technologies and ceramics for the purpose of
improving the overall number of undomesticated vegetation gathered.Among hunter-gatherers
of the Mesolithic, there was use of ceramics, due to the increased settling and acquiring of
undomesticated vegetation, and considerable use of lithic grinding tools, between 8800 BP and
7400 BP. At Uan Afuda, Mesolithic hunter-gatherer settlements had remnants of baskets with
undomesticated vegetation within them and cords, which date between 8700 BP and 8300 BP.
Pastoral rock art is the most common form of Central Saharan rock art, created in painted and
engraved styles depicting pastoralists and bow-wielding hunters in scenes of animal husbandry,
along with various animals (e.g., cattle, sheep, goats, dogs), spanning from 6300 BCE to 700
BCE. The Pastoral Period is preceded by the Round Head Period and followed by the Caballine
Period.The Early Pastoral Period spanned from 6300 BCE to 5400 BCE. Domesticated cattle
were brought to the Central Sahara (e.g., Tadrart Acacus), and given the opportunity for
becoming socially distinguished, to develop food surplus, as well as to acquire and aggregate
wealth, led to the adoption of a cattle pastoral economy by some Central Saharan hunter-
gatherers of the Late Acacus.In exchange, cultural information regarding utilization of
vegetation (e.g., Cenchrus, Digitaria) in the Central Sahara (e.g., Uan Tabu, Uan Muhuggiag) was
shared by Late Acacus hunter-gatherers with incoming Early Pastoral peoples.

The Middle Pastoral Period (5200 cal BCE – 3800 cal BCE) is when most of the Pastoral rock art
was developed. In the Messak region of southwestern Libya, there were cattle remains set in
areas in proximity to engraved Pastoral rock art depicting cattle (e.g., rituals of cattle
sacrifice).Stone monuments are also often found in proximity to these engraved Pastoral rock
art.A complete cattle pastoral economy (e.g., dairying) developed in the Acacus and Messak
regions of southwestern Libya.Semi-sedentary settlements were used seasonally by Middle
Pastoral peoples depending on the weather patterns (e.g., monsoon).

Amid the Late Pastoral Period, animals associated with the modern savanna decreased in
appearance on Central Saharan rock art and animals suited for dry environments and animals
associated with the modern Sahelian increased in appearance on Central Saharan rock art. At
Takarkori rockshelter, between 5000 BP and 4200 BP, Late Pastoral peoples herded goats,
seasonally (e.g., winter), and began a millennia-long tradition of creating megalithic monuments,
utilized as funerary sites where individuals were buried in stone-covered tumuli that were
usually away from areas of dwellings in 5000 BP

The Final Pastoral Period (1500 BCE – 700 BCE) was a transitory period from nomadic
pastoralism toward becoming increasingly sedentary. Final Pastoral peoples were scattered,
semi-migratory groups who practiced transhumance. Burial mounds (e.g., conical tumuli, v-type)
were created set a part from others and small-sized burial mounds were created closely
together.Final Pastoral peoples kept small pastoral animals (e.g., goats) and increasingly
utilized plants. At Takarkori rockshelter, Final Pastoral peoples created burial sites for several
hundred individuals that contained non-local, luxury goods and drum-type architecture in 3000
BP, which made way for the development of the Garamantian civilization.
Bubalus,Bubaline, or Large Wild Fauna rock art is the earliest form of Central Saharan rock
art,created in an engraved style, which have been dated between 12,000 BCE and 8000 BCE.The
Bubaline Period is followed by the Kel Essuf Period. As the animal world is particularly
emphasized in Bubaline rock art, animal depictions are usually shown in larger scale than
human depictions. Bubaline rock art portrays a few geometric designs and naturalistic outlined
depictions of animals,such as antelope, aurochs, buffalos
History

The cave and rock art was discovered in October 1933 by the Hungarian explorer László Almásy.
It contains Neolithic pictographs (rock painting images) and is named due to the depictions of
people with their limbs bent as if they were swimming. The drawings include those of giraffe
and hippopotamus.They are estimated to have been created as early as 10,000 years ago with
the beginning of the African Humid Period, when the Sahara was significantly greener and
wetter than it is today. The cause of the climate change 10,000 years ago was due to changes in
summer solar insolation and vegetation and dust feedbacks.

Almásy devoted a chapter to the cave in his 1934 book, The Unknown Sahara. In it he postulates
that the swimming scenes are real depictions of life at the time of painting and that the artists
had realistically drawn their surroundings and that there had been a climatic change from
temperate to xeric desert since that time making it drier.[citation needed] This theory was so
new at that time that his first editor added several footnotes, to make it clear that he did not
share this opinion. In 2007, Eman Ghoneim discovered an ancient mega-lake (30,750 km²)
buried beneath the sand of the Great Sahara in the Northern Darfur region, Sudan.

The cave is mentioned in Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient. The film adaptation has
a scene in it that has a guide describing in his native language to Almásy, who is portrayed as a
character in both the novel and the film, the location that Almásy renders a drawing and
includes some text that is then placed in the book that he keeps for himself.The cave shown in
the film is not the original but a film set created by a contemporary artist.[citation needed]

Present day

Physical scientists who have been conducting research in the area drew a provisional link
between the proposed swimming humans and two lakes that are 124 miles (or 200 km) south
of the cave. However, Andras Zboray, an archaeologist who is doing research in the area,
questions whether the figures are swimming or not. He believes that the drawings are "clearly
symbolic...with an unknown meaning."[citation needed]

Other researchers such as German ethnologist Hans Rhotert, who was involved in rock art
research in North Africa and the Middle East, was the first to interpret these drawings as being
that of deceased people.Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, a doctor of anthropology, ethnology and
prehistory, agrees with Rhotert. He has pointed out parallels to the Coffin Texts indicating that
the figures are deceased souls floating in the waters of Nun.

Due to similar artwork being found in nearby caves, such as the Cave of Beasts, and the
continuous line that the figures create extending across a majority of the cave's interior has led
researchers to believe that the cave art may display developing concepts that were later
adapted to the configuration of the Nile valley.

Substantial portions of the cave have been irreversibly damaged by visitors over the years,
especially since the film was released in 1996. Fragments of the paintings have been removed
as souvenirs and some surfaces have cracked after water was applied to "enhance" their
contrast for photographs. Modern graffiti have been inscribed upon the wall and tourist littering
is a problem.[citation needed]
Steps have been taken to reduce future damage by training guides and clearing litter from the
vicinity, but this important rock art site remains fragile and risks future disturbances as tourist
traffic to the region increases.
The prehistory of West Africa spans from the earliest human presence in the region until the
emergence of the Iron Age in West Africa. West African populations were considerably mobile
and interacted with one another throughout the population history of West Africa.Acheulean tool
-using archaic humans may have dwelled throughout West Africa since at least between
780,000 BP and 126,000 BP (Middle Pleistocene).During the Pleistocene, Middle Stone Age
peoples (e.g., Iwo Eleru people,possibly Aterians), who dwelled throughout West Africa between
MIS 4 (71,000 BP) and MIS 2 (29,000 BP, Last Glacial Maximum), were gradually replaced by
incoming Late Stone Age peoples, who migrated into West Africa as an increase in humid
conditions resulted in the subsequent expansion of the West African forest.West African hunter-
gatherers occupied western Central Africa (e.g., Shum Laka) earlier than 32,000 BP,dwelled
throughout coastal West Africa by 12,000 BP,[8] and migrated northward between 12,000 BP
and 8000 BP as far as Mali, Burkina Faso,[8] and Mauritania.
During the Holocene, Niger-Congo speakers independently created pottery in Ounjougou, Mali–
the earliest pottery in Africa– by at least 9400 BCE, and along with their pottery,as well as
wielding independently invented bows and arrows, migrated into the Central Sahara,which
became their primary region of residence by 10,000 BP.The emergence and expansion of
ceramics in the Sahara may be linked with the origin of Round Head and Kel Essuf rock art,
which occupy rockshelters in the same regions (e.g., Djado, Acacus, Tadrart). Hunters in the
Central Sahara farmed, stored, and cooked undomesticated central Saharan flora,underwent
domestication of antelope,and domesticated and shepherded Barbary sheep.After the Kel Essuf
Period and Round Head Period of the Central Sahara, the Pastoral Period followed.some of the
hunter-gatherers who created the Round Head rock art may have adopted pastoral culture, and
others may have not.As a result of increasing aridification of the Green Sahara, Central Saharan
hunter-gatherers and cattle herders may have used seasonal waterways as the migratory route
taken to the Niger River and Chad Basin of West Africa. In 2000 BCE, "Thiaroye Woman",also
known as the "Venus of Thiaroye,may have been the earliest statuette created in Sub-Saharan
West Africa; it may have particularly been a fertility statuette, created in the region of
Senegambia, and may be associated with the emergence of complexly organized pastoral
societies in West Africa between 4000 BCE and 1000 BCE. Migration of Saharan peoples south
of the Sahelian region resulted in seasonal interaction with and gradual absorption of West
African hunter-gatherers, who primarily dwelt in the savannas and forests of West Africa.[8] In
West Africa, which may have been a major regional cradle in Africa for the domestication of
crops and animals, Niger-Congo speakers domesticated the helmeted guineafowl between 5500
BP and 1300 BP;domestication of field crops occurred throughout various locations in West
Africa, such as yams (d. praehensilis) in the Niger River basin between eastern Ghana and
western Nigeria (northern Benin), rice (oryza glaberrima) in the Inner Niger Delta region of Mali,
pearl millet (cenchrus americanus) in northern Mali and Mauritania, and cowpeas in northern
Ghana. After having persisted as late as 1000 BP,or some period of time after 1500 CE,
remaining West African hunter-gatherers, many of whom dwelt in the forest-savanna region,
were ultimately acculturated and admixed into the larger groups of West African agriculturalists,
akin to the migratory Bantu-speaking agriculturalists and their encounters with Central African
shunter-gatherers.
Nearly 350 caves have now been discovered in France and Spain that contain art from
prehistoric times. Initially, the age of the paintings had been a contentious issue, since methods
like radiocarbon dating can produce misleading results if contaminated by other samples,[13]
and caves and rocky overhangs (where parietal art is found) are typically littered with debris
from many time periods. But subsequent technology has made it possible to date the paintings
by sampling the pigment itself, torch marks on the walls,[14] or the formation of carbonate
deposits on top of the paintings.[15] The subject matter can also indicate chronology: for
instance, the reindeer depicted in the Spanish cave of Cueva de las Monedas places the
drawings in the last Ice Age.

The oldest known cave painting is a red hand stencil in Maltravieso cave, Cáceres, Spain. It has
been dated using the uranium-thorium method to older than 64,000 years and was made by a
Neanderthal.The oldest date given to an animal cave painting is now a depiction of several
human figures hunting pigs in the caves in the Maros-Pangkep karst of South Sulawesi,
Indonesia, dated to be over 43,900 years old.Before this, the oldest known figurative cave
paintings were that of a bull dated to 40,000 years, at Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave, East Kalimantan,
Indonesian Borneo,and a depiction of a pig with a minimum age of 35,400 years at Timpuseng
cave in Sulawesi.

The earliest known European figurative cave paintings are those of Chauvet Cave in France,
dating to earlier than 30,000 BC in the Upper Paleolithic according to radiocarbon dating.[Some
researchers believe the drawings are too advanced for this era and question this age.However,
more than 80 radiocarbon dates had been obtained by 2011, with samples taken from torch
marks and from the paintings themselves, as well as from animal bones and charcoal found on
the cave floor. The radiocarbon dates from these samples show that there were two periods of
creation in Chauvet: 35,000 years ago and 30,000 years ago.One of the surprises was that many
of the paintings were modified repeatedly over thousands of years, possibly explaining the
confusion about finer paintings that seemed to date earlier than cruder ones.[citation needed]
In 2009, cavers discovered drawings in Coliboaia Cave in Romania, stylistically comparable to
those at Chauvet.[20] An initial dating puts the age of an image in the same range as Chauvet:
about 32,000 years old.

In Australia, cave paintings have been found on the Arnhem Land plateau showing megafauna
which are thought to have been extinct for over 40,000 years, making this site another candidate
for oldest known painting; however, the proposed age is dependent on the estimate of the
extinction of the species seemingly depicted. Another Australian site, Nawarla Gabarnmang, has
charcoal drawings that have been radiocarbon-dated to 28,000 years, making it the oldest site in
Australia and among the oldest in the world for which reliable date evidence has been obtained.

Other examples may date as late as the Early Bronze Age, but the well-known Magdalenian style
seen at Lascaux in France (c. 15,000 BC) and Altamira in Spain died out about 10,000 BC,
coinciding with the advent of the Neolithic period. Some caves probably continued to be painted
over a period of several thousands of years.
The next phase of surviving European prehistoric painting, the rock art of the Iberian
Mediterranean Basin, was very different, concentrating on large assemblies of smaller and
much less detailed figures, with at least as many humans as animals. This was created roughly
between 10,000 and 5,500 years ago, and painted in rock shelters under cliffs or shallow caves,
in contrast to the recesses of deep caves used in the earlier (and much colder) period. Although
individual figures are less naturalistic, they are grouped in coherent grouped compositions to a
much greater degree. Over a long period of time, the cave art has become less naturalistic and
has graduated from beautiful, naturalistic animal drawings to simple ones, and then to abstract
shapes.

In the early 20th century, following the work of Walter Baldwin Spencer and Francis James
Gillen, scholars such as Salomon Reinach, Henri Breuil and Count Bégouën [fr] interpreted the
paintings as 'utilitarian' hunting magic to increase the abundance of prey.Jacob Bronowski
states, "I think that the power that we see expressed here for the first time is the power of
anticipation: the forward-looking imagination. In these paintings the hunter was made familiar
with dangers which he knew he had to face but to which he had not yet come."
Another theory, developed by David Lewis-Williams and broadly based on ethnographic studies
of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies, is that the paintings were made by paleolithic
shamans. The shaman would retreat into the darkness of the caves, enter into a trance state,
then paint images of their visions, perhaps with some notion of drawing out power from the
cave walls themselves.

R. Dale Guthrie, who has studied both highly artistic and lower quality art and figurines, identifies
a wide range of skill and age among the artists. He hypothesizes that the main themes in the
paintings and other artifacts (powerful beasts, risky hunting scenes and the representation of
women in the Venus figurines) are the work of adolescent males, who constituted a large part of
the human population at the time.[verification needed] However, in analyzing hand prints and
stencils in French and Spanish caves, Dean Snow of Pennsylvania State University has proposed
that a proportion of them, including those around the spotted horses in Pech Merle, were of
female hands.

Analysis in 2022, led by Bennet Bacon, an amateur archaeologist, along with a team of
professional archeologists and psychologists at the University of Durham, including Paul Pettitt
and Robert William Kentridge,suggested that lines and dots (and a commonly seen, if unusual,
"Y" symbol, which was proposed to mean "to give birth") on upper palaeolithic cave paintings
correlated with the mating cycle of animals in a lunar calendar, potentially making them the
earliest known evidence of a proto-writing system and explaining one object of many cave
paintings
LAWOKO BAKER OJERA

BCA/B233359/DAY