Twelve thousand years of pictures showing the Sahara drying out
Paintings and carvings made between about 12,000 BC and AD 100 run for a hundred kilometres of sandstone north from the Algerian border, in the western Sahara. The subjects are the point. Giraffes. Elephants. Ostriches. Cattle being herded, people dancing, people playing music. This is one of the driest places on the planet and the art is a continuous record of it being green, then drying, with the animals in the pictures changing to camels and horses as the water went. Bones and pots back it up: domesticated animals here by around 7000 years ago, and processed milk residue on ceramics at 7,500 years, which is among the earliest anywhere. UNESCO listed it in 1985 and declared it in danger in 2016, and since 2009 people have been scrawling graffiti over the paintings and stripping others off with chemicals. Ghat District.
Ghat District, Libya
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
