Tassili n'Ajjer
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How it came to be
Tassili n'Ajjer is a rocky plateau of 72,000 square kilometres in south-eastern Algeria, near the borders with Libya, Niger and Mali. More than 15,000 paintings and engravings have been found here. They cover some 10,000 years, running into the first centuries AD.
The images show animals such as the hippopotamus that needed water and have long vanished from the region. Over time the subjects shift from hunting scenes to round-headed human figures, cattle herders, horses and chariots, and finally camels, tracing the Sahara as it dried.
In the 1930s Brenans, a French legionnaire, made sketches that brought the art to Western attention. The area became a national park in 1972 and was inscribed in 1982 under both cultural and natural criteria. The higher ground still holds the endemic Saharan cypress.
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