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As one travels around in the
Sahara, one is struck by the great many signs - scattered over
almost the whole territory - of the human frequentation of this
region apparently a very long time ago.
Pre-Islamic monuments,
grinding-stones abandoned in the dunes and cattle engraved on
the rock faces conjure up a Sahara inhabited and a climate which
allowed small groups of nomadic herders and hunters to make a
living. In some regions, one can find real galleries of rock art
which prove the presence, in a more or less distant past, of
populations freed from essential survival needs, thanks to
animal domestication.
This "invention" guaranteed them a sure supply of food, with the
consequent development of social hierarchies.
Saharan rock art also lets us see the richness of the symbolic
world of these populations. Using these images, some authors
have even assumed the existence of an old Pan African heritage
which would have influenced the art of ancient Egypt, and which
is found in several of today's sub-Saharan populations.
Rock art is spread throughout the world,
and the artistic talent of our ancestors is evident in the famous
"galleries" of
Australia,
South Africa,
France,
… But Saharan rock art has something else to offer: it allows us to see
man's extraordinary adventure over the last millennia, during his
evolution from the Palaeolithic* to the Neolithic and from there up to
the historical era. A period during which man "invented" and developed
different methods of adaptation to an environment shaped by extreme
climatic changes..
* We don't want to assert here that
Saharan rock art goes back to the Palaeolithic, but rather that in the
oldest works, of "Bubaline" and "Round Head" styles, a symbolic world is
represented which probably derives from that of the Palaeolithic
populations.
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Tabelbalet -
Algeria
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