Tassili N'Ajjer

Prehistoric Rock Paintings of the Sahara

Four thousand years ago the people who inhabited the Tassili N'Ajjer, a group of mountains in the eastern Sahara, painted the rocks with scenes of their daily life. There can be little doubt that the animal images they produced were part of a magic ritual to ensure a successful hunt - perhaps for men of that time there was no clear distinction between image and reality, so they believed that by making a picture of an animal they brought the animal itself within their grasp. From the thousands of pictures they left we learn that the desert then was no desert at all: it was a place of flourishing community life, of flowers and waterholes and herds of antelope. To our eyes these vivid and colorful scenes look astonishingly `modern,' preserved as they have been by the dry climate.

`Very beautiful, with a very fine subject' UNESCO

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.