Tassili n;Ajjer - (World Heritage Site in Algeria)

Brief Report

Located in a strange lunar landscape of great geological interest, this site is one of the most important groups of prehistoric cave art in the world. More than 15,000 drawings and engravings record the climatic changes, the animal migrations, and the evolution of the human life on the edge of the Sahara from 6000 BC until the first centuries of the current era. The geological formations are of outstanding scenic interest eroded in sandstone and shales are 'forests of rock'. 

Wonderful Universal Importance

Brief synthesis 

Tassili n'Ajjer is vast plateau in the south-east Algeria at the borders of Libya, Niger and Mali, covering an area of 72,000 square kilometers. The exceptional density of paintings and engravings, and the presence of many prehistoric remains are remarkable testimonies of Prehistory. From 10,000 V. CHR to the first centuries of our era, successive peoples many archaeological remains, habitations, burial mounds and enclosures that yielded abundant lithic and ceramics. It is, however, the rock art (engravings and paintings) that have made and Tassili Restaurant world-famous from 1933, the date of its discovery. 15,000 Engravings are identified. The property is also of great geological and aesthetic importance: the panorama of geological formations with 'rock forests' of sandstone eroded seems a strange lunar landscape.

Wide Report

Tassili a mountainous area in the middle of the Sahara, located to the south-east of the Algerian Sahara and is limited by the Libisch-arab Arab Jamahiriya, Niger and Mali, is a strange lunar landscape of deep gorges, steep riverbanks and 'stone forests'. Prehistory and Tassili Restaurant benefited from climatic conditions which were more favorable for the human habitation. The abundance of wild game, the possibilities of the livestock and pastoral life in immediate proximity of impregnable defensive sites formed the essential factors that beneficiary population development.

The unique rock formations and networks of steep valleys of the plateau are the result of the alternation of wet and dry periods. At the end of the superstructure forms part pleistocene era, for example, there were large lakes in the region, what are the large Very. The lakes are fed by rivers which the And Tassili Restaurant and dry riverbeds from this period. The action of the rivers on the surface of the plateau formed deep gorges and separate plateaus. In the last 10,000 years has be playful dryer, although this process was reversed by a more humid period of 4000 BC to 2000 BC. Wind erosion during dryer periods has formed rock formations which seem to ruins, known as 'stone forests'.  The plants and animals on the plateau witnesses of earlier periods wetter. Species survive in damp microclimate are fish and shrimp and, until the 1940s, a dwarf Sahara crocodile, many thousands of kilometers from the nearest population in Egypt. From approx. 6000BC. In the early centuries of the Christian era, the various peoples inhabited this plateau many traces in the archaeological record: settlements, tumuli & Norway's second housings and that was very ceramics.  

Five different time periods can be distinguished: the naturalist period, in which the flora of the savannah is shown; the archaic period, when small schematic diagrams or colossal forms the aspects of icons filled with an obvious magical interpretation; the Bovidian period (4000-1500 BC ),  The dominant period in terms of the number of paintings, during the presentation of the herds and the scenes of everyday life, in which a new naturalistic design, belong to the most well known examples of prehistoric murals; the Equidian period, that the end of the Neolithic and protohistoric periods, That corresponds to the disappearance of numerous species from the effects of gradual desiccation and the appearance of the horse; and the Cameline period, during the first centuries of the Christian era, which coincides with the beginning of the hyper-arid desert climate and with the advent of the cultural.  This site is one of the most important groups prehistoric cave art in the world. The most important group of paintings is situated to the east of Djanet in the National Park; other special rock art are located in the north, in the region of the Wadi Djerat Illizi nearby.