In the Tassili N’ajjer caverns
Eight millennia before the Western era, ancient civilizations and peoples of Africa depicted their daily lives on the cave walls of the Tassili n’Ajjer massif. Tassili means “plateau” or “plain of rivers.”
More than 5,000 paintings have been catalogued, and it is believed that the number could easily double, since many areas remain unexplored.
The first reports of this extraordinary Paleolithic “museum” emerged during the First World War.
Images and data were collected by the French Foreign Legion, whose explorers had ventured into regions more than 1,400 km from the capital, Algiers.
The excitement of this discovery spread quickly, since until then it was believed that these areas of Africa had never been inhabited.
Among the specialists of the scientific community was a man of exceptional character and a lover of the desert above all else: the French ethnologist and archaeologist Henri Lhote, who spent more than three years in the Sahara—the largest desert in the world—far from any urban center or civilization.
At the beginning of 1956, Lhote finally secured support from the French government and several scientific institutions to organize the long-awaited expedition to the Tassili n’Ajjer plateau.
In February, Henri Lhote’s team set off into the perilous desert. The expedition included thirty camels, a Tuareg guide, two assistants, and several specialists:
“The beasts lose their breath from the effort. The slope becomes steeper, and the mass of rocks grows ever more imposing. Some camels collapse under the burden, their loads rolling back down the ravines; the men must rush everywhere at once…”
After countless efforts, the feat was accomplished. Each day spent on the sandstone plateau brought new surprises: caves, cliffs, rock shelters…
The caves with paintings were scattered throughout the terrain. Lhote and his team had reached their goal.
Lhote began the painstaking work of tracing and coloring the paintings—now preserved, though almost forgotten, in the Musée de l’Homme in Paris.
In every rock labyrinth, new collections of Paleolithic rock art were revealed.
Unlike most cave paintings of the period, which tend to use a single tone, those of Tassili employed multiple colors, making them especially remarkable.
The vast majority of the images depict animals: giraffes, ostriches, elephants, oxen, hippopotamuses—evidence that the region was once teeming with life.
According to the paintings, rivers, forests, animals, and varied vegetation once surrounded the caves. They also show hunters, archers, and great scenes of everyday life.
The paintings reflect, in chronological order, the occupations of the peoples who lived there: hunting and fishing (7000 BC) and cattle herding (4000 BC).
The Great Mysteries of Tassili
The first mystery is that no burials have been found—a rare circumstance.
The second lies in strange depictions of beings wearing helmets and suits resembling modern astronauts, painted in what looks like a small city, with streets and urban features.
The walls are covered with these round-headed beings—large images painted between 7,500 and 8,000 BC.
Colossal and imposing figures—or perhaps gods—were painted on both concave and convex rock surfaces. Lhote classified the drawings into different groups and periods. According to him, many are more than 10,000 years old.
The French archaeologist produced the most comprehensive classification to date of Tassili’s periods. The oldest, the Round Head Style (7000–4000 BC), is also the strangest, and therefore the most controversial.
The gigantic figures with enormous round heads—resembling the helmets of old divers or modern astronauts—Lhote dubbed the Martian Type. Among them, one mysterious figure stands out: the so-called Great Martian God, six meters tall, with a single eye and strange garments.
To appreciate it fully, one must step back: the simple profile, a round head with no details other than a double oval in the center of the face—strikingly similar to the common image of a being from another planet.
Another remarkable scene is known as The Abduction, in which a Round Head figure leads four women toward a strange circular object.
Any explanation of these paintings risks sounding like speculation.
Round Head figures also appear in the regions of Azyefú, Ti-n-Tazarif, and Sefar.
At Ananguat, in a fresco combining different styles, one can distinguish a strange figure with arms stretched forward, emerging from an ovoid object.
Lhote wrote of this fresco:
“Lower down, another man emerges from an ovoid shape of concentric circles, resembling an egg—or, more problematically, a snail. Caution is essential in interpreting such a scene, for we are faced with pictorial themes without precedent.”
This region of Africa remains a mystery for historians, especially regarding the period in which the Tassili paintings were created.
The Sahara has given—and continues to give—surprises. It is worth remembering that much of ancient Egypt still lies buried beneath its burning sands.
During the period we are discussing, the plateau’s climate was warm and humid. This earliest style has been further divided into Early, Developed, and Decadent phases, to account for its different features.
The Round Head Period was followed by the Bovidian Period (4000–2500 BC), undoubtedly the most prolific. Ancient herding peoples—of white, black, and Ethiopian races—depicted their herds in magnificent detail.
By then, the climate had shifted from warm and humid to warm and dry, Mediterranean in type.
Judging by the present lifestyle of the black nomadic Fulani people (Peul) along the Niger River, about 3,000 km south of Tassili, it is reasonable to deduce that five millennia ago, they were the inhabitants of what is now a desolate plateau.
Later came the first horses. The Chariot Period began when the Sahara was already transforming into the arid desert we know today.
Eventually, horses gave way to camels. The appearance of certain symbols alongside the frescoes has led researchers to suspect the possible existence of a form of writing some 5,000 years ago—posing a serious challenge to the official thesis that Mesopotamia was the sole cradle of civilization and writing.
Written by:
Abdurrahman Jimenez