The Ancient Rock Art of Chad

Deserts are special places but they are not for everybody. They are for those who love unpeopled places, whose hearts soar at the thought of lands that have been shaped only by nature and time, who don’t mind the vast distances, the privations, the daunting logistics that journeying through them entails. Deserts are for those who are touched by stark mountains, huge sand dunes, starlit skies and nomadic peoples. And for a true desert experience, it’s hard to beat the Sahara.

The Tibesti Mountains, Chad, are a treasure house of rock art, much of it still unrecorded and known only to the nomadic people who wander through it, and they’re as remote and far from what we call civilisation, as anywhere in the world. Some of the oldest rock art in the world is in Namibia and is about 30,000 years old. Here, in the Sahara, the oldest probably dates back more than 10,000 years, but much of it is from around 7,000 years ago. Sometimes the art was painted using red and yellow ochre and white pigments, while some was engraved using rocks fashioned as chisels.

 All constitutes a rich historical resource, connecting us to Africa’s ancient past. The art comes from a time before desertification set in and most of it is from the socalled pastoral period, which dates from the time domesticated animals entered the scene, around 5,000BC. In the caves and on the cliffs and boulders, there are paintings and engravings showing warriors, elephants, horses and the rituals of those longago days. The Tibesti Mountains, north- ern Chad, is a land of volcanic craters and spectacular rocks and dunes that contains the Sahara’s highest peak (over 3,300m). The rock paintings include – a huge life-size elephant engraved on the side of a rock, a vast panorama of 18 large cows and one bull across a magnificent rock.

There are paintings in a cave overlooking the ancient shores of the Paleolake Mega-Chad, now completely dried up; and also paintings of highly decorated peoples and proud warriors wearing headdresses. This region of the Sahara was once inhabited by a pastoral people with a great love of domestic animals; there are signs of boats that floated on lakes that are now arid sand. Everywhere are worked tools and shards of decorated pottery, all poignant reminders of a vanished civilisation.

 The Tibesti Mountains area, the desert around it is a hard, tough place, but magnificent. Its vast rocks, like giant cathedrals soaring out of the sand is spectacular. The ancient lake beds, the gorges, the dunes, the little oases, the tantalising glimpses of nomadic life – tur- baned men riding camels across the desert, younger ones gath- ered round wells in the oases, small groups of children shy- ly eyeing up explorers. The vast horizons, the airy caves, the grace of the paintings, the endlessly shifting landscapes. This desert is a strange, mysterious place where time has buried many things, where the sand has shifted and swallowed entire civilisations, erasing them from map and memory .

Courtesy: ft.com