Tassili n’Ajjer is a vast plateau in south-east Algeria at the borders of Libya, Niger and Mali, covering an area of 72,000 sq. km. The exceptional density of paintings and engravings, and the presence of many prehistoric vestiges, are remarkable testimonies to Prehistory. From 10,000 BC to the first centuries of our era, successive peoples left many archaeological remains, habitations, burial mounds and enclosures which have yielded abundant lithic and ceramic material. However, it is the rock art (engravings and paintings) that have made Tassili world famous as from 1933, the date of its discovery. 15,000 engravings have been identified to date.
Tassili n’Ajjer, located in a strange lunar landscape of great geological interest, this site has one of the most important groupings 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 human life on the edge of the Sahara from 6000 BC to the first centuries of the present era. The geological formations are of outstanding scenic interest, with eroded sandstones forming ‘forests of rock’.
Algeria’s Sahara Desert, a barren and mysterious expanse spanning millions of square kilometers, reveals secrets that will forever change our view of the universe. Archaeologists and scientists who have conducted research in this remote region of southeastern Algeria continue to question the possibility of an extraterrestrial presence. This isn’t the first time the Sahara has revealed buried treasure, dinosaur fossils, prehistoric tools, and ancient rivers hidden beneath the sand, but this time, the story goes beyond anything anyone could have imagined in the town of Sefar, in Tassili n’Ajjer (wilaya of Illizi, located 2,400 km south of Algiers, the capital).
The city of Sefar is the largest troglodyte city in the world (listed as a World Heritage Site since 1982), the largest open-air museum in the world, housing hundreds of thousands of engravings, drawings, and rock paintings, including the famous “Great Gods” and “Martians” of a very particular pictorial style, which are among the oldest and most enigmatic paintings in the world. The dating of these astonishing figures goes back to at least 12,000 years BCE, if not much earlier.
The transition from one cultural style to another should never be imagined as a clear and brief break. The Capsians of the Bubaline period (the Algerian Paleolithic), in the north, did not suddenly disappear to make way for the following ones, in the south. One can imagine a sort of cross-fade of images, like in the cinema, to give the impression that many inseparable events are occurring.
For some, perhaps an extraterrestrial visit to Earth in the distant past. Could the Sahara, once a verdant region crisscrossed by rivers and populated by life tens of thousands of years ago, have been a point of contact with a civilization from the stars?
