Gateway to Tassili n'Ajjer — Algeria's prehistoric rock art plateau above 10,000 years of Saharan history
Illizi is a small desert town of 40,000 in southeastern Algeria, and its sole raison d'être as a destination is as the departure point for Tassili n'Ajjer National Park — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most significant concentrations of prehistoric rock art on earth. The Tassili plateau (an elevated sandstone massif of eroded canyons, arches, and wind-sculpted rock forests) contains over 15,000 rock paintings and engravings spanning 10,000 years of human presence, depicting animals now absent from the Sahara (elephants, hippopotami, crocodiles, cattle) from when the region was a…
The Tassili n'Ajjer plateau was inhabited by successive waves of Saharan pastoralists, hunters, and herders from at least 10,000 BC, when the Sahara was a wetter savanna environment — the Neolithic Wet Period. The rock art record documents the progressive desiccation of the Sahara over millennia as the cattle-herding cultures of the Green Sahara gave way to the camel-using nomads of the historical period. The Tuareg people (Kel Ajjer confederation) have been the primary inhabitants of the Tassili region for at least 1,500 years and continue to maintain traditional routes and rock art knowledg…