As anyone who knows me can attest, one of the photographic subjects I find most fascinating is rock art. Such art offers a window into the lives and minds of people who lived hundreds and in most cases thousands of years ago. Without a common language or reference, such art often leaves us with more questions than answers, while at the same time reminding us of our connection to the people who created them. The fascinating aspect of the Sahara cave paintings and petroglyphs is that they give us an extra element of detail about the world of their creators that you generally don’t get in the American Southwest, and other places. We know this, because of the animals and human activities they drew on walls thousands of years ago, are in most cases completely incompatible with the Sahara we see today. They even show us through the animals depicted at different times, how life in the Sahara was changing, so much so that the various dating periods for the rock art in this area have been defined by the animals displayed. The earliest rock art shows animals that are either completely extinct or which haven’t lived near the Sahara for thousands of years. While more recent rock art displays animals like horses and cattle that were able to live in the Sahara in more recent times, but no longer. And finally, the last prehistoric examples, show animals like the camel which are recent transplants from Arabia, that are among the only large animals that can withstand the Sahara as it currently is. While some may be skeptical about the ability of such art to give us an accurate picture, other research techniques have since proven, from the study of ocean cores off the West coast of Africa to the...Read more