Oued Djerat

The Oued Djerat is a wadi not far from Illizi , the capital of the Illizi province of the same name , in southeastern Algeria . It leads through a remote rock valley in the Tassili n'Ajjer National Park , which has thousands of rock art , mostly rock paintings , but also petroglyphs . The picture gallery extends over many kilometers. What is unusual in this region is that the pictures are particularly large. Giraffes alone are depicted on an area of ​​100 m², the largest of which is eight meters.

The public discovery dates back to 1934, when the French officer Brenans and his troops stopped at this place and came across drawings of rhinos, hippos, crocodiles, elephants and giraffes. The French researcher Henri Lhote picked up the thread and discovered thousands of other drawings that he examined scientifically. The rock carvings date from the Neolithic Age and are similar to those of the provinces of Oran (Algeria) and Fessan (Libya). They date back more than 7,000 years after Henri Lhote.

Palm groves and Gueltas are not uncommon in this area. Many of the residents are Tuareg .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Henri Lhote , Les gravures rupestres de l'Oued Djerat (Tassili-n-Ajjer), Memoires du Center de Recherches Anthropologiques, Préhistoriques et Ethnographiques, SNED, Algiers, 1976, page 804

Web links

• Yves Gauthier, Algérie et Libye, sanctuaires de l'art rupestre saharians
• Pierre Colombel, Le Tassili n'Ajjer, mémoire du Sahara
• Nouvelles gravures rupestres de l'Oued Djerat (N. Tassili)
• Oued Djaret at Geonames

literature

• Birgit Agada, Adolf Schuster, Algeria, Trescher Verlag 2010, ISBN 978-3-89794-155-7

Coordinates: 26 ° 18 '  N , 8 ° 38'  E