Travel Guide Messak Settafet

Here, mountain point like in Village in the west (after the erg Ouan Kassa), but a large stony plateau and dark plateau. The Plateau Settafet plateau extends to a loss of sight between the Erg Erg to the north and the Erg Mourzouk to the south. To the north-west of the Messak Settafet extends the Messak Mellet, parallel to the Erg Ouan Kasa, and also rich in cave engravings. Messak Mellet and Messak Settafet form the Messak region, which was an important home of civilization in prehistoric times. In the Neolithic era, the Messak inhabited a population of hunting and breeding. In some places of the Messak, you can still see fragments of tools from the Paleolithic (des or hachereaux scattered on the soil) and Neolithic (not to pick up, even less so!). Archaeologists also found several trails traced to prehistoric times. In some parts of the Messak, these precious remains have sometimes been irreparably affected by former oil exploration and exploration campaigns carried out by certain Western companies.This is where for the first time a clock researcher of Libyan rock art: On July 5, 1850, Heinrich Barth discovered a few engravings of which he made a detailed report in his stories published in 1857. We will have to wait until 1932 for another German, the Leo Frobenius, to carry out an expedition of archaeological study. But the first really deep archaeological mission of the engravings of the Messak returned to Italian Paolo Graziosi, as early as 1938. Since then, tens of thousands of engravings have been recorded on about 500 sites, and the Messak has one of the sites recording one of the highest concentrations of rock engravings in the world.The Messak has the most beautiful cave engravings of the bubaline tradition of the whole of North Africa, on stones from the plateau or especially in the trough of its wadi, which once were fertile valleys where rivers flowed. In accordance with this tradition, there are mainly African animals that are now extirpated from the désertifiée region. But there's also been some pastoral scenes, including assembled cattle with stools, which are perhaps the oldest captured stools in the world, and some hunting scenes. There are also mythical subjects, such as théranthropes engravings (see box). Among the most accessible sites are the engravings of the Wadi Wadi.