Travel Guide El Azrag

The paleolake of Azrag and its surroundings are cherished by paleontologists and archaeologists. Nestled between the foothills of Kediet Ej-Jill and the dune massif of El Hammami, the Azrag area is located 25 km southeast of Zouérate. The study of fossilized bones and lithic material, discovered around the sebkha, has made it possible to date the human presence in this area to over 100,000 years. Thus the site of Hammami-la-defense, uncovered in 1966, has delivered bone remains of animals (elephants, hippos ...) and countless artifacts (bifaces, axes ...) dated to the Middle Paleolithic. Likened to a hunting site where game was butchered, Hammami-la-defense was not investigated as envisaged by researchers because of the outbreak of hostilities between the Mauritanian state and the Polisario Front in the 1970s. Since then, excavations have remained stagnant. Azrag has also revealed scrapers, scrapers and other piercers specific to the Aterian (90,000 to 20,000 BP), an African facies of the Mousterian. Finally, closer to us, in the Neolithic, we note the manufacture, specific to northern Mauritania, of engraved ostrich egg bottles. In this area, one of the main attractions is diatomite, a white sedimentary rock lining the Azrag paleolake. Why? For the footprints left, nearly 9,200 years ago, by proboscideans, bovids and humans...