Wow, things have been crazy around my house lately, not “bad” crazy more like really busy leaving me no energy when I get home after work. It's the heat and humidity, mostly but the weekends aren't much better. Here at my house the grass and weeds in my yard have already moved into the ultra fast growing season I don't usually see to the first of August.
Yeah, I have a riding lawnmower but there's a lot of smaller chores left over like weed whacking and using the blower to clean up the curb and driveway. Anyway here's a small post on a subject I find interesting.
I am continually amazed at what archaeologists find from human prehistory. Long before writing was created numerous vibrant and sophisticated cultures came into being only to fade away into oblivion leaving only mysterious stone relics.
One such remnant are the Dabous Giraffes, stone petroglyphs located in the Air Massif of Niger. Dated to around 8000 BCE they are the largest stone petroglyphs in the world and were created when the Sahara was a much wetter savanna that stretched for thousands of miles. This wetter period is called the Neolithic Subpluvial and lasted from around 12000 BCE to 7000 BCE.
No expert, but if I remember correctly once the Sahara went back to desert some of that regions inhabitants migrated to the Nile River and began the process of establishing Egyptian culture.
The giraffes were carved into a sandstone outcrop and depict a large male and smaller female. Long after the Sahara returned to a desert climate shifting sands covered the glyphs for thousands of years before they were rediscovered in 1987. That region of Niger has over 900 similar carvings of animals and humans.
I find myself profoundly sad that the artist or artists of these glyphs will forever remain unknown to us. The culture that produced the creators of those glyphs had to be advanced enough that they had advanced beyond the mere struggle for survival. That they had enough food and necessities that men and/or women could create such works of art.
3 comments:
Those carvings are amazing! I think it's sad too that we won't ever know what their lives were really like.
The Bug: Wonder in far future humans will think the same about us.
Very cool!
How different life must have been. There are so many things we take for granted now, like awareness of the broader world, that would have been unfathomable to our ancestors of 9,000+ years ago.
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