Tassili n'Ajjer holds one of the largest galleries of prehistoric art on Earth: more than fifteen thousand paintings and engravings across a sandstone plateau in southeastern Algeria. The oldest are some twelve thousand years old. What they show is the surprise — giraffes, elephants, hippos, herds of cattle and people swimming, painted when the Sahara was not desert but green savanna laced with rivers and lakes. The Tuareg name means plateau of rivers, and the art records the slow drying that turned that grassland into the desert we know. The rock itself is carved into towering pillars, nearly three hundred natural arches and vast fields of stone that glow copper at sunset and pale pink at dawn. The plateau stands well above the sand around it, and the shelters holding the paintings are scattered among its towers.
Reaching the art is a journey in itself. From the oasis town of Djanet, Tuareg guides lead multi-day treks on foot and by camel up onto the plateau, at the desert's own pace. Painted shelters hide among the towers at Sefar and Jabbaren, including human figures far taller than the people who come to look at them, and the famous Running Horned Woman. Tassili became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982, and it can only be entered now with a permit and a licensed guide, on expeditions that usually run a week or more. Trips go in the cool months; the plateau is unbearable in high summer. It sits far from Algeria's troubled borders and counts among the safer corners of the southern Sahara, though the park closes in unstable times.