THE ROCK ART OF TASSILI N'AJJER

The first clarification provided by Jean-Louis Le Quellec: the term « Tassili frescoes » is inappropriate. Tassili is a Tuareg common name referring to a landscape, a plateau, with rock formations having often gone through « érosion pachydermique » (erosion causing a surface reminiscent of a pachyderm’s skin), and thus looking like an elephant skin. So it is not a toponym referring to a particular place.

The central Sahara, which used to have hardly any borders, now lies in south-east Algeria, in south-west Libya and covers a small part of Niger. The Tassili where the rock paintings and engravings were discovered during the last century is in fact called Tassili n Ajjer, as Father Charles de Foucault determined in his « Dictionnaire abrégé Touareg-Français des noms propres » published in 1940. (Ed. Larose, Paris).

The « where » having been established, let us now focus on the « when ». Guided by the Touareg Djebrine Masar, the Méhariste Charles Brenan, in search of Antinea, Queen of Atlantida, discovers works of rock art and brings them to the attention of Abbé Breuil. The latter, who is too old to travel, calls upon his disciple Henri Lhote to conduct surveys.

Following Abbé Breuil’s methods down in the caves, Henri Lhote moistens the figures to make them stand out. But they dry too quickly due to the heat. So, as soon as they are moistened, he decides to emphasize the outer edges using charcoal, trace them and then rub the charcoal off with a sponge. These methods have wiped away any possibility of dating these works in situ.

The exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, organised by Henri Lhote in 1957, was highly successful. Many publications followed, all of them without precise dating.
For decades this long-awaited dating remained in limbo. Stepping into this breach, the most far-fetched theories cropped up. A 5,000 or 50,000 year old corpus? All sorts of things were written, in a plethora of lovely books, full of images, but lacking scientific content.

It has even been said that Martians had done these artworks; they may well have traced the famous “Round Heads” as a way of portraying their self-portraits. After numerous rough guesses and the independence of the Saharan countries, all hope of dating the Tassilian mineral maze was lost, leaving these paintings and engravings floating in space-time.

Thirty years ago, the Association of the Friends of Saharan Rock Art (AARS), finally took the buffalo firmly by the horns. A brave undertaking indeed, given the fact that from one tip of a horn to the other there is no less than 3.20m as far as the gigantic buffalo is concerned – the one that grazed in the central Sahara during its most recent green and fertile period, between 9,000 and 7,000 years ago.

The result: the publication of 3,300 hitherto unseen documents, enabling us to situate this cave art in time. These documents take us back 7,000 years into a green Sahara with its pastoral population, its herds and its flocks.

As Pauline Rolland (heritage conservation official at the Musée National de Préhistoire) explains in the concise and all-important documentary note-book inside the comic book, around 10,000 years ago the climate warmed, bringing rain back to the Sahara after a long arid period. Small lakes and marshes appeared, as well as waterways. Oak forests, olive groves, fig trees, cypress trees emerged. Elephants, hippopotami, antelopes, warthogs and humans followed suit. 5,000 years ago the temperatures dropped and rain no longer fell on Tassili n'Ajjer. The Sahara turned into a landscape of sand and stone where oases were few and far between.

During the most recent period of the “green” Sahara between 9,000 and 5,000 years ago, groups of human beings, while still continuing their hunting practices, started raising herds of cattle, goats and sheep. Bones of these animals, around 7,000 years old, have been found during excavations in the central Sahara. It is the pastors who “related” on the rock faces around them the story that the archaeologists cannot tell. To our amazement, their celebrations, rites, dances, hairdos, clothing materials are revealed.

Several members of the AARS (Yves and Christine Gauthier, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec) have also succeeded in defining two distinct styles of artistic expression on a single map by placing on top of each other paintings and engravings and two sorts of funeral rites – namely the circular basket-like monuments and the monuments with passages and enclosures. As a result, two distinctions can be made: the Iheren style in Tassili n'Ajjer, dating back to 3,350 to 2,700 years BCE and the Mesāk style on the plateau of the same name, dating back to 4,500 to 4,000 years BCE… hence slightly older.

Jean-Loïc Le Quellec considers the authors of the Iheren-style paintings in Tassili n’Ajjer to be “master artists” because of the submillimetre drawings done with remarkable finesse on the rock faces. For example, concerning the domesticated oxen “You can actually see the hairs on their ears, the hairs on their pedicles. There is a wealth of detail in these images that is absolutely amazing.”

As for the style of the Mesāk engravings, there is something very special about them. Instead of a single contour, they dug out two simultaneously. On the outside, bush hammering made the wall flat and smooth. Inside the engravings the wall was polished. These two procedures allowed the engravings to stand out in sharp relief

Despite a few disrespectful acts that have been carried out on the rock surfaces in the central Sahara, thanks to digital image processing, it is now feasible to capture things that the naked eye cannot see and reposition them on the wall. This is what Jean-Loïc Le Quellec and the members of the Association of the Friends of Saharan Rock Art (AARS) have been doing for the past few years. They have come to a clear conclusion: the inventories need to be done again.

In conclusion, Jean-Loïc Le Quellec thinks that there still remains a lot to be done. He is glad that a comic book has come out, rekindling interest in Tassili n’Ajjer and even encouraging a lot of volunteers to join the ranks of the AARS, so that we can go on gaining a better understanding of this parietal art. The researcher concludes by quoting the well-chosen words of his mentor, Georges Dumézil: “We had a feeling that the adventure was well worth trying […] to reach a sort of accommodation and move on from a muddled perception and generous interpretation to get a clearer, plainer and more objective view of the drawings.” (extract from Mitra-Varuna, Georges Dumézil, 1948)

In concrete terms, what role can a comic book play in this essential reconstruction? This is what the researcher Jean-Loic Le Quellec, has to say: “For a long time I had been hoping that artists would take an interest in this domain. My basic idea is of course that prehistoric art interests the prehistorians who are striving to reconstruct the past, but it is also “art”. When we take a closer look at what at first glance appeared to be primitive, we discover that they are images that required highly technical skills. They were done by talented artists. And I think that contemporary artists could learn something from them when they address contemporary issues, and maybe use bits of this ancient repertoire. That’s one of the things that interest me in the relationship between science and art. The other thing that interests me is that here is the stuff dreams are made of, imagination let loose… and reverie, imagination, poetry, improvisation are all things that appeal to me. In my view there is just one condition: reveries must not be mistaken for science or the other way round. Under these circumstances, everything’s fine with me. I’m all for this sort of adventure.”

So, what is this comic book all about? In the middle of the green and fertile Sahara, at a time when the humans are still nomadic hunter-gatherers, the idea of sowing seeds and raising livestock sprouts in the mind of a young woman called Djané. She senses that it would make life better and allow women to escape the patriarchal system in which they are supposed to get “knocked up” by the sole dominant male and denied the right to choose their loved one.

It was through the eyes of a child that Xavier Daban, alias Maadiar, discovered the “Tassili frescoes” in his grandfather’s library. A graduate of Sciences Po, an associate professor of geography and now a teacher of history and geography, he has fulfilled, thanks to this comic book, the dream of sharing these unknown, forgotten treasures, adapting his first creation, a radio fiction, into a comic book scenario. He asked Frédérique Rich, alias Fréwé, to do the illustrations. He explains that she is “a young lady who lives in the forest, with a keen eye for nature that emerges in her illustrations.” The artist manages to establish a dialogue over time, combining her personal touch and a kind of tribute to the old masters.

The ape, standing on its hind legs, moults and prepares to conquer the world, adapting its skin colour to the intensity of the sun. The giant buffalo watches closely and understands this monumental changeover. A decisive moment beautifully reproduced by the geographer/story writer of this comic book who, on the occasion, slips into the skin of the buffalo itself: “You never give up, it’s exhaustion that got the better of me, not your petty flogging or your monkey-fist punching […] Few in number and in a short time, you have unlocked many a mystery and invented amazing things. And I am ashamed of you, ashamed of the hatred that lacerates your heart. So much intelligence and so little wisdom.”

By way of conclusion, let us ask ourselves this question: how will the Saharan desert landscape change over time? Here is the wise response of Pauline Rolland, in her documentary note-book inside this comic book: “Could the Sahara turn green again as a result of global warming? It is a hypothesis that has been put forward, given the fact that several thousand years ago, during a warm period, abundant vegetation covered the Sahara. But one thing has evolved since the Neolithic Era, changing the rules of the climate game: the humans’ control over nature has got completely out of hand. Today, with the high levels of greenhouse gas emissions, it is hard to predict how the Saharan climate will change.”

We thank the team at the Musée National de Préhistoire des Eyzies for this very first presentation of the comic book « Tassili, une femme libre au Néolithique » by Maadiar and Fréwé with its preface by the researcher Jean-Loïc Le Quellec and its documentary note-book.- all brought together to provide “food for thought”… and for dreams.
Our thanks to Jean-Loïc Le Quellec, Emeritus Director of Research at the Institut des Mondes Africains, as well as the members of the AARS for their indefatigable and fascinating investigations. We welcome this sort of encounter between art and science, which proves that humankind is also capable of the best.