As one of the birthplaces of world civilization, Africa has many exquisite prehistoric primitive petroglyphs, which are extremely widely distributed in more than 10 countries in Africa, such as Algeria, Ethiopia, Egypt, Mozambique, Kenya, etc. They not only retain this original work of art, but also collect a large number and wide circulation, which is also unmatched elsewhere. Of these, 15,000 petroglyph sites have been found in Tacitus, and as many as 30,000 in the Sahara, with intricate forms and techniques, as well as colorful content, rough and flowing strokes using water, mixed with powder made of red rock, and cold paints. Because the moisture in the pigment can fully penetrate into the rock wall, chemical changes will occur after long-term contact, so that the pigment melts into the rock wall, so that the picture is still vividly visible many years later.
In 1721, members of a tour group inadvertently discovered a petroglyph depicting animals while following the group's sightseeing from Venezuela to Mozambique, and his inadvertent discovery triggered numerous scientific expeditions, scientists, archaeologists flocking to it, and then they discovered a huge pigment depot in eastern Algeria, located in the En'Arger Mountains in the Sahara Desert, which is 800 km long and 50 km wide to 60 km wide. The main pigment of the petroglyphs is the rich red sand deposits there.
In 1956, a French expedition discovered more than 10,000 works in this vast mountainous area. Scientists deduce from what these petroglyphs reflect that the Sahara region was not a desert before, but was inhabited by a group of people living in the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods. Their livelihoods are generally based on hunting large aquatic animals and grazing sheep. A large number of archaeological data have repeatedly confirmed that the period from 8000 BC to 2000 BC was geologically the tidal period of the Cambrian period in Africa. At that time, the Sahara region was not a desert, but a grassland full of tropical plants, which was suitable for hunting. The characters depicted in the original Petroglyphs of Africa are mysterious and eerie, with soldiers armed with spears and round shields, who ride in chariots to be majestic and heroic, and there are vivid scenes of people shooting wild deer and hunting bison. The hunters were armed with bows and arrows, and scientists came to the following conclusion, when people lived in an era of frequent wars, war had become a part of people's lives, and hunting also occupied an important position in life.
There are people wearing small hats and wrapped around their waists, they have no weapons, they make the appearance of percussion instruments, and some people seem to welcome the arrival of the gods and contribute to the appearance of objects, as if to describe the pictures of the gods. Some people are dancing and dancing in a beautiful way. Among them, there are also portraits with huge round heads. Their costumes were very thick and clumsy, with nothing on their faces except two eyes, and their expressions sluggish. At first, scientists did not figure out who these people were, and it was not until humans invented spaceships that they understood the meaning of these pictures. Today's astronauts put on the cosmic suit and put on the cosmic hat, which has a striking resemblance to those round-headed figures. This can be seen in the techno-tech of people's lives depicted in the petroglyphs.
Of all the original African petroglyphs, the murals of the Sahara Desert are particularly spectacular. The Sahara Desert, located between the Atlas Mountains and the Sudan Steppe in northern Africa and the Atlantic and Red Sea coasts, is enormous, accounting for almost half of Africa's entire territory. These mysterious desert murals, discovered by the German explorer Bals during his expedition to the Sahara in 1850, feature ostriches, buffaloes, and a variety of figures. Due to the lack of archaeological knowledge, at that time, these frescoes did not attract his attention. Twenty-three years later, scientists examined the murals and found that they depicted scenes from 10,000 years ago. On the Argyll Plateau in the middle of the Sahara Desert, on the Kasili Terrace, people stumbled upon a huge community of petroglyphs, which is thousands of meters long, all painted on the rock walls, depicting the life scenes of ancient people, and the colors are very elegant.
Since then, a number of archaeological expeditions have poured in, and in 1956 Henry Lot led a French expedition to discover 10,000 murals in the desert. The following year, they returned to Paris and brought back replicas and photographs of murals covering an area of about 10,800 square meters, which became the world-famous archaeological news at that time.
Many village ruins have also been excavated in the Sahara Desert, all of which are Neolithic human sites. Judging from the large number of cultural relics excavated, the Sahara was an oasis of lush vegetation from 10,000 years ago to more than 4,000 years ago, when the tribes and peoples who worked and multiplied here created a highly developed culture, and the widespread popularity of grinding stone tools and the manufacture of pottery were its main characteristics. At that time, the culture had developed to a very high level, as can be seen from the Sahara script and the Tifina script in the murals, there will be a lot of horses in the murals, as well as vivid and realistic ostriches, elephants, antelopes, giraffes, etc., and even murals depicting the image of buffalo.
Scientists assert that starting from the Tasili Plateau, south to the shores of Lake Quito and north to the Tunisian depression, constitutes a vast northwest waterway network in the Sahara, and many pools of water appear in the rainy period, along which a variety of animals and plants are bred, and the Sahara culture is highly developed. At the same time, it was found that only a few areas had murals about camels, and these murals of camel images belonged to the later works of African petroglyphs. Around 400 to 300 BC, the Sahara became a desert and camels came here from Western Asia. The period of territorial expansion of the Roman Republic was also at this time.
Based on the contents of the murals, it can be speculated that people at that time probably liked to paint on rock walls before and after wars, hunts, dances and sacrifices, using paintings to inspire emotions or express their love for life. The atmosphere of life of these paintings is very strong, and the national character of the African people who are industrious, brave, optimistic and heroic and the distinctive local characteristics have been fully reflected. Some scholars have taken ethnography as the research direction and determined that the petroglyphs were not drawn by the Native Bushmen in Africa, based on the fact that the Bushmen knew nothing about perspective, but this technique was fully used in African petroglyphs. Based on the similarities between petroglyphs in eastern Spain, North Africa, the Sahara, Egypt and other regions, some archaeologists speculate that in the distant Mediterranean, a group of people drifted to the Cape of Good Hope, and when they roamed to the Sahara and the Great Plains of East Africa, they found that it was a living oasis, which was their ideal hunting area and habitat. They then stayed in the mountainous plateau, where they created many of the earliest African petroglyphs, thus becoming the first hunters and hunting artists.
However, this is only the subjective speculation and conjecture of some scholars and archaeologists, and it is unfounded. As for the fact that petroglyphs are not the work of the Bushmen, it is even more absurd because they do not understand the laws of perspective. Because even if the later Bushmen did not understand the knowledge and techniques of petroglyphs, it does not mean that the extinct Bushmen did not understand this knowledge and technique, only a very small number of people can master, and the teaching method is very mysterious. Therefore, it is not surprising that the later Bushmen could not understand the petroglyphs painted by their predecessors, not to mention that due to the long age of the year, many petroglyphs have been blurred, and the latecomers are difficult to identify, based on ethnographic views, it is a racial prejudice and lacks sufficient persuasiveness.
There are also some scholars who think it is difficult to find out whether rock painting is an ancient art native to Africa or a radiation of external culture, and they believe that any great art is international, there is no need to label any art as a national, this kind of work is meaningless, like galleries in other parts of the world, African culture is also compatible with the art of many peoples and their original religious sects, although this general theory does not satisfy everyone, but the ideas he provides to understand the origin of African rock paintings are still desirable. Theories are inconclusive, but it is indisputable that primitive petroglyphs are conducive to human understanding of the prehistoric civilization of the Sahara Desert.
The discovery of African petroglyphs is of great significance to the study of primitive cultures in the world, and it is indisputable that it allows us to understand and examine the life and social forms of primitive tribes in Africa.