Amogar Rock Art

The rock engravings at Amogar are among the most accessible examples of Saharan prehistoric art in Mauritania, pecked and scratched into sheltered sandstone faces along the cliff sides of the pass. The subjects are characteristic of the Green Sahara period: cattle with elaborately shaped horns, giraffes (animals that have not lived in this region for millennia), and stylised human figures. Some panels also include later additions — camels, which were only introduced to the Sahara around 2000 BCE, appear in a different, slightly coarser style that makes the chronological layering visible.

Finding the panels requires a local guide or someone who has been before; they are not signposted. The overhangs that protected the carvings from erosion for millennia are the key — look for any sheltered surface below a rock overhang in the narrowest part of the pass. The late afternoon light, when the sun is low and throws shadows across the carved surfaces, is when the images become most legible.

things to do sight
A story
Between roughly 6000 and 2000 BCE, the Sahara was not a desert. The African Humid Period brought reliable rainfall to what is now among the most arid land on earth, and herders grazed cattle, goats, and camels across a landscape of grasslands and lakes. The engravings at Amogar show that world: giraffes moving through what was then a savannah, cattle that would be recognisable in any modern West African herd, human figures in motion. They record a climate catastrophe in reverse — the last testimony of a world that slowly dried away.

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