For the Tuareg, the Jabal Akakus is the Tadrart, "the mountain" in Tamasheq language, the highest massif in southwestern Libya. The Akakus Tadrart was made by UNESCO a World Heritage Site for its outstanding rock engravings and paintings.
In the now drained, engravings and cave paintings relate the human life of before the history when the desert was still flowered. These representations testify to the artistic sense of our ancestors who didn’t know the writing, but knocked already on the history door. These artists often represented in a particularly realistic way the animals which they were close to. They also described their everyday life: huntings, milking and harnessing of the domestic animals, surveillance of herds. Symbolism also emphasizes sexuality and mythology.
To try to know the successive populations, the scientists discern schools and artistic styles in the Akakus painters and the Messak engravers.
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