DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66493#0043
were no camels (dromedaries) in Africa before the year 500 A. D.
They also found older pictures of hunting scenes in which men and
dogs, apparently forerunners of the Saluki, are depicted chasing Bar-
bary sheep, pictures of men with animal heads, as in South Africa,
and of women with short skirts, as in Eastern Spain.
LIBYAN DESERT. It was not until after the World War
when the automobile began to replace the camel as a means of trans-
port that the territory between the Nile and the Italian colony of
Libya south of the oases gradually began to appear in its proper out-
lines. This, the Libyan, the greatest and most terrible of all African
deserts, was till recently, and to a certain extent still is, a blank spot
on the map, a blank in which 9000 foot mountains, a 3000 foot
plateau and a chain of sand dunes almost a thousand miles long—the
Great Sand Sea—are beginning to appear. Most of our knowledge of
it is inevitably bound up with the names of Rohlfs, King, Bead-
nell, Ball, Prince Kemal el Din, Hassanein-Bey, Bagnold, Clayton,
Almasy and Shaw, men who with camel, caterpillar tractor, auto-
mobile and airplane were the first to undertake its exploration. When
Frobenius set out from Kharga Oasis in 1933, rock paintings had
already been found in the Uwenat Mountains. Our two expeditions,
diafe xi and xn (1933-35), investigated these finds and, concen-
trating on prehistoric material, made many new ones. We stretched
our work to cover the geographically known but prehistorically un-
touched border districts of the desert and so made what is perhaps
the decisive contribution to the prehistoric exploration of this whole
region. The Forschungsinstitut fur Kulturmorphologie hopes to pub-
lish the first results of this work, compiled in detail by Dr. Hans
Rhotert, in the summer or autumn of 1937.
The most important paintings are in Ain Dua at the southwestern
base of the Uwenat Mountains about 370 kilometers southwest of
Kufra. Others lie in the Khargur Tahl, a sandstone valley in the same
range (which is mostly of granite), and still more in Wadi Sora which
4i
They also found older pictures of hunting scenes in which men and
dogs, apparently forerunners of the Saluki, are depicted chasing Bar-
bary sheep, pictures of men with animal heads, as in South Africa,
and of women with short skirts, as in Eastern Spain.
LIBYAN DESERT. It was not until after the World War
when the automobile began to replace the camel as a means of trans-
port that the territory between the Nile and the Italian colony of
Libya south of the oases gradually began to appear in its proper out-
lines. This, the Libyan, the greatest and most terrible of all African
deserts, was till recently, and to a certain extent still is, a blank spot
on the map, a blank in which 9000 foot mountains, a 3000 foot
plateau and a chain of sand dunes almost a thousand miles long—the
Great Sand Sea—are beginning to appear. Most of our knowledge of
it is inevitably bound up with the names of Rohlfs, King, Bead-
nell, Ball, Prince Kemal el Din, Hassanein-Bey, Bagnold, Clayton,
Almasy and Shaw, men who with camel, caterpillar tractor, auto-
mobile and airplane were the first to undertake its exploration. When
Frobenius set out from Kharga Oasis in 1933, rock paintings had
already been found in the Uwenat Mountains. Our two expeditions,
diafe xi and xn (1933-35), investigated these finds and, concen-
trating on prehistoric material, made many new ones. We stretched
our work to cover the geographically known but prehistorically un-
touched border districts of the desert and so made what is perhaps
the decisive contribution to the prehistoric exploration of this whole
region. The Forschungsinstitut fur Kulturmorphologie hopes to pub-
lish the first results of this work, compiled in detail by Dr. Hans
Rhotert, in the summer or autumn of 1937.
The most important paintings are in Ain Dua at the southwestern
base of the Uwenat Mountains about 370 kilometers southwest of
Kufra. Others lie in the Khargur Tahl, a sandstone valley in the same
range (which is mostly of granite), and still more in Wadi Sora which
4i