Sites & heritage
Sandstone arches, gueltas inhabited by crocodiles, rock paintings, salt lakes: Chad's heritage in thirty-one sites.
Timeline
Seven thousand years of human presence in the Chadian Sahara, read off the rock.
7,000 BCE
Bubaline period
The oldest engravings: the great wild fauna of the humid Sahara, often carved life-size.
5,000 BCE
Terkei
A vast set of caves and shelters once inhabited, whose walls carry some of the finest Bovidian paintings in the Ennedi.
5,000 BCE
Bovidian period
The golden age: polychrome paintings of herds, milking and dance, left by a settled pastoral society.
1,500 BCE
Caballine period
Horse and chariot appear, drawn in 'flying gallop' — the age of the first trans-Saharan routes.
500 BCE
Cameline period
The dromedary replaces everything: schematic caravans, tifinagh inscriptions, and the slow extinction of rock art.
