Libya: Archaeology and Civilisation (Part 19)

Until the First of September 1969 Revolution started to reclaim the desert and to develop the interior of the country, Libya’s coastal belt itself was a narrow strip of land that only occasionally widened ... and narrowed still further where the encroaching fingers of the desert edge imperceptibly towards the sea.

Although the general impression seems to persist that Central Africa has always been a lifeless expanse of barren desert, this may not have been the case. Several archaeologists who have conducted recent excavations believe that countless thousands of years ago there was life in the Libyan desert as well as in other vast areas of the African continent, which are today as barren and prohibiting.

Evidence based on recent discoveries of rock paintings and graffiti that most archaeologists believe had been executed by prehistoric inhabitants suggests that that segment of the African continent on which Libya lies, has not always been bereft of nature’s benevolence. It proves that life existed in this vast region known as the Sahara.

That part of the Libyan Desert, in particular where the regions of Cyrenaica and the Fezzan meet in the south, are amongst the most inhospitable.

It is in this area that the Great Sea Sand itself is to be found together with the Qattara Dep-ression ... an immense wilderness that is only interrupted by a few scattered oases that take life from the water which occasionally seeps through the Saharan rock formations.

This same archaeological evidence also suggests that thousands upon thousands of years ago life may also have flourished in other African desert areas beyond the present boundaries of Libya itself.

Most of the rock paintings that have been discovered indicate that animals that normally flourish in the more fertile and liberally endowed areas of North Africa, may once have freely roamed the desert regions of the present day.

A large number of these rock drawings, roughly done designs in rock that, nonetheless demonstrate clearly animals, such as the elephant, the giraffe and ostrich, have been traced to the Stone and the Bronze ages.

These designs, in their archaic resting places, leave little room for doubt that wild life must have existed countless centuries ago.

Other sketches, mostly carved in solid rock portray other species of animals as well as several fauna.

These fauna designs have been classified as belonging to the species that are usually found in verdant prairies, thus suggesting that lush tropical forests could have existed in Central or North Africa, even though they are no longer to be found.

The Qattara Depression

The Qattara Depression (in Arabic: 'Munk-hafad al-Qattarah') is a desert basin within the Libyan Desert of northwestern Egypt.

At 133 m below sea level, the Depression contains the second lowest point in Africa. It covers about 18,000 km2. At its maximum it is 80 km in length and 120 km in width. Its bottom consists of a saltpan.

Within it are saline marshes under the northwestern and northern escarpment edges, and extensive playas (dry lake beds) that flood occasionally.

The major oasis in the depression, Moghra oasis, is uninhabited. It has a 4 km2 brackish lake, including a Phragmites swamp. Salt mar-shes also occur and occupy approximately 300 km2, although in some areas, wind blown sands are encroaching.

About one-quarter (26 %) of the 19,500 km2 area is occupied by playas, composed of hard crust and sticky mud that are occasionally filled with water.

There are no human settlements in the Qattara Depression. However it is inhabited by the nomadic Bedouin people and their flocks, with the Moghra oasis being important in times of water scarcity and dry seasons.