Messak Settafet
Messak
Pleistocene to Islamic (Middle Stone Age to Camel Period)·Bubalus hunter-gatherers / Pastoralists / Garamantes / Tuareg·🇱🇾 Fezzan, Wadi al Hayaa District, Libya
About
About Messak Settafet
Messak Settafet — 350-km long sandstone cuesta (350 m high) dissecting the Fezzan at the Ubari erg edge, the Sahara's greatest rock-art and lithic landscape: 15,000+ engravings (Bubalus, giraffe, cattle, meercatze fighting cats) in Bubaline/Pastoral/Horse/Camel styles spanning 12,000 BP to 1,000 CE, plus dense Middle Stone Age workshops on escarpment rim where quarried Silurian chert nodules piled into thousands of lithic scatters exploited for Levallois cores. Wadi Mathendous and In Galghien gorges concentrate engravings. Impact craters of lithic mining visible from space.
Why it mattersOne of world's largest open-air rock-art provinces plus evidence of anthropogenic quarrying impact at continental scale detectable via satellite.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Quarry workforce seasonality vs sedentism
- 02Meercatze iconography meaning
Theories
- 01Messak lithic mining as early anthropogenic geomorphology (Foley & Lahr 2015)
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- Engravings 12,000 BCE–1,000 CE; lithic quarries 300,000–5,000 BP
- Period
- Pleistocene to Islamic (Middle Stone Age to Camel Period)
- Culture
- Bubalus hunter-gatherers / Pastoralists / Garamantes / Tuareg
- Builders
- Saharan pastoralists and Garamantes
- Purpose
- Engraving sanctuary recording fauna of greening Sahara and chert quarry industrial landscape
- Excavation
- Partially excavated
Engravings 12,000 BCE–1,000 CE; lithic quarries 300,000–5,000 BP
Initial construction
c. 1083 CE
Rediscovery
On the ground
Structures & features
25.7500° N · 11.8330° E · 530 m · 3 mapped features
Wadi Mathendous Gorge
rock artGorge with 150+ giraffe/elephant engravings (Camel Period)
25.7634° N · 12.1704° EIn Galghien Chert Quarries
earthworkRim quarries with thousands of Levallois scatters
25.7500° N · 11.9000° EFighting Cats Panel
rock artMeercatze paired-feline engraving type-site
25.7550° N · 12.0500° E
Gallery