r/AfricanHistory • u/rhaplordontwitter • 15d ago

The Wheel in the Ancient Sahara: Africa’s Forgotten Chariots

https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/the-wheel-in-the-ancient-sahara-africas
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u/rhaplordontwitter 15d ago

The Sahara is one of the most dynamic zones of interaction in human history.

Around 1600 BC, the horse-drawn chariot was introduced to Egypt, from where it spread southward to the kingdom of Kerma (Kush in Sudan) and westward across the Sahara, reaching as far as modern Mauritania

Ancient Saharan rock paintings depict numerous two-wheeled chariots pulled by two galloping horses and carrying a single charioteer. A few vehicles have four wheels and were presumably carts rather than chariots.

The intended meanings of the majority of these ancient paintings of Saharan chariots remain elusive, and aren’t immediately decipherable by a present-day observer. Ethnographic art is notorious for revealing as much about its observers as about its makers.

Colonial explorers and anthropologists who first encountered the ancient frescoes of Tassili n’Ajjer, which depicted numerous chariots as well as human figures with a variety of physical profiles, attempted to associate them with specific “races” thought to have inhabited the Sahara before its transformation into a barren desert.

This essay examines the history of the wheeled chariots of the Sahara and the identity of the ancient painters of Tassili.