“ Sifar “ the oldest and biggest rock City in the world
The city of “sifar” is also called the mystery city, and the Eighth Wonder of the World , It is located in “Tassili Nager (which means in Tamazight “Plateau of the rivers”) ‘An ancient mountain range ‘ , in the heart of “Djanet” desert in ‘Illizi’ province, southeast Algeria.
The Rock City or Sifar possesses an amazing archeological and breathtaking landscapes and big museum of drawings and inscriptions dating back more than 15,000 years, representing the oldest civilization in the world , and It is seen the greatest open-air museum in the world.
Classified by UNESCO in the list of the oldest and largest rocky city in the world (since 1982), and it is older than the Egyptian pyramids, and an area of 89,342 square kilometers, equal to the size of the State of Jordan.
thousands of carvings, drawings and cave paintings .It contains more than 5000 cavernous houses and more than 15 thousand murals and engravings a pictorial of man and bestiary
Among the famous figures of this great geological site;”Great Gods” and “Martians” are among the oldest and most enigmatic paintings in the world. In this prehistoric rock art, the human heads are systematically round, simple, decorated with geometric patterns, painted in red ocher and enhanced with white, blue-gray and yellow.
These amazing figures and symbols hold a great cultural heritage which testifies the strong relationship between man and his environment .The rock art depicts the very old prehistoric cultures and the evolution of civilizations in the region. It portrays also the cultural behaviors adapted to the harshness of the climate
The city caves include a set of drawings of human beings flying in the sky wearing what looks like flying devices, and it is strange that there are also drawings of women and men wearing clothes like the ones we wear in the present time, men wearing scuba diving equipment, and some of them dragging mysterious cylindrical objects, and inscriptions of ships and astronauts.
Tassili N’Ajjer is one of the essential elements of an ecological belt and its mysterious Sifar is an outstanding universal value which brings together animal and plant species of the Saharan, tropical and Mediterranean type, adapted to the harsh climate. However, it is more vulnerable to deterioration caused by climatic conditions (harshness of Sahara) that’s why it must be protected
. HICHAM CHAREF