Caught up in battle or a ritual dance, these mythic catlike creatures have faced each other on a cliff in Libya for perhaps 8,000 years. During that time northern Africa's broad savannas became a vast desert, and most of its people moved south. Civilizations vanished, but their works of art remain. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AFRICA'S ART TREASURES Scrambling after my guide, Aissa, I scale a jumble of rocks and duck into a large cleft open to the wide African sky. It's been a long day--plodding across stony plateaus, stung by the Sahara's bitter December winds--but it's all about to pay off. Quickly scanning the sandstone walls, I stop at one bright patch. It's a lone figure about nine inches long that seems to leap across the rock, its energy undiminished after millennia. The detail is astonishing: I can see the taut muscles in his legs and the string of the bow that he carries in his clenched right fist. This ancient archer is from one of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of rock art sites in northern Africa. Over the past dozen years these sites have become my passion and recording and protecting them my life's work. Each time I find one, I'm transported back thousands of years to a time when this vast desert was a grassland, veined with braided rivers and shallow lakes, and home to thriving civilizations. Like the rivers and lakes, the people have vanished, but through their art their stories have survived. The tale begins perhaps 12,000 years ago, when elephants, rhinos, and the prehistoric wild ox Bubalus antiquus roamed northern Africa's plains. For some 4,000 years rock art of the so-called Bubalus period was dominated by engravings of large animals that were hunted by humans. Then about 9,000 years ago representations of people ushered in what experts call the Round Head period, which overlaps the end of the Bubalus. By about 7,000 years ago domesticated livestock entered the scene--a momentous change immortalized in art of the Pastoral period. As the Round Head ended and the Pastoral began, art changed dramatically, says my colleague Alec Campbell who travels with me through the Sahara, documenting the deserts art. "The paintings started to show man as above nature, rather than as a part of nature, seeking its help." The next big change came after 1650 B.C., when the Hyksos conquered northern Egypt by chariot and introduced the domesticated horse, common in rock art of the Horse period. The camel arrived from Asia about 2,200 years ago, inspiring the Camel period. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From the mouth of this cave Algeria stretches dry and desolate before me, but the paintings inside (above and detail at right) tell of a time, perhaps 7,000 years ago, when this land was wet and green enough to support cattle and a community of herders. Today our only evidence of this rich life is an ancient artist's rendering of it. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The first rock art site in northern Africa was reported more than 150 years ago, but piciographs such as these still largely remain a mystery. Fortunately modern science has answered some of our questions about this early art. Analysis shows that the artist's palette was mixed chiefly from minerals such as red and yellow oxide, white clay, and charcoal, and perhaps bound to the rock with blood, fat, or urine. Amazingly, even after thousands of years the colors are still vibrant. The Bushmen of the Kalahari may offer some clues to how rock art imitated life. Though they haven't painted for about a hundred years, these southerners keep other ancient traditions that appear in Saharan rock art. A few years ago in Botswana I photographed a Dzu Bushman playing a musical bow (below), one of the world's oldest instruments and possibly the same object held by the white figure in the painting at right. Placing the end of the bow in his mouth, the Bushman tapped its sinew string with a reed and a haunting music floated across the desert, connecting us with Africa's distant past. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Some 6,000 years after its work was done, a stone chisel (right) still fits easily into the groove it cut in the Libyan sandstone. Alec Campbell, who found the tool on a narrow ledge below the engraving, demonstrates the hammering technique that the artist may have used to carve a domesticated cow. We are impressed with the skill and stamina it took to cut these evocative images. But the fact that they have lasted for millennia, even when exposed to the fierce wind and scouring sand of the Sahara, is astounding. This life-size crocodile (below), dramatic evidence of a wetter climate and the life that once basked oil the banks of northern African rivers, was cut into the rock perhaps 9,000 years ago. Some of its grooves sink more than two inches deep. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Much of the rock art in this vast region is as inspired as it is indelible. I first saw the engraving at right (known as "Les Vaches qui Pleurent," or (The Crying Cows") while traveling in Algeria's Tassili-n-Ajjer mountains. I was stunned by its almost Picassoan sophistication. The cattle seem to emerge, horns first, from the rock face oil which they were carved some 7,500 years ago. The artist chose his canvas carefully, looking for a surface that would catch the sun's rays and create depth and the illusion of motion through shadow. At the right time of year, as the light plays across this engraving, you can almost see the cattle move. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I know these people, I thought, as I studied a series of small paintings, like snapshots of daily life, on a rock face in the Fezzan region of southwestern Libya. One in particular caught nay eye--a seven-inch pictograph that we named "The Hairdresser" (below). At least 4,000 years old, it could have easily been a portrait of the Wodaabe people who now live just south of the Sahara in the semiarid region known as the Sahel. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Scenes much like this--one man leaning over a bowl while another carefully washes his long, thick hair--are common among the Wodaabe. Though not conclusive evidence, these pictographs support the theory that the nomadic Wodaabe, known for their skill with face painting, are descendants of northern Africa's Neolithic artists. Such pieces to this complex puzzle are rare. The sheer size of the Sahara --3.5 million square miles--and thousands of years of migration to and from the region make it difficult for us to track down the rock artists' descendants. Fortunately some of the customs they chronicled are easier to trace. Another ritual still common today is body painting, especially among the Surma of southern Ethiopia (above). Carefully crafted to intimidate an opponent during ritual battles, these elaborate clay-and-water patterns are remarkably similar to some of the engravings I have seen in Chad--like these massive figures from the Ennedi mountains (right), the tallest of which is nine feet high. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] For thousands of years northern Africa's rock art has endured sun, sand, and the occasional thunderstorm. Now it faces a more potent threat--man. The danger ranges from tourists who wet paintings to make them easier to photograph to guerrillas who take shelter in caves and use the art for target practice, like this bullet-pocked cam el in Chad (right). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But the most alarming destruction we've seen is in Morocco, where at site after site rock art has been either completely removed or irreparably damaged in the attempt. Abdellah Salih, who works for Morocco's Ministry of Cultural Affairs, picks up a wedge from a 6,000-year-old engraving (above) to show me where it fit before a botched effort to remove the entire piece. According to Salih, 40 percent of the engravings and 10 percent of the paintings in this region have been stolen or damaged. Most have fallen prey to thieves, who pry the art off rock faces and smuggle it into Europe to sell to private collectors. Rock art is also retouched out of respect for the magic it's believed to contain. I was told that engravings in the Air mountains (right) were recently marked with clay and charcoal by fighters in Niger's civil war who hoped to tap into their ancestral power. All this is why in 1996 I founded the multinational Trust for African Rock Art. Because only if we protect these sites Call We learn more about this ancient art form--and the long-vanished civilizations that gave it life. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: Brought to life by the afternoon sun, a procession of graceful necks and long legs sweeps across a cliff face in Libya. Although this engraving of giraffes, six to seven feet tall, is roughly 7,000 years old, it still elicits "a tremendous feeling of a herd on the move," says the author. Caption: ART TREASURES: Caption: Rock art has been discovered on every continent except Antarctica, and Africa has more sites than any other, widely distributed across the continent. The oldest known African pictographs are in the south and are estimated to be 27,000 years old, but experts believe painting in Africa may reach back more than 40,000 years. Caption: With tulip-shaped heads and hourglass bodies, these 2,500-year-old figures look more like they're from a different planet than another time. Working on a pile of boulders in Niger's Air mountains, the artist pecked through a dark patina to reveal the bright granite underneath. Caption: As if sprung from a dream, floating figures seem to swim across the Sahara toward an eight-foot-tall archer. Found in Algeria, these immense paintings, which may depict shamanistic out-of-body travel, are typical of the Round Head period, about 9,000 to 7,000 years ago. Caption: Today Algeria's Tassili-n-Ajjer region is as deserted as it is dry, but millennia ago it was home to Neolithic peoples who collected wild grains, hunted with bows and arrows, and left exquisite paintings in rock shelters scattered throughout this forest of eroded towers. RESEARCH PROJECT Supported in part by your Society Kenya-based DAVID COULSON is founder of the Trust for African Rock Art. His book on this ancient aft, co-authored with Alec Campbell, will be published next spring by Abrams.