Tassili n'Ajjer

Wind has carved the sandstone plateaus of the central Sahara into surreal 'forests of rock', and on their sheltered faces people recorded a greener world: more than 15,000 paintings and engravings, begun around 6000 BC and continued into the early centuries of our era, tracking shifting climate, migrating herds and changing human life. Tassili n'Ajjer, in Algeria's deep south, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1982 as a Mixed World Heritage Site honouring both its art and its otherworldly geology.