Theft of cave art
 

This is a paraphrasing (over a very bad UK-Cairo phone line) of an article.....

An article in the current (Dec 11th 2002) copy of Northern Earth Magazine written by John Palmer, quoting an unnamed Dutch newspaper;

article begins //
Theft of prehistoric rock art in the Algerian Sahara..... there are thousands of such engravings, but many have already been removed by thieves with pneumatic drills, especially in the Jabbaren region on the Libyan border. These are sites deep enough into the desert to be remote and hard to safeguard. Extracted engravings are sent
abroad for sale, especially to Italy. The smugglers route runs through Libya, apparently using Sicilian Mafia connections. Some rocks shipped out of Africa may weigh up to 100kg. Being pre-Islamic and pagan artefacts, Muslim Algeria (like Taliban Afghanistan) has little respect for such art, indeed many Algerians object to their country being famous for pagan relics. It seems that some of the coloured engravings are also being daubed over with paint and the name of the Prophet scrawled over them. Disrespect is also signalled by urinating over the designs and they are being lost because some Muslim Algerians fail to realise the true value of their ancient inheiretance // paraphrasing ends

Whats next? The Gilf Kebir and Uweinat?

Who can guarantee that desert patrols from armies in countries with such cave art wouldnt be averse to a little pilfering themselves to augment their meagre salaries?

Im trying to find out more over email, Ill post it as I get it

Actually I feel the report is a bit sensationalist as the papers love us to think its all falling apart.
Having been up to Jabbaren a couple of weeks ago the only problem was fading (from watering for better pics), not drilling out - there is still some amazing art there that I would have thought would have got nicked years ago.
I think J Keenan may have started this ball rolling in his Sahara Man book (and a recent talk in London). IMHO he got the wrong end of the stick at Tamadjert, etc.

Down south they may vandalise (just as the cave men and pharaohs did to their predecessors) but they could not be arsed to steal it - esp with plenty of Roman stuff up north - and the Algies and even Libyans recognise the value of this stuff to the tourism they are trying to develop.

I reckon

Ch


Then again, someone actually drilled out some dino footprints off Broome in Australia a few years ago.