In 2025, the visit was repeated, but this time headed directly to the rock art sites in eastern Libya, accompanied by the writer Mohamed Abdullah Altrhouni, after staying in the city of Shahat. There, this question found a much clearer answer than before, while studying the murals in caves within the context of the natural landscape. Rock art, as an absence, drove us to pursue it night and day from one valley to another. But what kind of absence? It was an absence that granted narrative space for thought before its writing. When we stood before a mural, we stood directly facing an epistemological anxiety carried by these symbolic representations and signs of something present that could no longer be fully recovered. This feeling is precisely what gives these remains and engravings a meaning that imposes the permanence of its own production. I remember well that upon returning from that field experience—so different from my work in Shahat—I carried in my memory two images of the trace, not one: the image of the Temple of Zeus — that monologic, academic, archive-bound narrative — in contrast to an original, unenclosed discourse open to interpretation.

[Image 1: Haua Fteah Cave site]

Rock art is a trace of pursuit that cannot, under any circumstances, be understood in isolation from the natural landscapes that simultaneously produce and reproduce it. Walking through valleys, climbing mountains, and penetrating isolated caves—whose nests trembled upon entry and remained silent—form an essential part of this trace’s semantic structure. For they do not present the researcher with ready-made, short-sighted data, but rather with a continuous delay, sensually connected each time we approach deciphering their mystery. This stands in contrast to the marble statue, which can be isolated, transported, and contained within a museum space, reproduced within an interpretive context not devoid of colonial narrative mechanisms that rearrange the trace according to an external epistemic center. Within this context, the Greek or Roman trace is reproduced as something complete, classifiable, and possessable—which does not align with Derrida’s deconstruction of the meaning of presence and absence. This deconstruction directs me instead to look at rock art engravings—those unarchived narratives of murals that cannot be isolated from their original spatial context. For they are only containable through it, and by virtue of their absence within the natural depth of caves—which does not indicate weakness of presence, but rather a form of interpretive protection that hinders the possibility of subjecting them to a ready-made or centralized narrative.

[Image 2: Shi’b al-Qulta site]

On our recent journey to the Black Mountains, we lived in a constant feeling of falling into a temporal gap, bearing the character of passion for the unknown, as if we were chasing a perpetually shifting nostalgia. This state necessarily pushed us away from everything associated with classical Roman antiquities in the Jufra region. On a visit to Wadi Nina, I remember we stood before a Roman cistern for collecting rainwater and the remains of a collapsed stone building. Because we were hearing the whisper of the “drawings/engravings” we were on our way to with Abdul Latif, the broken stone column seemed to us a trace without a trace. Altrhouni looked at the remains of the column with visible laziness and apathy, without feeling any sorrow for it—unlike the anger I observed in him when he exploded in fury over the increasing encroachments on the engravings in Wadi Tajinat. Recalling this specific moment of our journey passing by the Roman trace is to shift the trace to another level of absence, far from the space of rock art and the natural landscape, through small archaeological finds. Despite their intense material presence in the palm of the hand, they carry, regardless of their small size, a double meaning due to their absence—more complex than the cylindrical column we left behind at the northern end of the Wadi Nina agricultural project. But how can we view these archaeological finds and their culture through this level of absence despite their materiality? The aesthetics of these finds, which we encountered at every site in the Black Mountains—despite their complete loss of original context and being treated archaeologically as finds subject to study, examination, and classification—lie not in their material presence but in the authenticity of their existence. As traces that lost their initial conditions of appearance yet continued to endure. From the Lower Paleolithic to the Middle Paleolithic to the Late Saharan Neolithic, we observed this silent absence without complete significations. In every hand axe, every rough side scraper whose age can be estimated at over 150,000 years ago, there the ancient Libyan was resisting extinction by leaving messages in the form of finds that sought to comfort this nostalgia within us—like a hand patting our shoulders and telling us: had it not been for these primitive tools made for digging the earth, shattering the bones of large animals, or scraping thick hides, you would not have been able to connect with us. At the level of Jacques Derrida’s concept of the trace, in the field of rock art and prehistoric archaeology, we move spiritually and connect emotionally with the highest degree of deficiency—which grants us the possibility of producing narratives not besieged by fragile presence, through an interdisciplinary text on a never-ending journey across all sites, from a path deep within a shelter or cave to a small find of pure quartz gleaming under the sun’s rays.

[Image 3: Wadi al-Sarrat site]

* Appendix: Approximate Catalogue of Selected Archaeological Finds from the Black Mountains: *

Table 1: Chronological Record and Technical Classification of Lithic and Environmental Finds in the Black Mountains Region.

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On our recent journey to the Black Mountains, I observed the informants Emhamed Boukhzam and Abdul Latif al-Mahdi as they walked through valleys and ravines searching for rock art sites. Both share the same passion: searching for archaeological finds on the earth’s surface. Reading the earth’s surface has been their passion since childhood, and over many years it has transformed into collecting the archaeological finds they come across. Through observation and monitoring the behavior of each, I found that Abdul Latif always looks at the ground. Although he is a skilled tracker, he cares only for archaeological finds. He looks at the earth with patience and care, with pleasure and filled with longing to find a stone that a prehistoric human attempted to polish and fashion into a knife. At the moment you expect him to place his foot on the ground, he descends like a hungry falcon, lifts his head with an arrowhead in his hand, then releases a gentle sigh from his chest. After that, he rubs the arrowhead well and places it in the palm of my hand, saying: “Look.” Abdul Latif embodies ghosts from other times, writing a history of searching for archaeological finds without uttering a single sound.

As for Emhamed, he walks along the stony path, and you feel he carries infinite sorrows. His slender shadow is detached from him, walking alone, while stones polish his features before him. Emhamed is also skilled in tracking, but he turns his attention to every line on the earth’s surface with a friendly manner. The track of a snake moving with its lethal, dry spirit; the track of a small, pale rock hyrax drawing passionate emotion on the Black Mountains; the track of a wild rabbit stealing the cold melody from the dawn. All these paths formed by the tracks of animals and reptiles do not prevent Emhamed from seeing archaeological finds as a halo of an ancient spirit. They both have a particular way of walking, weaving, to scan the largest possible area of the earth’s surface with minimal effort. Each of them has a valuable collection that awakens prehistoric spirits: chipped stone pieces, pottery shards, fragments of ostrich eggshells, and others.

The history of searching for archaeological finds is a painful and patient history. These material remains do not represent, for Abdul Latif or Emhamed, mere material remnants of a material culture; rather, they represent a longing to hear the echo of the past’s voice in their region. Abdul Latif and Emhamed place their collections not wrapped in cardboard, polyethylene, or bubble bags. They are there in a very ordinary cardboard box, from which a faint ringing can be heard. When Abdul Latif or Emhamed takes out his collection, he looks for a black cloth and spreads it on the ground with an intimate and instinctive manner, then brings out piece after piece, his hand echoing an unknown sorrow. Piece beside piece in a field of sweet serenity. When I look at him, I find him trembling, whispering with absolute emotion. This is the history of archaeological finds: the history of the mysterious emotional influence that flows into our hearts.

Searching for archaeological finds requires looking down and waiting for a lost love calling to you. There must be a vast space, and time passing slowly and painfully. Searching for rock art inscriptions requires looking up and relying on the strength of compassionate despair. You look at the slopes, at the overhanging rocks, at the mountain peak and the head of the ravine clinging in grey stillness, at the shelters looking at you with clear eyes. Unlike the seeker of archaeological finds, who thinks about the piece they found and the scent of its use, the seeker of rock art inscriptions waits for the maker of the find to emerge from a place fed by the wind; they wait for the eloquence of art to tell them the story of religion, customs, rituals, and social organization. This eloquence exists only in rock art murals. The rock art researcher returns home from beneath the body of stones and the minutes of the hour carrying nothing but a text written in an intimate manner. They do not have Abdul Latif’s box from which the sound of birdsong can be heard. Their little white box is the text that walks alone when darkness covers the velvety body of the ravine.

Their text does not resemble the find that is preserved and classified according to its function. The researcher of inscriptions looks at the mural as a text and thinks about the metaphors they might extract from it. The writer of archaeo-poetic text hates gloomy, uninspired texts. Their text is there, where they look up while walking through the narrow valley; there, while climbing the summit of the slope; there, in the strain of descending the ravine, which hears the soft moan of their bones. As for the metaphor, it resembles fruit ripening during their ascents and descents, and it alone is what they bring back home, placing it in the palm of their hand as a blank white page.

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These changes are ultimately linked to the emergence of shamanism and the rain religion throughout Africa. Shamanism, in its essence, deals with problems that have no known boundaries—problems requiring conscious interaction with a supernatural power to gain control over them and find solutions. The shaman emerged as a person with special abilities to deal with these problems by entering a trance state enabling communication with supernatural beings. The greatest of these problems was drought and the absence of rain, without which the continuation of life could not be guaranteed. The prehistoric shaman was a person capable of influencing climatic changes, not merely predicting them. Libya is part of Africa, and the climatic changes there contributed to the emergence of shamanism. At the same time, shamanism, within specific climatic contexts, contributes to our understanding of climatic and environmental changes in the region.

Wadi al-Baqar (Valley of the Cow) is located in the Fezzan Basin in southern Libya, at the intersection of longitude 12.848928°E and latitude 27.597147°N. In this valley, there are unique shamanic engravings on open-air rocks. The shamanic perspective and the theme of rain-making dominate the murals of this valley. In (Figure 1), we see a figure wearing an elephant mask in the context of performing shamanic trance rituals[^1]. Behind this figure’s back, there is a plant resembling flowers, raised upwards. This plant is called “buchu” ; it appears in rain-making rituals and the extraction of the rain animal from the water hole, and is traditionally used as a tranquilizer during trance rituals. In (Figure 2), we see the same plant on the arms of the man attempting to calm the rain animal. In (Figure 3), we find a figure extending their hand with the buchu plant to calm the rain bull while it is being pulled from the water hole. To the left of the image, there is another figure wearing a mask, but it is incomplete due to poor definition. This indicates that this figure was dancing during the performance of trance rituals, and that they are about to bring the rain animal, which in truth represents the water within the water hole. Rain rituals cover most rock art sites in Libya, but these rituals, in the absence of the shamanic perspective, have been neglected due to the complexity of their interpretation. Contributing to this neglect was the failure to use ethnography as a tool for interpretation; the focus was often on formal structure, neglecting the identity of the mural itself and the context in which it could be discussed. Wadi al-Baqar has been completely neglected, only coming to light through the photographs of Loai Abdulhamid, a PhD candidate in philosophy.

In another mural (Figure 4) from Wadi al-Baqar, Loai Abdulhamid describes it as “scenes of birds, flowers, and palm trees.” However, what is seen ascending to the sky are none other than the threads of light depicted in rock art in this manner, as in (Figure 5). In the book “The Archaeology of Shamanism” edited by Neil S. Price, Lewis-Williams discusses the painting (Figure 6) in an article titled “Shamanism in Southern Africa: The Rock Art Engravings in their Social and Cognitive Contexts,” stating:

“A rock painting of a shamanic dance. In the center, two or more figures are dancing, holding what appears to be a rope studded with white dots. To the right, another figure holds the rope above their head. This rope represents the spiritual threads of light that the shaman climbs while ascending to the sky to bring rain.”

These threads lead to the spirit world and are visible only to the shaman possessing supernatural power. During the dance, at its climax, the shaman ascends spiritually to the house of water. During their ascent, the women strike the ground with round stones to communicate with the spirit world. These threads, as in (Figure 7), represent, in Lewis-Williams’s words, the shaman’s path during the out-of-body journey. This account is supported by statements from informants /Xashao D!xao and /Xashao /’o, who said the thread is the supernatural power known as n/om, as well as by Uma D!xo, who described it as something from n!om. On this journey, the shaman passes through the water hole, depicted as a qalta on the ground or on the standing wall within the shelter.

These threads appear in Wadi al-Baqar (Figure 8), depicting the shaman’s journey to the spirit world. In the center, the shaman is at the beginning of the journey, with threads of light above their head. The posture of the shaman’s body gives the impression of ascending upwards and the start of the journey. On the right, we find the shaman who has left their body, transformed into a spirit ascending upwards. In this part of the journey, there is no clear body, but rather something resembling a transparent fluid symbolizing the shaman’s spirit. Also in this part, the spirit is completely connected to the threads of light, in the midst of ascending to the spirit world where the house of water lies. The section on the left represents the network of difficulties the shaman encounters and the struggles they undergo to reach the house of water.

Returning to the mural (Figure 4), which Loai Abdulhamid described as containing palms, flowers, and birds, we believe it is an incomplete mural due to the photography focusing only on the center of the composition. Whatever the case, such murals, often described as abstract and incomprehensible, are, in fact, from an ethnographic and shamanic perspective, open to interpretation and understanding. Climbing the threads of light is a metaphor for reaching the place of rain that has ceased to fall. Climatic changes compelled the shaman to invent this journey and reach the place of rain, negotiating with the spirits and struggling with them if necessary to release their grip on the rain. During the trance dance, the shaman sees these threads and, in the altered state of consciousness, climbs them to reach the house of water. If they fail to climb and fall (i.e., exit the altered state of consciousness before arrival), they remain away from people, returning only at night to try again on another day when luck might be on their side and rain will fall.

[^1]: *For more on the elephant and its relationship with rain, refer to the article “The Elephant, the Rainmaker” on the Chuwint website.*

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However, the measures of ethnographic work, such as long-term residence, attentive listening, and close observation of informants, cannot fully rescue the researcher from the pitfalls of his subjectivity and reflexivity in his work. Bleek’s nineteenth-century experience—concerning Bushmen folklore, published in 1911 thanks to Lucy Lloyd’s efforts after his death in 1875—can be viewed such that reflexivity in his project remains at the level of language first, which can be considered an awareness of the linguistic horizon and the limitations of direct translation; hence the work was done to establish the texts in the original language before their translation. Second: the centrality of the individual narrator, which involved working with characters who were not entirely unknown, who provided lengthy tales about their culture according to their position in the historical context, that is, a personal production of narrative by the primary narrators[^2]. Third: the almost explicit absence of the researcher’s position as an actor within a colonial system, and consequently the absence of deconstructing power between him and the narrators, which makes his work technically (linguistically) reflexive, not politically epistemological, assuming the complete dominance of European understanding over the text.

Thus, as we mentioned, his methodology relied on three dimensions: establishing the original text, then analyzing its linguistic structure and narrative forms, before producing a parallel translation of the raw material, in addition to the absence of the researcher’s position as a political actor, reflecting the limitation of dominance that led to controlling reflexivity by preserving the original stylistic characteristics of the experience. This procedural sequence gave the project a qualitative, interactive character, as it was founded on the priority of the original material and preserving its oral stylistic features. Such a procedure reduces the possibilities of reformulating the text according to a European horizon, regardless of the historical context in which this project was carried out, which later took on a critical documentary dimension due to its association with a language threatened with extinction.

Awareness of this type of ethnographic experience grants us ample space to understand the structure within which field work moves, and the dynamics of its transition from the narrow space of documenting these narratives to reflecting on their social function and what they address; that is, how tales and cultural symbols transform into analytical tools, and how these narrative materials can become a tool for interpreting the living system with all its emotional tension and duality combining symbolic themes of death and life, drought and water, and animal and human. These environmental and social symbols carry complex meanings that explain the relationship between humans and their surroundings. In many of the Bushmen tales collected in Bleek’s experience, there are explanations related to the symbolic meaning of their rock art, and this meaning addresses the idea of cosmic imbalance on the environmental level through their view of rain as a living being, and of drought not merely as an emergency climatic crisis, but as a serious disruption in their relationship with invisible forces; these forces whose communication with humans maintains their balance in dealing with the elements of nature.

Such procedures, of meticulous documentation of these tales and highlighting the voices of participants, enable interpretation within a specific socio-cultural context, and provide a practical model that we can employ in accordance with the Libyan environment, in the field of Libyan rock art, particularly concerning the culture of the rain religion in the central Sahara, and the murals produced by this culture that mirror the ethnographic reference in various sites in Southern Africa, within an interdisciplinary horizon where the balance between the authority of the author and the studied society becomes clear. For the ostrich in San Bushmen culture does not awaken from its resurrection after being slaughtered by the bushman except so that the small whirlwind occurs, and its feather flies to the sky and falls into the heart of the water, so its flesh grows anew and enlarges until it becomes taller and tougher, kicking with its feet and sharp claws the jackal when it tries to approach the eggs in its nest. Through these myths, the ostrich becomes a pivotal animal present in Bushmen culture as a rain-being, and the falling of its feathers represents nothing but the return and continuation of rain, with the renewal of feathers and its strong form, to expel the drought which represents the jackal. According to this perspective, producing an ethnographic model in Libya requires redefining the researcher’s position within a critical hermeneutic framework that balances belonging and analysis. This model is understood, in the postmodern context, as an interdisciplinary model combining anthropological theory, cultural studies, textual analysis, and the history of knowledge. The crisis of local humanities represents an institutional level linked to the conditions of knowledge production, while the traditional academic text exhibits a methodological flaw represented by the predominance of description and weakness of interpretation. This flaw is not related to the nature of the data, whether quantitative or qualitative, so much as it is related to the prevailing epistemological framework.

Despite current challenges, it is not impossible for Libya to have a text that enables the Libyan ethnographer to work within his culture, not above it. Such a text could possess the reins of its locality without a forced intermediary or the uprooting of narrative from its environment. This is represented, if you will, by the locality of the horizontal wandering of knowledge and its production through dismantling hierarchical power. Locality in this context is defined as a conscious epistemological positioning that combines the researcher’s awareness of being part of the studied world, involving actors in the production of meaning, revealing internal multiplicity within the community without forced integration or reducing the participants’ voice to benefit the researcher, while employing reflexivity[^3] as a tool to define the researcher’s position and cognitive limits, not as a subjective license or a means of narrative centering, thus allowing clarity of analytical position and flexibility of interpretive reading. In this sense, the ethnographic text remains a synthetic, interdisciplinary act, but it is a declared-position synthesis achieving balance between the author’s authority and the multiplicity of voices within the material, revealing what the researcher considers obvious or natural, thereby enabling the production of shared internal interpretation. Through this approach, the local model, as a postmodern model, can transcend traditional description towards building a coherent epistemological analysis, based on clear mechanisms of documentation, highlighting differences, and preserving the community’s voice within the text without dissolution or cognitive monopoly.

[^1]: * (1827–1875) A German linguist and philologist considered one of the first researchers to work field-based on the languages and cultures of the San peoples (Bushmen) in Southern Africa during the nineteenth century. He was known for his project of documenting their oral texts in their original languages and analyzing their linguistic structure before translation. His works were published posthumously in 1911 through the efforts of Lucy Lloyd, and contributed to preserving linguistic and cultural material that was threatened with extinction.
[^2]: (ǂKábo, Dia!kwain, Kweiten ta, ǂKasin)
[^3]: George Marcus defines reflexivity: “as self-critique, personal quest, the play of self, testing (experimentation), and an idea of empathy, it is a vast field for commentary and concern through the question: is reflexivity a license or a method? Moreover, it opens the possibility of the so-called polyphonic text or the fully collaborative project, but very often it only reinforces the perspective and voice of the solitary reflecting fieldworker without challenging the ethnographic research model.”

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When the shaman in Southern Africa enters the spirit world, he takes on a half-human, half-animal form, and this is why we see many figures in rock art in the form of a complete animal, or half-animal and half-human. The most powerful animals in the spirit world were the lion, elephant, eland, and leopard. The shaman would wear the skins of these animals because the animal’s power transfers to him. Arrows are a symbol of spiritual power, and are often carried in bundles. The forms of animals and humans pierced with multiple arrows do not symbolize a hunting scene, but rather indicate the spiritual power bestowed upon them through those arrows. Shooting arrows at rain animals does not represent hunting, but is a sign of increasing rain power and controlling it.

In Southern Africa, Bleek and Lloyd recorded stories about people of the ancient race from the time when elephants were considered human. This race, from their perspective, existed on earth before the San people, so it is not surprising to find paintings depicting people with elephant heads (Figure 1). In the Cederberg mountains, paintings featuring people with elephant heads are very rare—only two sites out of 300 contain people with elephant heads. In the Drakensberg, there are also two sites with people with elephant heads. Andrew Patterson calls these figures “Elephant-hrop,” meaning elephant and human (Figure 2). The elephant is associated with bringing rain and the trance dance, and in many rock art paintings, the elephant appears connected to bringing rain.

In Libyan rock art, the presence of the elephant is striking, especially in Al-Masak, where the elephant is depicted very intensively. However, what concerns us here is the presence of the elephant from a shamanic perspective, because the shaman has a special relationship with certain animals that have a connection to rain and possess supernatural power. The elephant is one of these animals due to its relationship with rain and water. As a result of this relationship, the elephant is depicted as a person with animal characteristics, such as an elephant head. And if the San people depicted elephants because humans were originally elephants and then transformed into humans, perhaps such a belief also existed in prehistoric Libya. In (Figure 3) from Wadi Adrou in the Saft Al-Masak region, we find a shaman with an elephant head. But more importantly, what we discovered during our research in Wadi Tajent—we found a mural containing two shamans with elephant heads (Figure 4).

The posture indicates that a ritual is taking place at that moment, and that there is a dance performed by the shamans during the ritual. Perhaps there are murals similar to this one in other places that have not yet been discovered. It is necessary to delve deeper into the San people’s mythology concerning the early people, and examine its relationship with Libya and the rock art in Libya and Southern Africa, because the similarities are not simple and require complete study and research. In the Acacus, the shamanic perspective of the elephant and viewing it as a rain animal exists and is no different from Southern Africa. We are discussing a mural that displays all the elements of shamanism (Figure 5).

The mural is from Inshal – Acacus, showing an elephant with strange physical characteristics and features. This is because the shaman is in an altered state of consciousness and sees animals in forms and appearances different from reality. The figure directly in front of the elephant is the shaman leading the elephant forward into the arid lands where rain is desired to fall. There are two figures to the right and left of the elephant carrying bows, which are symbols of rain power and control. On the right, we notice a fissure in the wall with threads of water painted around it. Although there are no deposits near the fissure, these cracks are the place for summoning rain spirits and their entry and exit into our world. Near the fissure, there are dots similar to those present at the far left of the mural.

About these dots, Lewis-Williams says in an article titled “Testing the Trance State Interpretation of Southern African Rock Art”: “Red dots appear in the trance dance and rain-making scenes.” Beneath the elephant’s trunk, there are figures painted in red performing rain dance rituals. On the left, we see human figures that have taken on animal form, leaping forward. These forms, during the performance of the great dance or rain dance, symbolize merging with animals possessing supernatural power. We find an example of the posture of these figures in (Figure 6) from Southern Africa. On the left, there is another part of the display during the dance and ritual performance.

We must point out here that the state of erection seen frequently in the mural refers to power and the trance state. There are two female figures to the right and left of the mural. There is a relationship between women and rain (Ikhwa), and they are called during rituals “wives of the rain.” Undoubtedly, the panel is shamanic and presents the elephant as one of the important rain animals in the Acacus, also referring to the trance dance and the state of obtaining supernatural power. The prehistoric rain religion provided the same solutions to the same problems, foremost among them drought, throughout all of Africa.

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The Wind is a Bird of Fire
Segment 2
It is said that the wind is easily annoyed, like a teenage girl who cannot bear her homework. In Bushmen folklore, those who have seen the wind say that it was originally an ordinary man until he transformed into a huge bird, without offering convincing arguments for his sudden change of nature; perhaps they avoided delving into this topic for fear of being uprooted by it.
Among the Bushmen, who never stop telling tales, there was one they called “the Men of Smoke,” the only one who spoke to the wind, and that its place was Mount Harvontin in a deep mountain crater. And because he was no less annoyed and displeased with it than it was with him, he would throw stones at it, believing it was a bird full of evil throwing fireballs to burn crops and huts, and because of that, it exploded and flew away, and has not blown gently since that day, becoming perpetually angry.
Since that incident, the Man of Smoke forgot the pleasure of lying down and sleeping like a child by the bushes, and remained fearful in his hut of restless dust—covering the cattle herd, sealing springs that knew nothing but tears. And because the wind is by nature untrustworthy in all tales, the Basili tribe[^3] also lost many of their men when it buried their wells with sand, so they decided to wage war with poisoned spears to kill it. But it was not a bird, but rather an anger from the hiss of burning sand grains they called Al-Qibli[^4], due to their repeated attempts to steal the sacred agate stone in order to control it. That was in a dry and strange time, when neither magic nor rain sacrifices had any miracles capable of controlling nature’s fluctuations, which had exchanged its fertile skin for dry crusts and a mournful whistle circling in the valley shelters.

Symbols
Segment 3
Since time immemorial, drought has been linked to longing, prayers, and immigration. And this is exactly what the man who lit the path to the water house used to do. And because the language of nature only communicates through symbols and signs, the San peoples relied on footprints and upturned tree branches to guide those whom the thirst of distance had led astray, or just to exchange messages and tell each other that they had simply not disappeared, as if saying: “We are fine as long as water is near.”
Thus, finding water was sometimes emotional and also technical, between the short-term surface movement towards pools by the San people, and the deep understanding of the earth and the engineering of time’s droplets by the Garamantian people[^5], who perceived the hidden secret of stability amidst drought, because they were simply, as it is said, born from the heart of the Qulta, and learned that the luminous holes of their ancestors in the walls send signals from their ancient shaman who crossed through them to the clouds to save his people. The descendants continued, until that time, to inherit the climbing onto the backs of ostriches and scaling the threads of light, until it was severed and most of them fell from the sky to the summit of Jebel Zinkekra[^6], and there they established their primitive fortress, before descending to Wadi Al-Ajal and commencing the cultivation of the desert, exchanging profitable goods and trade from the Proto-Garamantian period until the Classic Garamantian period.
And just as the water networks[^7] sprouted enchanting oases like a dream of immortality, they also sprouted long annihilation on bridges of bones. And men, due to traveling long distances, continued to engrave their chariots and horses on mountain edges to determine the routes to reach gold, minerals, ivory, and precious stones, to ensure for their kings in another life comfortable tombs teeming with the finest funerary goods.
[^1]: An ancient Libyan tribe, dwelling in the far west of the Libyan coast, their territory extending to the great Triton River.
[^2]: Ancient shepherds were existentially connected to the sky; by it they guided themselves in travel, and regulated the seasons of rain and fertility, so stars became a system of knowledge before being an object of veneration.
[^3]: An ancient Libyan tribe, known for their veneration of snakes and their war with the Al-Qibli wind.
[^4]: A hot, dry wind that blows in Libya coming from the depths of the desert, with which temperatures rise, drought intensifies, and it sometimes carries thick dust that obscures vision and increases the feeling of suffocation.
[^5]: An ancient Libyan people who inhabited Fezzan in southern Libya, and flourished between the 5th century BC and the 5th century AD, taking Germa as their capital.
[^6]: A mountainous site in the Fezzan region of southern Libya, containing remains of ancient settlement attributed to the early stages of Garamantian presence in the area, archaeologically known as the Zinkekra fortress, which has a defensive character linked to the urban center at Germa.
[^7]: The Garamantian water networks relied on the “Foggara” system; underground channels dug with precise slope to transport water from aquifers to the oases, enabling stable agriculture in the heart of the desert around Germa in southern Libya.

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