Archaeology
9,000-year-old rock art of people swimming in what's now the arid Sahara
Name: Cave of Swimmers
What it is: A series of rock paintings depicting a group of people swimming
Where it is from: Egypt's Western Desert
When it was made: Between 6,000 and 9,000 years ago
Related: Jade burial suit: 2,000-year-old 'immortality' armor worn by Chinese royalty
What it tells us about the past: Thousands of years ago, the Sahara Desert was not the dry, sandy landscape we know it as today — it was a lush, green oasis. In fact, the sandstone-rich Gilf Kebir plateau, which stretches from southwestern Egypt into southeastern Libya and is where the rock art resides, offers further evidence that this swath of land was once accessible to bodies of water and not always a barren desert.
In 1926, the remote area was mapped by European cartographer László Almásy who stumbled upon two "side-by-side shallow caves" adorned with hundreds of rock paintings of Animals and humans, including handprints that would have been created by someone "blowing pigment onto the rock face over splayed fingers," according to The British Museum.
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