Tassili n'Ajjer National Park

Tassili n'Ajjer National Park, covering some 7.2 million hectares of the Sahara desert in Algeria, protects a sandstone massif holding one of the most important collections of prehistoric rock art in the world, with more than 15,000 engravings and paintings spanning roughly 12,000 years. Its rock art traditions run from about 10,000 BCE to 1000 CE and depict wild animals, domesticated cattle, humans, horses and camels, including the Running Horned Woman of the Round Head period, an early depiction of sacred feminine imagery in Africa. The massif also contains nearly 300 natural rock arches, deep gorges and permanent pools of water, and shelters endangered Saharan cypress trees, among the longest-lived organisms on Earth. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1982.