2000 BC to 600

Stone villages of Tichitt

When the Sahara was greener, hunters and herders left rock art across the region. From around 2000 BC, people of the Tichitt tradition build hundreds of stone walled villages along the cliffs of Dhar Tichitt and Oualata, among the oldest such settlements in West Africa. As the land dries, Berber herding peoples, among them the Sanhaja, spread across the desert.