Dinosaurs, carved rocks and cave paintings
 

I've been wanting to go back to Morocco and some of the southern sahara pistes next autumn.


I've been researching where to find some of the ancient sites with dino footprints, cave paintings and carved rocks.


I fell across this website which is really good Accueil by Jacques Gardini.



Its in French so requires a bit of work to get the best out of it, and a map would have been helpful, but the information both on pistes to get to the sites and details of them are really good.


I'm really excited about finding some remote caves and looking at some of the pictures!

I know some rock carvings and have used Gandinis website as an aid. I believe there is more info in his relevant guide books


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Any you want to share? I think what I'd really like are some good cave paintings in remote spots.



I'll be stopping in Tafroute for a few days as there seems to be lots going on in the Anti Atlas, then on to Ouarzazsate, MS7, MS6, Efroud, Beni Tajitte and then over the atlas to Meknes.



Cheers Dave

I've had better results from other sources than Gandini, his waypoints never seem to work for me.

Air Ouazik: The absolute best site for gravure rupestre or petroglyphs (or 'rock art' as I now term it) is probably Ait Ouazik. The carvings at Ait Ouazik are high quality engravings rather than the crude peckings of Foum Chenna (below). They are at least 5,000 years old and include rhino, elephant, ostrict, giraffe and so on. No carvings of camels and horses are these weren't introduced into Morocco until thousands of years later.

Write-up: http://m.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=30876
Location: coming south from Tazzerine on the N12 take a piste to the right just before the Al Lkram service station.
Map: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/...33!4d-5.633333
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Foum Chenna: hundreds of much more recent 'pecked' rock art showing warriors on horse back with shields and lances.
Location: heading south towards Zagora on the N9, waypoint N30 29 06.6 W6 10 07.4
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There's lots of dinosaur sites, here's a cluster near Imilchil near the junction of the R317 and P7319

http://www.morocco-knowledgebase.net...lchil-dino.png
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There's a couple of gazelle carvings within walking distance of Tafraoute, see my report at http://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=30880

Thanks Tim,



a couple of those are very close to where I am going, so I will def drop in to see them.


Cheers


Dave

There are new digital maps of Maroc Tim
 

which you might find useful. See screen shot of same area as your for comparison. Click on image to enlarge
500M

Interesting. Which system is that?

QGIS is one way but... as I read you don't like Basecamp for being too complicated, you might want to prepare a LOT of pain killers for QGIS!

added PDF user guide link here in case you'd like to try it.

I spent the day with chaps from Ich(e) (north of Figuig) looking at a variety of rock art in the surrounding areas.
https://goo.gl/maps/zKJXpFJ4fsq