In one form or another, giraffes have been around for a very long time. And so has Homo sapiens. The interaction between giraffes and humans starts way back in prehistory, and rock art (paintings and engravings) is found all over Africa from Morocco, Algeria and Libya in the north, through Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania in the east, to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique in the south (Le Quellec 1993, 2004; Muzzolini 1995). Wherever, in fact, there has been savannah. However, the most extensive and remarkable rock art is found in areas of the Sahara (Coulson & Campbell 2001). Today these are found in remote, inhospitable regions of the desert, so arid that any form of sustained human or animal existence is untenable today. They document prehistoric cultures that apparently thrived in these regions, hunting wild animals and herding domesticated cattle, that have subsequently vanished, leaving little trace of their presence or of the richness of their cultures.
