Laas Geel

The rock shelters sit low in a rocky hillside, easy to miss from the unpaved road until you are almost upon them, and then the scale of the paintings surprises you: great sweeps of red ochre depicting long-horned cattle in procession, accompanied by human figures with raised arms and animals that scholars read as oryx and gazelle, the composition spanning several metres of wall with a confidence that speaks to an established artistic tradition rather than a first attempt.

The pigment has survived millennia in the dry air, and the figures retain a vividness that makes them feel recent, yet the archaeologists who first documented them in the 1970s and again in the 2000s describe a tradition that predates the Egyptian pyramids by at least a thousand years, placing this among the earliest known narrative artworks anywhere on the continent and suggesting that the pastoralist cultures of the Horn were producing figurative art of high sophistication at a time when most human societies were still creating abstract marks.

What distinguishes Laas Geel from more famous rock art sites is the narrative complexity: scenes appear to show not just animals but interactions, perhaps a hunt, perhaps a ceremony, and the three-colour palette of red, white and black pigments is applied with a sophistication that suggests ritual rather than casual marking, each colour grade achieved through the addition of different mineral compounds that would have required knowledge of both chemistry and the properties of local stones.

The site was sealed to casual visitors for years during the Somali civil war, and its re-emergence as a tourist destination has brought both attention and new threats to the surface of the paintings, which are sensitive to breath, touch and the moisture of crowds standing too close for too long, a paradox that heritage managers are still working to resolve as the number of visitors grows each year.

Local guides in Hargeisa, many of them trained through small heritage NGOs, describe the paintings as a source of identity for the region, linking present-day Somali pastoralist culture to an ancient past in which cattle were the measure of wealth and beauty, a theme that runs through Somali poetry and song to this day and that gives the site a living cultural resonance that extends far beyond its archaeological significance.

Standing before the largest panel, with the dry scrub of the Hawd plateau stretching away to the horizon, you become aware that these images were made by people who looked at exactly the same landscape and found in it something worth preserving for the future, a conversation across eight thousand years about what matters most in a world that was already ancient when the first strokes were laid down, and you sense the responsibility that comes with being the latest link in a chain of witnesses.

The paintings are among the oldest known figurative works in Africa, predating the Egyptian Old Kingdom.

The three-colour palette and apparent narrative scenes give Laas Geel a sophistication rare among prehistoric rock art sites.

A visit supports local heritage communities and raises awareness for preservation of a site still vulnerable to development and tourism pressure.