Memory upon memory, this palimpsest of empire and tribe lies forgotten as the winnowing sand reduces it to dust, century after century.
This is our shared story and part of that early journey out of Africa.
These are the remains of that first child of humanity, learning art and creating beauty from the bones and flesh of the earth itself.
It is here that we moved past our contingent animal state and transcended survival as the age of exquisite abstraction dawned.
All around me, the ancestors whisper their secrets along this forsaken gallery of time, if ever there was an abode of the djinns this is it.
Photos courtesy of the author.