ABSTRACT
The disappearance of tropical mega-fauna in the Sahara and the Sahel is a fact, the mechanisms of which have been explained by specialists. The purpose of this chapter is to try to understand why and how certain species of this fauna, which have died out in sub-Saharan areas, are still preserved in the imagination of peoples of the area. We are concerned with the Tuareg people, on the one hand, and elephants (the only animals to be considered here), on the other. The scope of such an investigation is huge since my ambition is to compare the earliest rock art, i.e. that belonging to the stage of the big so-called 'Bubal' fauna, and perhaps to that of the 'Bovine' type in its first period, with the oral traditions of the 20th-century populations. This is why I will limit myself to connecting the data on rocks (according to prehistorians' generally accepted chronologies) to data provided by Tuareg culture, so as to suggest a certain number of hypotheses and cautious deductions.
