Home
Mysterious Sahara: The Land of Gold, of Sand, and of Ruin By: Prorok, Byron Khun de
I can't find anything older than this book that details Kealey/Watt's description of them better than this. But there are some problems. Here they're associated with the Taureg, which is still a present day Berber culture in North Africa. Kealey had mentioned that the Berbers are remnants of the cromagnon, but in Prorok's book they're described as "living Neanderthals." Which isn't such a bad contradiction if you consider that perhaps the Neanderthals brought them in first, then left them behind has Kealey mention the Thalers had done this to other groups before. But another contradiction is that this author talks about the Taureg's queen, which is problematic cause it would imply matriarchy (unless she was one of those "males on the inside" ones). So make of it what you will.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]
In Mysterious Sahara Prorok, a popular archeologist and adventurer of the time, describes his 1925-28 expeditions into north Africa. He goes south from Algeria, across the Sahara, and into the mountains of the Hoggar.
The first chapter of this book is a rather grim but fascinating roll call of early Saharan explorers. The list goes on and on, and almost all of them died horribly. Sometimes it was thirst or hunger, but usually it was at the hands of the Taureg, the giant "white" race of the Sahara, in which the men wear veils and are dressed from head to toe in black. Prorok himself, throughout all of his books, keeps up a rather chipper tone, which diverts the reader from the fact that hundreds of explorers died in the very same tracks. This isn't Disneyland.
On his way to find the Taureg, Prorok stops by the temple of Jupiter Ammon, "where Alexander the Great became a god," and then visits the Troglodytes of the Matmatas, who were living Neanderthals.
Somewhere south of the Mountain of Snakes, Prorok finds the Tauregs. They are every bit the tall, silent warriors and bandits he expected them to be. There are about 5,000 of them, living in a feudal system, still carrying the swords of the crusaders, with jewelry and coins from the 17th century. Everywhere Prorok sees links between the Tauregs and medieval Europe -- and Atlantis. He also describes the Tauregs as a near super-race. He saw men run straight at a bar six feet off the ground and clear it with a single jump. His photographer shot 40,000 feet of motion picture film.
But Prorok and his companions never relaxed:
There is no question but what one feels the malignity that envelops the hidden personality of the Taureg, and at times it is surprisingly easy to recall the death-dealing spear that traversed Reygasse's tent one silent night, or the tombs of Palat and Douls and Flatters, far out in the sands, or what is far more tragic because of its nearness to me, the passing of some of my own brave comrades, killed by Taureg as I write these lines.
In December, 1928, after Prorok's sojourn with the Tauregs, his friends, General Clavery and Captains Debenne, Pasquet, and Resset were massacred on the road to Beni Abbes. A few months later 83 French officers and men were killed by the Tauregs at Ain Yacoub.
One reason Prorok lingered with the Tauregs was that he wanted to find the tomb of their queen, Tin Hinan, which would contain clues to the Taureg's mysterious origin. On October 18, 1927, he found the tomb. He had to excavate in a hurry, however, before the Tauregs realized whose tomb it was. With only a few companions, out of food and almost out of water, he dug. Near the top of the tomb they found Roman coins from the time of Emperor Constantine and other relics from the faraway Mediterranean. Then they found the queen herself:
Around the queen's neck was the extraordinary spectacle of over three hundred precious and semiprecious stones, all of which became beautiful indeed when we washed them and placed them in the brilliant sunshine to dry. But the thing that astonished us most, as our trembling hands uncovered object after object, was the amazing collection of bracelets on the arms of the queen. On the right arm we found nine huge solid gold bracelets, of a weight quite surprising. On the left arm were eight solid silver bracelets of exactly the same design...
Some of this material is also covered in the author's In Quest of Lost Worlds (1935), but Prorok goes into far better (and different) detail here. Mysterious Sahara is a book you will probably read more than once.
I can't find anything older than this book that details Kealey/Watt's description of them better than this. But there are some problems. Here they're associated with the Taureg, which is still a present day Berber culture in North Africa. Kealey had mentioned that the Berbers are remnants of the cromagnon, but in Prorok's book they're described as "living Neanderthals." Which isn't such a bad contradiction if you consider that perhaps the Neanderthals brought them in first, then left them behind has Kealey mention the Thalers had done this to other groups before. But another contradiction is that this author talks about the Taureg's queen, which is problematic cause it would imply matriarchy (unless she was one of those "males on the inside" ones). So make of it what you will.
Last edited by Preston on Fri Mar 20, 2009 9:30 am; edited 1 time in total
