“Sahara, das versunkene Paradies”

Alpine and foreign cultures (), Michael Schlamberger 50 min

The Sahara is the symbol for deserts: It is one of the most extreme and hostile landscapes on earth, and at the beginning of the 20th century it had barely been explored. That is, until the moment in 1922 when the Austrian adventurer Ladislaus Almásy discovered rock paintings in the centre of the desert. Those primeval artistic works displayed a paradise-like world with big animals, rivers, lakes and bathing people. The desert explorer had discovered one of the most mysterious enigmas of climate history. A long time ago, the largest tropical desert must have been a lush Garden of Eden. Following the traces of Almásy, the nature filmmaker Michael Schlamberger, who has won many awards, searches for indications of this captivating chapter in the natural history in the Sahara.