By Rupi Mangat
Published: Daily Nation Kenya 27 January 2019
Above: Maasai giraffe browsing in Maanzoni
In Ancient Egypt’s royal tomb of the famous pharaoh, Tutankhamun are images of giraffes nibbling leaves while he sits in state some 3000 years ago. Giraffes and elephants including the rare okapi lived in the midst of the Egyptians until the forests were plundered to build boats and pyramids for the pharaohs, which heralded in the Saharan Sands.
Giraffes have globe trotted the earth since the Miocene era 23 million years ago when their range included Europe and Asia.

“Giraffes appear more frequently than most other animals on rock art,” states David Coulson of the Trust for Africa Rock Art (TARA) that is a digital repository of Africa’s most important prehistoric rock art. “It is the earliest artistic expressions of humankind, a window on how our ancestors related and interacted with nature and the natural world,” continues Coulson.


