Cameroon - The Rupestrian Engravings of Bidzar

The village of BIDZAR (or BITZAR) is located on the Maroua-Garoua road, mainly inhabited by Guidar, with some Moundang families and rare Guiziga. There is a marble field to the west of the road, and the junction of the road to Guider divides it into two parts. In the region, there are about 130 Km2 of marble outcrop (Cipolin) whose plans were perfect for engraving. The slabs with engravings seem to be limited to around the village of BIDZAR 2.5 km from north to south and 1 km from east to west; the engravings are distributed without any apparent link on the marble slabs. All have geometric characters, and may in some cases be schematic representations. The recurrence of engraved patterns similar and not comparable to traces of erosions, besides the marble fields outside BIDZAR, as likely to be eroded or engraved as those recognized in BIDZAR, but devoid of any petroglyph indicating human character of the engravings and not "natural drawings". The materials on which the engravings of BIDZAR were made are a limestone marble (cipolin) traversed by chloritoschist veins which change in places its normally whitish color which became greenish-green, pinkish-pink, yellow-yellowish or bluish. Its resistance to friction is quite low and the rock breaks easily.