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The Mystery of the Blue Ostriches
The famous Blue Ostrich Painting shows five ostriches cautiously watching the approach of a hunter with bow, disguised as an ostrich. Two of the ostriches are painted blue. Stow, a recorder of rock art in the 1860's to 70's, indicated that he had found the painting in the Wittebergen , a range of mountains in the present Herschel district of South Africa. His daughter, after his death, maintained that the painting was high up in a cave, which had to be reached by ropes. The Characters:
George Stow : 1822-1882, geologist and one of the first recorders of rock art in South Africa. His paintings were published in 1930 in a celebrated book Rock Paintings in South Africa. The accusation: Tobias, Lewis-Williams and Dowson accuse George Stow of having faked one of his paintings , The Blue Ostrich Painting. That in fact it is a mirror image of an engraving in a book by Robert Moffat, Missionary Labours and Scenes in South Africa published in 1842. The significance: Lewis-William's thesis is that generally bushman rockart is an expression of trance experience. Images of half man, half animal (generally antelope-men) are therefore not images of hunters dressed in animal disguises but are images of bushman shamans transformed into animals in trance. Lewis-Williams' argument is convincing in that most of these antelope-men (therianthropes) have cloven hooves, indicating something more than mere animal disguise. However the famous painting of the Blue Ostriches (as shown), clearly reveals a hunter with human feet poking from under his ostrich disguise. The Blue Ostriches Painting is therefore loaded with theoretical significance. One painting is not a rebuttal of Lewis-Williams' whole thesis, but the existence of this painting might suggest as Stow argued, that at least some of the rock paintings reflected the manners and customs of the bushman, a position to which Lewis-Williams is opposed. The Evidence against the accused: Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Tobias list the following evidence:
The Evidence for the Accused: The alleged motives for Stow's forgery seem to be the weakest part of the argument against him. The copies of paintings which Stow recorded and which have been recently rediscovered show a remarkable accuracy and correspondence to the original paintings. Lewis-Williams and Dowson argue that Stow was so wedded to his theory that rock paintings were a reflection of the 'manners and customs' of the bushman that he fabricated this painting to provide evidence for his theory. This imputes to Stow a consciousness of someone so committed to a theory that he would be willing to fabricate a painting. Yet he was the groundbreaking recorder, not a modern theorist under siege from rivals. Further, it seems that this is the only one that he allegedly fabricated. Finally, after Stow's death, Dorothy Bleek who published some of Stow's copies, corresponded with Stow's daughter to enquire about the painting. Stow's daughter maintained that she had been with her father when he had heard about this painting and had sent his head-man out scouting. He returned to report that he had found the ostrich painting in an almost inaccessible place. Lewis-Williams and Dowson see this as a 'romantic description', probably created to protect her father. The Judgment: Lewis-Williams, Dowson and Tobias have a convincing case. However it is just possible that somewhere in an 'almost inaccessible place' in the Wittebergen Mountain range, lies a yet unexplored painting of Blue Ostriches.
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The Painting: