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  TOURSNEWSROCKART JOURNALCONTROVERSIESFEATURESREADING ROCK ARTBOOKSSITE OF THE MONTHNORTH EAST CAPEPRIME ORIGINSCONTACT US 
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Graves and Painted Stones
The significance lies in the dating of rock art. Some of the rock art, from the content of the images which reflect colonial contact, is clearly fairly recent; that is, around the 1700's to 1850's. The paintings depict colonists on horses, and even in one extraordinary case in the South West Cape, a galleon with sails. But how far back does this tradition of painting go? For various technical issues it has been difficult to carbon-date the rock art, and an attempt to date the rock art through styles and location remains speculative. The painted stones however hold the key. For these have been found in the layers of archaeological deposits. And accurate dating of the adjoining deposits is possible.
He believes that we can. Analysis of the images on some of these stones indicate the following features: the arms-backwards characteristic position of the shaman going into trance, associated water-images (like those of on a stone from an excavation at Klasies River Mouth of a man and four fish or dolphins) which for Lewis-Williams are symbols of trance itself or the underworld , as well as depictions of nasal blood associated with San trance dance. Thus for Lewis-Williams there is evidence of a shamanistic world view that extends across geographical space over Southern Africa, but also backwards in time to at least four thousand years ago, if not to twenty-thousand years ago. Finally Lewis-Williams tries to make sense of the fact that some of these painted stones were placed in graves. His tentative hypothesis is that the trance ritual linked the world of reality to the spirit world, and that the images of trance on these burial stones were therefore some symbol of connection between the two worlds.
Reference: CONTACT BRETT HILTON-BARBER primeorigins.co.za is an iafrica.com Private Label site |
Most rock art in Southern Africa is found on the walls of overhangs and caves. However some rock art has been found on painted stones, and these have particular significance.
Most of the painted stones come from the past four thousand years, but one extraordinary find in the deposits of an archaeological excavation in Namibia, called Apollo 11, is dated to 26,000 year before the present, which would make it contemporary with some of the Upper Paleolithic art of Europe.
Lewis-Williams, a renowned rock art researcher asks the question, can these painted stones tell us how far back the shamanistic tradition of the San people goes?