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Rock Art of Southern Africa: A Sacred Heritage
In cliff overhangs, in open caves and on hidden rocky outcrops of Southern Africa, lies one of Southern Africa's great heritages and national treasures , the rock art of the San people. Not only are these images, - from single figures and animals to complex polychrome masterpieces of interlocking figures, animals and symbols-, beautifully crafted; but they also embody and reflect the rich symbolic life and world view of the San people. Witwatersrand University's Rock Art Research Centre has calculated that there are approximately 15000 known rock art sites and probably twice as many as this are in existence. South Africa has one of the richest heritage's of rock art in the world. It is certainly true that one can still stumble across an as yet unrecorded San rock art site in a kopje of the Highveld or in a granite overhang of the North-East Cape, and possibly be one of
the first people to look on a masterpiece created by a San artist, thousands of years ago.
What makes South Africa's rock art even more special is that it is probably one of the most understood of rock art cultures across the world. This is because of the fortunate circumstances of the recording of the mythology, language and folklore of the last remnants of the Southern San people, in the 1870's by a visionary linguist, W.Bleek and his family. This material offers a glimpse into the past and helps future researchers make sense of rock art which had remained inaccessible and open to speculative theories. These South African insights have proven so useful that some of the hypotheses have now been used to understand rock art in other parts of the world. Whilst debate still rages amongst researchers, there is consensus that the art expresses the religious and spiritual beliefs of the San people. The rock art of South Africa is therefore a valued and sacred heritage. How did the San Artists Paint? In the early 1930's Mrs Marion How, the wife of a District Commissioner, lived in Lesotho. She heard that an old man, Mapote, one of the younger sons of a Baphuti chief, Moorosi, who had close ties with the San of Lesotho before their extinction in the 1870's, was still alive.
Mapote had painted with the San and was thus acquainted with both their techniques and with their materials. When asked to paint once again, he created tiny brushes of feathers stuck into the ends of reeds. Mapote obtained iron oxide which had to be heated until red hot and then ground between two stones into a powder. The binder used to mix was a sticky white juice and blood ( he asked for eland's blood which was unavailable).
This is as close as there has been of any verbatim account of the witnessing of San painting. By the time the questions about San painting began to be asked, the Southern San painting tradition was almost extinct. However analysis of the actual painting pigment confirms this account from the 1930's. Red, orange and purple were made from heated iron oxides. White paint was made from ground kaolin while black was made from manganese oxide. This explains the difference in the deterioration of different colours. Black and white deteriorated much quicker than the colours created from the iron oxides. As a result we often find the classic "hook-shaped" head, where the disappearance of the white colour used for the face, creates an effect of a hook-shaped head. The other striking detail from Mrs How's account is the request for eland blood to be used as a binder. That it was particularly eland's blood, is evidence that the painting had some religious purpose. It seems clear that in certain parts of Southern Africa, the eland was seen by the San as imbued with great potency. It has been suggested that the harnessing of this potency could assist the medicine-man/shaman in entering trance. That eland's blood was used for the actual painting reflects the essentially spiritual nature of the paintings. Style:
Can anything be usefully said about the regional differences in style and content of the San paintings? Much was made by earlier writers about regional differences of style. There is consensus now however amongst researchers that discussions of style do not help much in understanding the rock art. It is true that there are regional differences. There are many more polychrome ( many colours) paintings in the Drakensberg and N-E Cape, than the Western Cape where the paintings are predominantly monochrome. However it is also true that rich polychrome paintings have been recently discovered in the Cedarberg of the Western Cape. The writers of the 1960's and 1970's such as C.Cooke, were influenced by the scientific world view of the time, which believed that knowledge could come out of classification. They were also influenced by the visits of the rock art authorities from Europe, Frobenius ,who visited Southern Africa in 1928, and especially Breuil who visited in the 1920's and 1950's. Breuil had made much of the classification of styles of European rock art and this permeated the local view of the art. It was suggested that there were different styles which reflected different historical periods. The attempt to define precise styles linked to periods has now been abandoned . Garlake in writing about Zimbabwe has even suggested that what was seen as a crude style reflecting an art in decline, was in fact possibly just the work of San children. However some analysis has been done on a characteristic feature of San painting, that images are superimposed on others. Researchers in the Western Cape, argue that crude finger-drawn painting is always superimposed on fine-line painting. Further cattle are always painted in the crude finger-tip way. The suggestion is that the arrival of the cattle-keeping Khoi about 1600 years ago led to the decline of the fine-line tradition in the Western Cape. Modern theorists like Lewis-Williams have emphasised continuities rather than differences. He suggests that there was a San world and religious cognitive system which stretched across time and geographical space, despite obvious regional differences. There are clearly regional differences in content. The eland is the game animal that is extensively painted in the Drakensberg and the N-E Cape mountains, providing evidence for the idea that what was painted was not just what was seen or eaten ( eland bones do not appear in such frequency in late stone age sites,) but what had particular significance in religious life. But in the Northern parts of South Africa bordering on the Limpopo the kudu is the large meat animal which appears most frequently in the art. Eastwood and Cnoops who have researched this area argue that regional San groupings chose different animals to embody religious significance. This could have been for a variety of reasons, including an individual shaman's revelatory vision which then became the accepted mythology of the area. How old are these paintings? (see also Major Discovery and Painted Stones) Dating rock art has always been difficult. Dating in archaeology has generally been done by carbon dating, and the pigment of the art itself is unsuitable for accurate dating. Dating has therefore relied on the discovery of rock art, either on stones (art mobilier) or fallen pieces of painted wall surface (parietal art) in layers of sites where careful excavation has taken place. Material in these layers can be carbon dated and dates given to the rock art itself. The dates of course would indicate the latest date which the art would have been painted, for the art might have been done some time prior to falling into the deposits which were then covered over by further human occupation and natural forces. The most famous painted stone, is one from a cave named Apollo 11 in Namibia. Here the painted stone was found in a deposit which was dated at 26,000 years ago. Recently a fallen piece of painted rock face was found in a deposit which was dated to 3,600 before the present. This discovery in the Steenbokfontein Cave on the West Coast is the oldest dated rock face painting. These dates are extraordinary, because they show that there existed a painting tradition , and very probably a religious tradition which goes back at least a thousand years before the birth of Christ, and probably
many thousands of years before that.
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