#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA CODE#
#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA PLUS#
#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA SERIES#

Again, geneticists confirm that these groups are of exceptional antiquity along with the San of southern Africa, these are the oldest peoples on earth in terms of their genetic markers. These groups, whilst much integrated with other groups today, have a hunter-gatherer ancestry that extends back long before the coming of pastoralists and farmers into the region.

The rock art distribution corresponds to spread of people who speak click-languages: the Sandawe and the Hadza. Its closest parallels are with the San art of southern Africa, but a number of its elements, such as its distinctive human head forms, are unique. The art is made up entirely of animal and human forms. It is an island within the Pygmy rock art zone. Whilst other traditions cover huge geographic areas and are represented at many thousands of sites, this tradition occurs at just a few hundred sites in an area of land less than 100km in diameter. These sites were named national monuments in 1937 by the Tanzania Antiquities Department.In eastern Africa, in central Tanzania, lies one of the most intriguing of Africa’s hunter-gatherer rock arts. The Kondoa region was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2006 because of its impressive collection of rock art.

#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA SERIES#

The Kondoa Irangi Rock Paintings are a series of paintings on rockshelter walls in central Tanzania. This pair of rock art traditions extends far beyond the forests suggesting that Pygmy groups once occupied a much larger section of central Africa. Another film in this series will focus on this research. Pygmy traditions are helping researchers to understand the reasons behind the existence of two Pygmy arts. The geometric art always dominates, but the two traditions appear together as a pair: they co-occur across a huge area and are regularly found close by.

#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA PLUS#

As well as the geometric images there are also a small number of sites with highly stylised and distorted animal figures plus rows of finger dots. Whilst geometric tradition art is not well known, nearly three thousand sites have been recorded.

This area was termed “the Schematic Art Zone” by one of the fathers of African archaeology, Desmond Clark. Across the whole of the forest region from Uganda to Angola we find a remarkable tradition of geometric art. Genetic studies show that the varied Pygmy groups spread across central Africa are of great antiquity: they have lived in the region for at least the last 40,000 years. This is the land of the forest hunter-gatherers that we know as the Pygmies.  © Ben SmithMoving south on our journey we enter what is now the tropical zone of Africa, famous for its dark impenetrable rainforests. The outcrop has many other much smaller engravings. The giraffe engravings are located on an isolated outcrop thought to be between 8,000 and 6,000 years old, the largest one measures almost 5.5 m. For these to be included in the spectacular deep, polished engravings is surely significant. The Dabous giraffes of Niger are one such example, with lines carved from both the male and the female giraffe leading down to small human-like figures.

#BUSHMAN RHINOCEROS DRAWING SOUTH AFRICA CODE#

Cracking the code of this art is one of the greatest of research challenges today.

Like all of Africa’s hunter-gatherer arts, this was far from a simple record of daily life: we see creatures that are part-human part-animal giraffe with lines emanating from their mouths that meander across the rock-face until they finally join to a floating human form and many other mysterious beings. But, the meaning of its complex symbolism remains elusive. Decades of research, by many specialists, have given us a rich understanding of the age, sequence and regional variation in Saharan rock art. We even see images of hippo and crocodile, showing that there were pools and rivers in what is now a desert. In the rock art of this time we see antelope, giraffe, elephant, rhino, lion, ostrich as well as forms of prehistoric cattle that became extinct about 5000 years ago. 12,000 years ago much of the Sahara was a wet and rich grassland supporting great herds of plains animals. We will see even older, buried, rock art images later, but for now let us travel back some 12,000 years to the end of the last Ice Age. Here we find some of Africa’s oldest exposed rock paintings and engravings. They stand on an outcrop looking down over Wadi Mathendous, in a position of power and respect.' Found in the Messak Settafet of Libya, the 'Fighting Cats' petroglyph is a striking depiction of two long-tailed figures confronting each other on their hindquarters as if fighting.

Bushman rhinoceros drawing south africa