Learning from rock art
According to Thomas Dowson, "a lot of rock art is actually in symbols and metaphors." For example, eland bulls meant marriage and curing or the trance dance. Rock art gives us a glimpse of the San's history, and how they lived their lives. [3]
San used rock art to record things that happened in their lives. Several instances of rock art have been found that resemble wagons and colonists. Dowson notes that, "The people who brought in the wagons and so forth thus became, whether they realized it or not, part of the social production of southern African rock art. They added a new dimension. [3] Dorothea Bleek, writer of the article "Beliefs and Customs of the /Xam Bushmen", published in 1933, says the San also recorded "rain dance animals". When they did rain dances they would go into a trance to "capture" one of these animals. In their trance they would kill it, and its blood and milk became the rain. [4] As depicted in the rock art, the rain dance animals they "saw" usually resembled a hippopotamus or antelope, and were sometimes surrounded by fish according to Dowson. [3]
We can learn more about how the San lived through their rock art. In the following depiction, the people are all in a dancing stance, and the women are all clapping. So, according to Dowson, it is believed to be one of their healing or trance dances. Everyone is the same; one is not more elaborate or more detailed than another. This shows that though the healers held special powers, they were not thought of as higher or better. Healing was not for becoming a more prominent and powerful person, it was for the good of the entire community. [3] [5]
H. C. Woodhouse, author of the book Archaeology in Southern Africa, says historical sources have also said that the San often disguised themselves as animals so they could get close enough to grazing herds to shoot them. The head of the buck was an important part of this disguise and was used in dancing and miming of the actions of animals. The large number of buckheaded figures in paintings is evidence that the San did this. [6]
Later San rock art began to illustrate contact with European settlers. A famous example is of a sailing ship, known as the Porterville Galleon (found 150 kilometres inland in the Skurweberg Mountains near the town of Porterville). The picture is thought to represent a Dutch ship and have been created in the mid-17th century. Later examples of colonial subject matter include women wearing European-style dresses, men with guns, and wagons and carts made during the 19th century. [7] [8]
Production of rock art
The San used different coloured stones to do the drawings. Woodhousesays, "They usually used red rock, which they ground until it was fine, and then mixed it with fat." They then rubbed this on the rock to form the pictures. This paint withstands the rain and weather for very long periods. [9] According to Phillip V. Tobias, an Honorary Professor of Palaeoanthropology at the Bernard Price Institute for Palaeontological Research, the San used this paint in four styles: "monochromes, animal outlines in thick red lines, thinly outlined figures, and white stylized figures." [10] A.R. Willcox, writer of the article "Australian and South African Rock-Art Compared", published in 1959, says the tool used to do these paintings was "a brush made from animal’s hair or a single small feather." This may be one reason for the great fineness and delicacy of their painting. [6] I. and J. Rudner, writers of the journal "Who Were the Artists? Archaeological Notes from South West Africa", published in 1959, say the form that the San use is often referred to as Dynamic School. "It has a lot of action and color, and reached its climax in the shaded eland pictures." It is usually associated with the San. [11]
According to Woodhouse, clues are given as to who worked on the rock art by the subjects that are chosen. There are many pictures of the eland, reybuck, hartebeest and lion, and also of the San and fighting. [6] However, there are few depictions of plants. Wilcox notes that, "plants usually fell in the domain of women, so it is presumed that the authors of these paintings were men." [12]
Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek was a German linguist. His work included A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages and his great project jointly executed with Lucy Lloyd: The Bleek and Lloyd Archive of ǀxam and !kun texts. A short form of this eventually reached press with Specimens of Bushman Folklore, which Laurens van der Post drew on heavily.
The San peoples, or Bushmen, are the members of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. They speak, or their ancestors spoke, languages of the Khoe, Tuu and Kxʼa language families, and are seen by outsiders as a people only in contrast to neighboring pastoralists such as the Khoekhoe and descendants of more recent waves of immigration such as the Bantu, Europeans and Asians.
Dance is present in mythology and religion globally. Dance has certainly been an important part of ceremony, rituals, celebrations and entertainment since before the birth of the earliest human civilizations. Archeology delivers traces of dance from prehistoric times such as the 5,000-year-old Bhimbetka rock shelters paintings in India and Egyptian tomb paintings depicting dancing figures from c. 3300 BC.
Sympathetic magic, also known as imitative magic, is a type of magic based on imitation or correspondence.
Specimens of Bushman Folklore is a book by the linguist Wilhelm H. I. Bleek and Lucy C. Lloyd, which was published in 1911. The book records eighty-seven legends, myths and other traditional stories of the ǀXam Bushmen in their now-extinct language. The stories were collected through interviews with various narrators, chief among them ǀA!kunta, ǁKabbo, Diäǃkwain, !Kweiten-ta-ǀǀKen and ǀHanǂkasso.
The Tsodilo Hills are a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS), consisting of rock art, rock shelters, depressions, and caves in southern Africa. It gained its WHS listing in 2001 because of its unique religious and spiritual significance to local peoples, as well as its unique record of human settlement over many millennia. UNESCO estimates there are over 4500 rock paintings at the site. The site consists of a few main hills known as the Child Hill, Female Hill, and Male Hill.
The Iziko South African Museum is a South African national museum located in Cape Town. The museum was founded in 1825, the first in the country. It has been on its present site in the Company's Garden since 1897. The museum houses important African zoology, palaeontology and archaeology collections.
Lucy Catherine Lloyd was the creator, along with Wilhelm Bleek, of the 19th-century archive of ǀXam and !Kung texts.
Twyfelfontein, officially known as ǀUi-ǁAis, is a site of ancient rock engravings in the Kunene Region of north-western Namibia. It consists of a spring in a valley flanked by the slopes of a sandstone table mountain that receives very little rainfall and has a wide range of diurnal temperatures.
James David Lewis-Williams is a South African archaeologist. He is best known for his research on southern African San (Bushmen) rock art. He is the founder and previous director of the Rock Art Research Institute and is currently professor emeritus of cognitive archaeology at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS).
In the culture of the San, an indigenous people of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Angola, healers administer a wide range of practices, from oral remedies containing plant and animal material, making cuts on the body and rubbing in 'potent' substances, inhaling smoke of smouldering organic matter like certain twigs or animal dung, wearing parts of animals or 'jewellery' that 'makes them strong.' Anecdotal records reveal that the Khoikhoi and San people have used Sceletium tortuosum since ancient times as an essential part of the indigenous culture and materia medica. The trance dance is one of the most distinctive features of San culture.
ǀKaggen pronounced IPA:[ǀ͡Kaggen] is a demiurge and folk hero of the San people of southern Africa. He is a trickster god who can shape shift, usually taking the form of a praying mantis but also a bull eland, a louse, a snake, and a caterpillar.
Driekops Eiland is a rock engraving or petroglyph site in the bed of the Riet River close to the town of Plooysburg, near Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa.
Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Centre is a rock engraving site with visitor centre on land owned by the !Xun and Khwe San situated about 16 km from Kimberley, Northern Cape, South Africa. It is a declared Provincial Heritage Site managed by the Northern Cape Rock Art Trust in association with the McGregor Museum. The engravings exemplify one of the forms often referred to as ‘Bushman rock art' – or Khoe-San rock art – with the rock paintings of the Drakensberg, Cederberg and other regions of South Africa being generally better known occurrences. Differing in technique, the engravings have many features in common with rock paintings. A greater emphasis on large mammals such as elephant, rhino and hippo, in addition to eland, and an often reduced concern with depicting the human form set the engravings apart from the paintings of the sub-continent.
The visual art of Botswana has varied among the different ethnic groups and throughout history. Historically it has fallen into two main categories: that of the San peoples and that of the Bantu-derived peoples such as the Batswana...
Dorothea Frances Bleek was a South African-born German anthropologist and philologist known for her research on the Bushmen of southern Africa.
The San religion is the traditional religion and mythology of the San people. It is poorly attested due to their interactions with Christianity.
Patricia Joan Vinnicombe was a South African archaeologist and artist, known for identifying and copying San rock paintings in the valleys and foothills of the Drakensberg. Her work transformed the study of rock art into a science. She was also active in the preservation of Aboriginal art in Western Australia.
The Kuru Dance and Music festival is an annual celebration included in the Botswana's calendar of events marking the full moon where Khoisan communities find it very significant in their culture to interchange cultural knowledge through song and dance.
Letsoku is a clayey soil used by several tribes in Southern Africa and other parts of the African continent.The Sotho-Tswana of Southern Africa have described a number of clay soils as letsoku. These are named differently by other tribes in the region, it is known as chomane in Shona, ilibovu in Swati, imbola in Xhosa and luvhundi in Venda, there are many other names given by other ethnic groups. Letsoku occurs naturally in a number of colours and it has many use, it is mostly used for cosmetic applications in Southern Africa. However, other functions of it is related to artwork, medicinal use, cultural symbolism and traditional beliefs
