San Rock Art, Ukhahlamba /  Maloti Drakensberg park a UNESCO World Heritage Site. ( Kamberg Rock Art Centre, Game Pass Shelter and Giants Castle Main Cave)

San Rock Art, Ukhahlamba /  Maloti Drakensberg park a UNESCO World Heritage Site. ( Kamberg Rock Art Centre, Game Pass Shelter and Giants Castle Main Cave)

 

Witness the famous “Rosetta Stone Panel” at the Game Pass Shelter in Kamberg Park, Drakensberg, and the shocking revelation that a recent fire has devastated the main cave’s San Rock art site at Giants Castle.

 

 

The Maloti Drakensberg region is a treasure trove of some of the most outstanding rock art found anywhere in the world. The unique style of the paintings is instantly recognisable by children and adults alike, and San’s techniques to achieve this visual distinctiveness are genuinely remarkable. Even if you have seen examples of some of this rock art in museums or photographs, nothing can quite prepare you for the wonder and excitement of seeing the real thing close-up.

There is something deeply spiritual about standing in the very spot where the original artist stood as they painted a majestic eland, skillfully using black, white, and different shades of red, yellow, and brown to define its form and make its muscles ripple under the surface of its skin. Marvel at how the magnificent animal is shown in a three-dimensional pose, looking backwards over its shoulder at the hunters closing in on it. Puzzle over mystical-looking creatures and strange markings painted near them – then turn and gaze over the beautiful grassy hills and valleys, as the artist might have done.

 

What did they use for paint?

•   Red, orange and yellow paint were made from rock or soil rich in iron oxide.
•   Black pigment was usually made from black clay or soils rich in manganese and occasionally from burnt bone or charcoal.
•   White pigment, the least durable, was made from fine clay and, occasionally, from bird droppings.

Sometimes binders, such as melted fat, egg white, or eland blood, were used in the paint. Earlier paintings have survived better than those done more recently,

 

 

 

 

What do the paintings show?

Until recently, people saw the rock paintings as scenes taken from San daily life, quaint depictions of hunting, fighting, collecting food, and performing strange rituals. But in the 1970s, researchers came to believe that the paintings relate to the religious beliefs of the San and are reflections of

the spirit world

A popular view is that shamans probably created the paintings

– healers or medicine people. According to this view, a shaman would go into a hallucinatory trance, enter the spirit realm and interact with the spirits. The paintings record what was revealed in that altered state of consciousness.

As such, the paintings are believed to possess a special power.

To such an extent that some African izangoma (diviners) scrape pigment off the paintings to create particularly potent muti (medicine). Others use these powerfully sacred places as venues to train their students, and some rock art sites are still visited in secret by people of San descent.

Many paintings depict fantastical spirit creatures, such as rain animals (often described as eland) and therianthropes, hybrid human and animal forms. These suggest that the medicine person has taken on the power of the animal. A shaman in a trance would experience nasal bleeding like a wounded eland, and this blood was sometimes rubbed onto other participants of the ritual to ward off bad luck and sickness.

The eland is the most frequently depicted animal subject and the most elaborately treated of all the images. Eland depictions have multiple meanings—they are related to rainmaking and puberty ceremonies, used as a symbol of group identity or a metaphor for the trance state, or an attempt to capture the spirit of selected animals to ensure a successful hunt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SHADED POLYCHROME: The skilful use of colours and shading gives the painting a distinctive visual realism.

FORESHORTENING: Relative sizing of an image to give it a 3d look by making areas of the painting that should appear closer to the viewer proportionally larger than areas that are further away.

THERIANTHROPES: Depictions of part-human, part-animal forms (often part-eland);

believed to have held great spiritual significance.

SUPERIMPOSITION: New artwork painted over existing images; believed to have been done sometimes to

Recharge the site with spiritual energy.

 

 

What makes this rock art unique?

•   An uncommonly wide range of colours
•   Foreshortening and shading are used to give 3d realism, which is rare in rock art.
•   Animals depicted in a wide variety of stances
•   Many paintings are very detailed, with exquisitely fine lines.
•   Interesting and varied subject matter – including hunter-gatherer life, mystical imagery and the arrival of other peoples. Expression of the religious and mythological world of the Mountain San
•   The vast number of images and sites
•   Painted over 4,000 years
• Many images are in excellent condition.
• Some shelters are living heritage sites—they are still visited by San descendants and others who regard the paintings as sacred and potent.

 

 

What do we know about the San of this area?

 

The San have lived in this region for many thousands of years. Carbon dating suggests that the oldest remaining paintings were created about 4,000 years ago, and other archaeological evidence indicates that the San people were already here thousands of years ago.

The themes and styles of rock art over the centuries are consistent, but there is evidence that stone tools, social networks, and economic strategies have changed over the last 18,000 years. The San remained hunter-gatherers and foragers until the arrival of other immigrant groups.

That has changed dramatically over the last few hundred years, with the arrival of the black Nguni tribes, followed later by white hunters and farmers of the European colonial period. Some of the rock art depicts these intruders as seen by the San, in fascinating paintings of black herdsmen and their cattle, men on horseback, covered wagons, and soldiers carrying rifles. These images testify to what must have been fearful times for the short-statured and relatively peaceable San. They could no longer roam freely between the coast and the Drakensberg. They withdrew to the relative safety of the mountains, from where they raided the intruders’ cattle in the surrounding countryside. This led a British garrison stationed at Fort Nottingham to halt such raids and pursue the San Raiders. The retribution of the farmers was merciless, and by the dawn of the twentieth century, there was almost no trace of the many San who had lived in the area.

 

 

The living heritage of the Secret San. By the 1920s, popular opinion held that the San of the Maloti Drakensberg were extinct. Then, in 1928, a farmer discovered a perfect bow and arrow set in Eland Cave in the Didima area, sparking considerable speculation that there were still pockets of San people living deep in the mountains. This did not prove to be the case, but it is undoubtedly true that the descendants of the San have secretly continued to visit

significant sites.

Now that popular opinion toward the San is no longer hateful, the exciting truth is more readily announced: the San were not annihilated – many intermarried with their African neighbours, changing their names and taking on new cultural identities. Some kept aspects of their culture alive, visiting each other in secret, frequenting their rock art sites under the cover of darkness, and performing healing and rainmaking ceremonies for their African neighbours, as their ancestors had done for centuries. Today, about 600 people in the area are proud to regard themselves ethnically as San and have adopted the Nguni term Abathwa.

“First people” – for themselves.

This includes the Duma clan in the Kamberg area, which has recently been granted the right to perform its annual sacred eland ceremonies at Game Pass Shelter.

The last known painters were Lindiso Majola, from the Maclea area, and Kerrick Ntusi, who was still alive and living in the southern KZN Drakensberg. Both were painted around 1920.

 

 

 

Protecting rock art

Rock art is easily damaged.

Treat rock art sites with respect and don’t do anything that could harm the art in any way, either directly or indirectly. Inform the local heritage agency if you notice recent damage or alteration to a site. Also, contact them if you find anything that appears to be an unknown site.

• In Lesotho, contact the local museum or the Ministry of Culture:

+266 22 311 767

In KwaZulu-Natal, contact Amafa: +27 (0)33 394 6543

• You can also contact the local museums or the South African Heritage Resources

Agency (SAHRA):

+27 (0)21 462 4502

In the UDPHS, contact the Biodiversity conservationist:

+27 (0)33 239 1508

 

 

 

 

Rock art etiquette

Rock art is of immense archaeological and cultural worth and is irreplaceable. It is protected by law. Observing the following basic rules will ensure that you uphold the spirit of the law and help to preserve this

wonderful heritage for future generations.

•   Rock art sites must only be visited with a guide. Get permission in advance from the relevant authorities or the landowner.
•   Never touch or lean on the paint, as fats and oils from your skin can damage it.
•   Never wet the art with water, saliva, or any other liquid, not even just.
• To make the colours stand out
•   Avoid stirring up dust—some of it settles on the art and hardens into a crust, obscuring the paintings.
•   Never trace the art – it is easily damaged.
• Please refrain from interfering with the paintings in any way. Don’t scrape them; highlight the outlines or add your drawings. The damage is irreversible, and graffiti anywhere within 50 m of a rock art site could cost you a fine of up to a million rand and/or imprisonment for up to five years.
•   Never remove stone tools, pottery, bones or other objects from a site.
•   If you see anybody damaging the art, please report the incident.
•   Never make fires in shelters containing rock art.
•   You may not be in shelters where rock art is present overnight in the Ukhahlamba Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site.

In addition, remember that for some, the rock art sites are sacred places worthy of reverence. Behave respectfully and speak quietly, especially when accompanied by descendants of the San.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Game Pass Shelter, South Africa

Game Pass Shelter is one of the most well-known rock art sites in South Africa. Situated in the foothills of the Drakensberg Mountains, a sandstone recess atop a steep slope contains rock paintings created by people from the San/Bushman communities, who historically lived as hunter-gatherers throughout southern Africa. The Drakensberg mountains are renowned for their wealth of rock paintings, often featuring detailed and brightly coloured images of people, animals, and part-human, part-animal figures known as ‘therianthropes’, with this site being a prime example. One of the panels of paintings here is particularly significant in the history of rock art research, as it helped inspire a new approach to understanding the meanings and symbolism of San|Bushman paintings and engravings in the 1970s.

 

 

 

 

The most prominent painting panel at Game Pass features a series of carefully depicted eland antelopes in delicately shaded red, brown, and white pigments, essentially superimposed over a group of ambiguous anthropomorphic figures wrapped in what appear to be bell-shaped karosses, traditional skin cloaks. Several small human figures seem to be running above them. These are some of the best-preserved rock paintings in the Drakensberg, featuring the largest animals, approximately 30 cm long. To the left of this panel are two smaller sets of images, one featuring two further eland, some additional human-like figures, and a human figure with a bow; the other is a small panel for which the site is most renowned. An image approximately 50 cm long depicts an eland with its face turned towards the viewer, as if stumbling forward, with its hind legs crossed. Grasping the eland’s tail is a therianthrope figure with hooves for feet. Like the eland, this figure has its legs crossed and is depicted with small lines, resembling raised hairs that bristle from its body. To the right are three further therianthrope figures.

 

 

 

 

 

The rock paintings from this site were first brought to public attention in a 1915 issue of Scientific American and have been frequently published on and discussed throughout the 20th century. While studying a reproduction of the image with the stumbling eland in the early 1970s, researcher David Lewis-Williams began to consider that the figure holding the eland’s tail might not be a simple illustration of a man wearing a skin suit, or performing an act of bravura, as had been suggested by previous researchers, but might be “idiomatic and metaphorical, rather than illustrative” (Lewis-Williams 1981:91).

This idea was partly inspired by the testimony of Qing, a San/Bushman man who, in 1873, guided the Colonial Administrator Joseph Millerd Orpen to rock art sites in the mountains of Lesotho, which form a natural eastern border with South Africa and also contain many rock paintings. Qing’s explanations of the paintings, some of which Orpen copied, included a reference to antelope-headed human figures having “died and gone to live in rivers, who were spoilt at the same time as the elands and… by the dances of which you have seen paintings”. This, along with testimony and practices recorded from other South African San|Bushman people at the time, as well as those living elsewhere in south-western Africa in the 20th century, suggested to Lewis-Williams that these and other images in San|Bushman rock art may be a reference to the activities of spiritual leaders or ‘shamans’, people who, in San|Bushman communities, are believed to have the power to interact with spirits and the spirit world in ways which may affect the physical world.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lewis-Williams and other proponents of this “shamanistic” approach to interpreting San|Bushman rock art have proposed that much of its imagery is related to the shaman’s experience during the “trance dance” ritual, which is found in all San|Bushman societies. During this activity, the shaman enters a hallucinatory state in which spiritual ‘tasks’ such as healing the sick may be undertaken on behalf of the community. On entering the trance state, the shaman experiences trembling, sweating, stumbling and other symptoms similar to those of a dying antelope hit by a poisoned arrow. Lewis Williams noted that among some San| Bushmen, this process is referred to as ‘dying’ or being ‘spoilt’ and considered that the similarities between the eland and the therianthrope figure in this image represent this conceived equivalence.

Despite the historical presence of other large game animals in the Drakensberg, the eland is the most commonly depicted animal in the region’s rock art. Patricia Vinnicombe, noting this and the focus on other particular subjects in the imagery at the expense of others, proposed in her pioneering 1976 study of the rock art of the Southern Drakensberg People of the Eland that the paintings are “not a realistic reflection of the daily pursuits or environment of the Bushmen” (Vinnicombe 1976:347). Vinnicombe recalled that when, in the 1930s, an old Sotho man named Mapote, who had San|Bushman half-siblings and had used to paint with them, was requested to demonstrate, he had said that since the San|Bushmen had been “of the eland”, he should first depict an eland. Based on this and recountings of a myth about the creation and death of the first eland from Qing and other contemporary Southern San|Bushman people, Vinnicombe concluded that the eland, although regularly hunted by the Drakensberg San|Bushmen, had been a particularly sacred or powerful animal to them and that “Through the act of painting and re-painting the eland… the mental conflict involved in destroying a creature that was prized and loved by their deity…was…ritually symbolised and resolved” (Vinnicombe, 1976:350).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Building on the idea of the spiritual significance of the eland, the approach proposed by Lewis-Williams offered an alternative interpretation by inferring from ethnography that eland were believed to have spiritual ‘potency’. As part of a complex system of beliefs involving conceptions of power and potency to animals and rites, this potency could be released upon death, with trance shamans believed to be able to harness it, feeling themselves take on the animal’s attributes. Thus, therianthrope figures like those depicted here may be interpreted as representing hallucinatory experiences of shamans in trance, where they may feel that they are assuming the forms of other animals. It has been argued that other motifs, such as geometric forms known as ‘entoptics’, represent the abstract patterns created by neural networks and ‘seen’ during the early stages of entering an altered state of consciousness, and that the paintings themselves may have been made as reservoirs of spiritual potency.

The shamanistic approach to interpreting San|Bushman rock art images, for which the Game Pass panel is sometimes called the “Rosetta Stone,” gained popularity in the 1980s and has become the dominant interpretive framework for researchers. Debate continues about the extent and nature of its applicability to all San/Bushman rock art and how myth and ritual not associated with the trance dance may also inform the art. Work that connects San|Bushman cosmology and practice with images from sites like Game Pass continues to provide fascinating insights into these enigmatic images.

 

 

 

 

Game Pass Shelter and many other rock art sites are situated within the Maloti-Drakensberg Park, which was inscribed as a UNESCO Transboundary World Heritage Site in 2000. The site is open to the public and accessible via a trail from the Kamberg Rock Art Centre.

San|Bushmen is a collective term that describes the various hunter-gatherer-fisher groups living in southern Africa who share related languages and cultural traditions. Both ‘San’ and ‘Bushmen’ are considered offensive terms by some members of these groups, although others have positively adopted them

https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/country/south-africa/gamepass/

 

 

 

The Giant’s Castle Game Reserve was proclaimed in 1903.

Previously, the area was relatively unknown. From as early as the 1850’s we hear of commandos setting out in pursuit of raiding Bushmen and visiting the region of Giant’s Castle, but their activities centred round the country to the south of the peak, in the valleys of the Loteni and the Umkomaas, rather than to the north, the area of the present Reserve. Early maps indicate the presence of several bridle paths south of Giant’s Castle. There are none to the north. No doubt hunting parties often visited these mountain slopes, but they left no written record behind them. Major Grantham must have spent some time here in 186o while drawing up his military map. But there was little else.

The end of 1873 and the first six months of 1874 saw considerable activity around Giant’s Castle, which became internationally known during the Langalibalele Rebellion.

For months, a detachment of the 75th Regiment was encamped at the junction of the Bushmen’s River and the stream in the Langalibalele Pass, just below the Main Caves. Their cook carved the figures 75 on a large rock outside their camp. During the first six months of 1874, John Eustace Fannin, as we have seen, was commissioned by the Government to survey the passes in the area, and Colonel Durnford was ordered to blow up these passes. Both men spent about six months in the area.

 

 

 

For 29 years, nothing more was heard of Giant’s Castle, and then, in 1903, the Natal Government proclaimed it as a Game Reserve. On November 8th of that year, the first Game Warden, Sydney Barnes, pushed his way up Bushman’s River Valley to take charge of his new domain.

It was a wild and beautiful stretch of country, twenty-five kilometres of towering peaks,

remote and lonely valleys, where the only sound was the singing of the mountain streams. The winds blew fresh and sharp, the air was like the clean bite of dry wine, and the dawn came quietly over far horizons.

The original idea of the Reserve was to protect the fast-disappearing herds of eland that roamed the mountain slopes. From an estimated three to four thousand, they had now dwindled to about 200 and would soon disappear unless something was done to protect them. Initially, 12,000 hectares of I40 were set aside, but this area was later expanded, and today the Reserve stands at over 40,000 hectares. It stretches from Giant’s Castle in the south to the Old Woman Grinding Corn in the north.

 

 

 

 

 

And so it was that on a summer’s morning, towards the end of 1903, Ranger Sydney Barnes stood on a slight eminence and surveyed his new domain. Behind him towered the sandstone cliffs of the Little Berg, red, yellow, and brown, streaked with grey and black.

To his left, heaving its massive bulk into the very sky, was Giant’s Castle itself, 3,316 metres high. Two hundred metres below him, flowing firmly and steadily, was the Bushman’s River. Its faint murmur reached him in the silence of the early morning, the only other sound the sigh of the wind in the sugar bushes. And beyond, a wild glory of tumbled mountain peaks and mysterious, untrodden valleys.

He had managed to get his wagon up as far as Witberg, the present entrance.

But the richness of the Reserve has to be seen to be believed. Altogether, 70 sites of the Bushmen

Paintings have been discovered so far. The scenery, of course, is magnificent. In the clear air, under the summer sun, the hills are a green carpet; in autumn, their gold sweeps tranquilly up to the blue of distant peaks. There are hundreds of species of wildflowers, trees, and ferns. The bird life is fantastic: 148 species of birds have already been identified in the Reserve. And on these rolling hills roam the eland, the oribi, the rooi and the vaalrhebuck, the blesbok, the hartebeest, the wildebeest, and on the high ledges of the mountains the shy little klipspringer browses

 

 

 

 

 

When the Reserve was first proclaimed in 1903, its main object was to provide a sanctuary for the fast-disappearing eland, one of the noblest, and certainly the largest, of South Africa’s antelopes. At one time, it was the most common antelope in the Drakensberg. We know this from accounts of early hunters and the Bushman paintings that adorn the cave walls in the sandstone cliffs of the Little Berg, where the eland is the most commonly depicted animal. But by the turn of the century, the countless thousands that roamed these mountain solitudes in peace and security had dwindled to a meagre 200. W. Carter Robinson considered that in 190,0 there were only 20 left in the area of the present Reserve.