African rock art exhibition opens at the Museum

According to the organisers, the exhibition 'takes visitors on a discovery voyage of this outstanding heritage with important educational information on past history, past and present culture' through a series of photographic and informative panels.

TARA's primary mission is to create greater global awareness of the importance and endangered state of African rock art.

According to TARA, Africa's oldest rock paintings were found in southern Namibia in 1969 and carbon dated to 27, 000 years of age and that it is estimated that there are over 10 million individual painted and engraved images in Africa.

Most of these images are found in the Sahara Desert, Southern Africa, East Africa and Central Africa.

The organisation fears that most rock art is threatened because it is old and fragile and that in modern times, it is being threatened by expanding populations, carelessness, vandalism, theft, uncontrolled tourism and national development and therefore people need to be sensitised about it.

Perhaps as a first-time visitor to the exhibition, it would be wise to start with the panel that offers information on African art rock historical timelines. According to the panel, 'Africa has the greatest variety of rock art of any other continent and some of the oldest exposed rock art in the world'.

Under the panel, visitors get to read about the facts and time lines of Bushman (San) Art, Ancestral Sandawe or Hadza Art, Pastoral or Cattle Period Art, Tazina Style Engraving, Round Head Art, Early Hunter or Bubalas Period, Apollo II Cave, and so on.
Another panel asserts that rock art can inform us, human beings, about the relationship between people and animals.

It further says that in the olden days, wild animals were large and rendered in great details whereas humans were small but following domestication, animals became smaller and humans more intricately drawn.

The Symbolism panel informs the visitor that in addition to geometric and abstract images, animals and even some human figures can be considered as symbols and that much if not all earliest African rock art involves symbolism.

Then there is the Shamanism panel that asserts that 'shamans in hunters-gathers society probably created many, or even most rock images since they acted, and in some cases still act, as channels and mediums between humans and spirit worlds'.

Visitors also get to learn from one of the panels that in the past, African art rock sites were places local communities visited to communicate with the divine. These places were also used for rainmaking and fertility rituals.

The other interesting fact to be learnt at the exhibition is that among the San people of southern Africa, the giraffe was considered to be sacred no wonder they feature a lot in their rock paintings.

Following are some of the photographs of rock-paintings and engravings worth checking out at the exhibition:

*The sacred site in the Drankensburg, foothills where the San came in summer months to pain and commune;
*A gigantic figure believed to have been worshiped by some as god. The awesome figure found in Algeria is believed to be around 9,000 years old;
*A rock painting that depicts a group of men with bows and arrows standing next to an enormous crocodile 'drawn as if from the water';
*A Zimbabwean rock painting showcasing human figures standing next to three giraffes. Interestingly, the same painting depicts the tail of a huge snake;
*A panting of a kudu bull faced by a man holding a bow, Tanzania;
*A painting of concentric circles that is believed to have been used for rainmaking rituals in Uganda.
*Zimbabwe's granite landscape where many remarkable rock-paintings are found;
*A painting of an antelope (kudu) confronted by a human figure holding a spear;
*Scene of people with long-horned cattle in northern Sudan;.
*An engraving of a man with a spear holding his hand up to the muzzle of a giraffe. Some interpret this to mean that the man was trying to reduce or muzzle the 'power' of the giraffe; and
*A picture of Apollo 11 cave in Namibia. It is said that the rock paintings in the cave were discovered in 1969 at a time when the Apollo 11 shuttle mission was launched, hence the name.

TARA's travelling exhibition will cover 10 African countries including Botswana, Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe.   It was opened to the public on Wednesday. It ends on June 22.