Rock Art

The Bushmen left a legacy of beautifully painted scenes of life in some caves in the high mountains of Swaziland. These paintings are the only relic of a way of life that has gone forever. There are several theories about how to interpret the paintings, the most widely accepted one was on anthropological records collected at the end of the 19th century from Bushmen who painted. What they said was that there were two worlds, this world and the power world - and the power world was far the most important. When something went wrong in this world then the shaman went on a voyage to the power world. There he met beings who were half animal and half human, he interacted with them, found the source of the problem and then came back to this world to resolve the problem. The paintings therefore are records of trips to the power world - these voyages were induced by dancing and drumming, hallucinogenic drugs are not part of southern African tradition.

Certain substances, like ochre, were believed to lower the barrier between the two worlds. The paintings themselves were usually painted in ochre mixed with the blood of the largest antelope and totem animal, the eland. Sometimes they also used charcoal or white earth in the form of kaolin. However it is the charcoal and the ochre/blood that have survived well, this is because they are elements, iron and carbon, and were absorbed into the rock. Therefore by chance the paintings were mostly executed in a substance that would last for thousands of years in caves where they are protected from wind and rain.