The Drakensberg, 100,000 BC
One theory about rock art is that what's left to us is only a fraction of the human art created in ancient times. Some say that much of the art created by our ancestors was on the outside of the rocks, open to the elements, so it washed away pretty quickly. All that remains now is the work that has been protected from weather because it was deep inside caves. So I thought, what a colorful world that idea suggests, let’s paint it as if that were the case!
As a starting reference for the landscape I used one of my photos from 1996, showing a view from my camp on the Drakensberg escarpment.
Further Information
The cave art you can see in the painting is mainly derived from this other photo I took in 1996, which shows rock art created by the San people of the Drakensberg area.
There’s also 5 other images within my painting that I sourced from online rock art journals.
1/ Two animal figures depicting an Eland. The Eland is considered the animal closest to God by the San people, a kind of intermediary between the human and spirit world. Here's a study I did of a fairly famous San rock painting, there are two versions of it within my painting. I used watercolour and red pigment gleaned from a local plant to complete the study.
2/ A San shaman in trance.
3/ Color squares. These were influenced by the color squares found at Lascaux Cave in France, painted beneath the hooves of a large cow. They appear like 1940’s/50’s abstract art, and it’s been found that within their colors are to be found the full range of colors used in all the art on the walls of Lascaux, as if all the paintings were connected to this one spot. Why the squares were painted touching the cow is a mystery. The fact that the cow in Europe and Eland in South Africa where both considered of high importance struck me as interesting, to which I added the well researched cult of the bull in more modern times (ancient Greece, Persia, India, Egypt, and Rome), all perhaps pointing to a long-term human worship of the immortal as seen in the animal's horns. The bull’s horns were thought to resemble the moon, you see, which is reborn every month (similarly, the snake cult of old worshipped a similar thing, as the snake sheds its skin and is born again. Alexander the Great was a member of the bull cult, his mother a high priestess of a snake cult).
4/ A sculpture made of broken stalagmites. I learnt of a sculpture made by Neanderthals that’s been dated to 176,000 BC, in the cave of Bruniquel in France. The sculpture I painted is a replica of that. Scientists have dated the sculpture by dating the stalagmites that have grown on top of the sculpture. They are positioned so far into the cave - over 335 metres inside - that they would’ve been in total darkness. 66 blackened areas have been detected that indicate fires may have been started within the circular sculptures. Not much more is known, but this is enough to fascinate! To think, humans all that time ago were breaking stalagmites and laying them in intentional shapes. Added information that I learnt elsewhere suggested that stalagmites and stalactites were ‘played’ like instruments by our ancestors. If you hit them, each one makes its own ringing tone. Several have been found on the floor of caves where there is wall art, suggesting that they had been hit many times to produce sounds, and perhaps just broke off as a result of one hit too many. Maybe they were hit to produce sounds to accompany a trance dance, or chant, made by firelight before the images on the cave walls.
The birds in the painting represent those whose bones have been found (in places such as Grotta di Fumane in Italy) with traces of cut marks not relating to food procurement. These birds are all species that are not known to have been eaten by humans, so the cut marks indicate that around 44,000 years ago their feathers were cut off for purposes other than butchering for meat. Maybe our ancestors used their feathers for decoration? So, from top left to right, we have a red-footed falcon, golden eagles, and a bearded vulture.
There is evidence that our ancestors extracted and use earth pigments for paint around 300,000 years ago in Africa. At the Twin Rivers site in Zambia, for example, scientists have found over 300 pieces of rock that show signs of being worked to extract pigment. Some of them, totaling about 60kg in weight, have been imported from outcrops up to 3 miles away. The rock’s pigments include yellowish-green, earthy red, red, black, and reddish purple. Evidence has also been found of paint making kits at Blombos Cave in South Africa, from 100,000 BC. So it’s this date that I settled on for the painting’s title.
I read elsewhere that whilst we have evidence of paint being produced at Blombos 100,000 years ago, we have no evidence of cave art from that time. Yet. So what might the paint have been for? Perhaps they were outside paintings, as I've mentioned, that have washed away. Or it could be body paint. What a colorful time it could have been if you added all these ideas together. We already know that temples in ancient Egypt and Greece were brightly colored, so why not cave and mountain walls before that!
So in my painting all this comes together. Paintings on the rock walls, a sculpture on the floor, a human decorated with paint and feathers, the clear blue pollution-free sky, birds and animals of the Drakensberg past and present, and the view as I personally experienced it.
The Taking of the Photos
Back in 1996 I took 6 photos in South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains. They weren’t memorable so I’d chucked them in a box along with the other images I'd taken on that long African trip after I’d gotten home, and there they’d stayed until earlier this year, when I was clearing out my parent’s loft. Upon finding them my first reaction was self chastisement. “This was the best you could do Dave? A year in Africa visiting so many beautiful areas, and these photos were all you could produce?” I probably won’t return to Africa again, this was my one chance to see all this and record the memories! But then I remembered what terrible gear I had back then - a manual Praktica SLR with a broken light meter, and just 20 rolls of the cheapest 36 exposure film to last a year - and I eased up on myself and instead considered if I could use the images now for painting inspiration. Give them another life, and enjoy the memories of that past trip as I painted.
Finding the photos coincided with my recent interest in ancient rock art. So the 6 images of a camping trip to the Drakensberg Mountains - showing Jurassic Park-like landscapes and a wall of San rock art - stood out. That’s where this painting started.
The trip itself was an adventure, like many of my travels back then in the pre-internet days. I’d heard about this hike in the Drakensberg whilst in the campground at Victoria Falls, over 1,000 miles away. It wasn’t far off the main road south to Durban so since I was heading that way I decided to do it. I hitchhiked everywhere in those days, no problems at all, and it was an easy matter to get myself to the gates of Royal Natal National Park in the northern Drakensberg.
The cave art you can see in the painting is mainly derived from this other photo I took in 1996, which shows rock art created by the San people of the Drakensberg area.
1/ Two animal figures depicting an Eland. The Eland is considered the animal closest to God by the San people, a kind of intermediary between the human and spirit world. Here's a study I did of a fairly famous San rock painting, there are two versions of it within my painting. I used watercolour and red pigment gleaned from a local plant to complete the study.
The birds in the painting represent those whose bones have been found (in places such as Grotta di Fumane in Italy) with traces of cut marks not relating to food procurement. These birds are all species that are not known to have been eaten by humans, so the cut marks indicate that around 44,000 years ago their feathers were cut off for purposes other than butchering for meat. Maybe our ancestors used their feathers for decoration? So, from top left to right, we have a red-footed falcon, golden eagles, and a bearded vulture.
The main human figure is wearing some of the feathers. Their body is also covered with ochre paint.
There is evidence that our ancestors extracted and use earth pigments for paint around 300,000 years ago in Africa. At the Twin Rivers site in Zambia, for example, scientists have found over 300 pieces of rock that show signs of being worked to extract pigment. Some of them, totaling about 60kg in weight, have been imported from outcrops up to 3 miles away. The rock’s pigments include yellowish-green, earthy red, red, black, and reddish purple. Evidence has also been found of paint making kits at Blombos Cave in South Africa, from 100,000 BC. So it’s this date that I settled on for the painting’s title.
I read elsewhere that whilst we have evidence of paint being produced at Blombos 100,000 years ago, we have no evidence of cave art from that time. Yet. So what might the paint have been for? Perhaps they were outside paintings, as I've mentioned, that have washed away. Or it could be body paint. What a colorful time it could have been if you added all these ideas together. We already know that temples in ancient Egypt and Greece were brightly colored, so why not cave and mountain walls before that!
So in my painting all this comes together. Paintings on the rock walls, a sculpture on the floor, a human decorated with paint and feathers, the clear blue pollution-free sky, birds and animals of the Drakensberg past and present, and the view as I personally experienced it.
Back in 1996 I took 6 photos in South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains. They weren’t memorable so I’d chucked them in a box along with the other images I'd taken on that long African trip after I’d gotten home, and there they’d stayed until earlier this year, when I was clearing out my parent’s loft. Upon finding them my first reaction was self chastisement. “This was the best you could do Dave? A year in Africa visiting so many beautiful areas, and these photos were all you could produce?” I probably won’t return to Africa again, this was my one chance to see all this and record the memories! But then I remembered what terrible gear I had back then - a manual Praktica SLR with a broken light meter, and just 20 rolls of the cheapest 36 exposure film to last a year - and I eased up on myself and instead considered if I could use the images now for painting inspiration. Give them another life, and enjoy the memories of that past trip as I painted.
Finding the photos coincided with my recent interest in ancient rock art. So the 6 images of a camping trip to the Drakensberg Mountains - showing Jurassic Park-like landscapes and a wall of San rock art - stood out. That’s where this painting started.
The trip itself was an adventure, like many of my travels back then in the pre-internet days. I’d heard about this hike in the Drakensberg whilst in the campground at Victoria Falls, over 1,000 miles away. It wasn’t far off the main road south to Durban so since I was heading that way I decided to do it. I hitchhiked everywhere in those days, no problems at all, and it was an easy matter to get myself to the gates of Royal Natal National Park in the northern Drakensberg.
The hike itself was a test, the final ascent to the plateau was via chain ladders. That’s over 35 meters of hanging onto metal chain ladders without any ropes, with backpack pulling me backwards! I was at the bottom wondering if I could make it when a local guy started the climb hauling a full backpack with a portable BBQ attached and I thought if he can do it so can I since I have a much smaller pack. I was traveling for a year but I didn’t have much, a couple of changes of clothes, sleeping bag, diary, small camera, and a flimsy tent. Soon after the ladders I was on the top, standing next to the Tugela Falls, the highest in Africa, surveying a magnificent view. I set up the tent nearby, but so flimsy was it that during the evening a thunderstorm came in and crushed it, so I spent the bulk of the night huddling behind my little backpack, being rained on, dreaming of the dawn. A very primal experience you might say. Although a caveman would've been smart enough to seek out a cave, probably. What a different view the dawn brought from the clear skies of the previous afternoon...
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the explanation, and the painting!
