What do you know about San rock art?

Q1: How did San artists make their paint? What ingredients did they use?

A1: The main pigments used in rock art paint are ochre, charcoal or ash. Ostrich eggshells were sometimes ground to make white paint.
Egg albumin, resin and blood were also added as binders to the paint to make it last longer - and to make it more potent, spiritually.

Q2: What special ingredient was sometimes added to the paint to make it more potent?

Q3: What special event is shown in this painted image?
This ritual was intricately linked with much of the imagery seen in San rock art.

A3: A trance dance

For the San, the indigenous people of southern Africa, the activation of energy and contact with the spirit word is achieved through the communal trance dance.

Q5: The main buck in this panel was believed to hold large amounts of spiritual potency (or /nom or !gi). What animal is depicted?

A5: The eland

The eland, the largest antelope in the world, plays a prominent role in San ritual, belief and rock art. 
It is one of the most frequently painted and engraved animals in some parts of southern Africa.

Q6: Where, in the landscape, is the painted rock art found, and where are engravings usually found?

A6: Painted art is found in rock shelters and caves, in special places and where it has been protected from the elements.

Engravings were mostly made on large boulders in an open landscape. 

Q7: What gave these engravings a magical quality?

A7:  Some of the engravings can only be seen with carefully positioned lighting, as would have been the case in their natural landscape. At certain times of day the engravings would have 'magically' appeared, which was presumably the intention of the engraver, and added to the impact of the image.

Q8: What are these part-human, part-animal beings called by researchers?

A8: Therianthropic or anthropomorphic figures

Therianthropes are beings which are portrayed in the art of many groups across the world, including the rock art of the San in southern Africa. They are depictions of mythical beings which are part-human and part-animal. 

Q9: What are the two techniques that San and Khoe people used to create rock engravings?

A9:  The main techniques used to engrave images were pecking and fine-line engraving using a sharp object. 
  
Pecking involves knocking an implement or stone against a boulder to remove small pieces of rock to create the image. Fine-line engravings are made with a sharp object which is used to score lines.

Q10: How old is the rock art that has been dated in South Africa?

Rock paintings are among the most difficult archaeological artifacts to date. The inorganic pigments typically found in rock art cannot be dated.    

A10:  The oldest dated representational rock art in southern Africa is from Apollo 11 rock shelter in Namibia. The paintings are 27 000 years old.

Most dated rock art from southern Africa dates to within the last 6000 years. Most of the art in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg region is thought to be between 3000 and 1500 years old.