In Namibia we drove a long way to reach Twyfelfontein. We had a great tent as our lodging that night.
We spent the next afternoon on a guided tour of a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Twyfelfontein, also known as /Ui-//aes, is the home of one of Africa’s biggest concentrations of petroglyphs. It’s an open-air gallery in the Namib Desert, with 1,000- to 10,000-year-old images carved on slabs of basalt. A petroglyph was sent to the National Museum in Windhoek in the early part of the 20th century, but otherwise the site is mostly intact.
San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers had long lived in this area. They carved and occasionally painted animals they were familiar with or hunted. Lions and more than 200 giraffes and 100 rhino are depicted, along with hippos, ostrich, impala, elephant and zebra. And we were astonished to see shore birds and a seal!
The San had traveled across the desert to the ocean and back, recording what they’d seen and hunted there!
Along with figures with bows and arrows, foot and paw prints, some petroglyphs depict magical creatures. One engraving is of a lion with human toes, portraying a shaman who had crossed over into the animal world.
According to the explanatory signs in the Visitors’ Center and the excellent article https://www.africanworldheritagesites.org/cultural-places/rock-art-pre-history, “Rock art was the preserve of medicine people, or shamans, and had two functions: as a means to enter the natural world and to record the shamans’ experiences in that world. … The shaman’s vision became disturbed at the start of trance, and he would ‘see’ patterned flashes of light. Produced in the brain, these flashes are also known as entoptic images or images ‘in the eye’. They are depicted in the seemingly abstract geometric images in the rock art. Meanders, dots, lines, grids, spirals and whorls resemble entoptic or inner-eye images recorded in neurophysiological experiments. Although entoptic images are similar for all people in the world, the associations formed in a state of trance are contextual. The shaman fuses his hallucinatory visions with images of animals and other potent spiritual symbols.
…. Engravings of human footprints and animal tracks are frequently placed next to or inside tunnels, deep fissures and inaccessible surfaces, as if these indicate paths and entrances into the spirit world. It was believed that a shaman could move through solid rock, using entrances not visible to the normal eye. To the artist the rock face was not merely a canvas but rather a veil serving as the threshold to a parallel spiritual world.” [1]
The petroglyphs also provided practical information, like where to find watering holes.
The region is sere and beautiful in a severe way.
I’ve said this before, and will go on saying it: UNESCO World Heritage sites are for everyone who cares about our shared history and planet. Go visit!
NOTES: [1] https://www.africanworldheritagesites.org/cultural-places/rock-art-pre-history/twyfelfontein.html For more information go to Info Namibia.com/ © 2024 Jadi Campbell. Photos © 2023 Uwe Hartmann. To see more of Uwe’s photos and pics from our trips go to viewpics.de.
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and giraffes!
Later we surprised a lone giraffe crossing the path. When he ran off, there was nothing but the sounds of birds calling and his hooves thumping on the grassland.