Friday, September 7, 2007

Khoisan cave paintings

Today I want to put up some pictures my Dad took last weekend in the Cederberg which is in the Western Cape in South Africa. They are photos of cave paintings made by Khoisan people who were the first people who lived in the Western Cape before the white people came in 1652. The Khoisan are sometimes called Bushmen and their paints were made of ochre, animal blood, plants and some other things. These paintings are on a private reserve which not everybody can go to.

The first photo is of hunters and the painting could be between 3000 and 300 years old. The guide said that they can't do tests to find out.



The second painting is in the same cave and shows an antelope which the Khoisan were hunting.




This painting is from another cave and is of two elephants and many Khoisan, but they didn't hunt elephants. There were no elephants in the Cederberg but there were elephants in other places the Khoisan were before and so they painted what they saw there on the wall.



This painting is from the same cave and is of Afrikaners which means it is not that old.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Neat blog. I like the pictures you guys took!

lefty said...

Hi Michael, did you take this photo?