Rock Art in Southern Africa.

KWAZULU-Natal (South Africa); SOUTH Africa

This article focuses on the rock paintings of the prehistoric San people of South Africa. A colleague and I walked through the grassy foothills of tile Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal, meeting not a soul on the way. Ultimately, we came to a wide cave half-screened by bushes and a splashing waterfall. Behind this watery veil are some of the finest specimens of ancient San, or "Bushman," rock painting in South Africa. Rock paintings and engravings, testimony to a once ubiquitous hunter-gatherer presence, are found from coast to coast in thousands of diverse sites in southern Africa. The function and many meanings of rock art in history and prehistory still generate debate, although a broadly spiritual role is now well established. As an extraordinary and evocative record of the past, San rock art is becoming part of the culture of postapartheid South Africa.