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. Aside from a petroglyph that was sent to the National Museum in Windhoek in the early part of the 20th century, the site is mostly intact.
San (Bushmen) hunter-gatherers had long lived in this area. They carved (and sometimes painted) animals they were familiar with. Some were locally 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!
Along with figures with bows and arrows, footprints 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.
…. (G)eometric and schematic depictions … are related to the first stage of trance, or altered consciousness, and formed part of the rituals preparing for supernatural experience. … 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 gave 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.
My books are Broken In: A Novel in Stories, Tsunami Cowboys, Grounded and The Trail Back Out.
Tsunami Cowboys was longlisted for the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Book Award. Broken In: A Novel in Stories was semifinalist for the international 2020 Hawk Mountain Short Story Collection Award from Hidden River Arts and Finalist for Greece’s 2021 Eyelands Book of the Year Award (Short Stories). The Trail Back Out was the 2023 San Francisco Book Festival Winner for General Fiction, American Book Fest 2020 Best Book Award Finalist: Fiction Anthologies, Runner-Up for the 2021 Top Shelf Award, 2021 IAN Book of the Year Award Short Story Collection Finalist, and awarded a 2021 Wishing Shelf Red Ribbon. The title story The Trail Back Out was longlisted for the 2021 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Award.
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