San rock art: a sparkle for innovation

Figure 1 - Human evolution. About six million year ago
in Africa, the chimpanzee lineage and our own split

The first Hominids have most probably seen the day in Africa. Or at least it is what seem to conclude the numerous paleontology research expeditions throughout the past decades, including the notable discovery of Lucy in 1974 and, in 2001 of the Sahelanthropus tchadensis Tumai, in the Chadian desert. "Modern" human beings have 99.9% of their genetic heritage in common. This established fact sustains by itself that the notion of race amongst human beings is absurd. The fossils have made a great contribution to the understanding of the development of humankind.

In search of the art and culture that has inspired human innovation, nowadays we are able to retrace the creative visions of some of South Africa's foremost artists, such as the ancient San, on an 80,000-year path. Their fascinating beliefs together with their experiencing of rituals such as hunting and the trance dance have made the San rock art perhaps the best known of all of Africa's rock arts. It is also now amongst the best understood. For decades, researchers believed that the art was simply a record of daily life or a primitive form of hunting magic. Those were the days of gaze and guess, when it seemed that the longer one gazed at the art, the better one's guess would be as to its meaning. Thankfully, those days are gone and by linking specific San beliefs to recurrent features in the art, researchers have been able to crack the code of San rock art.

Figure 2 - The San People have been found to be the
most ancient people in the world with a genetic DNA
more diverse than any other

One of the most complex and sophisticated symbolic arts is revealed. Beyond a depiction of life, the art focuses on a particular area of San experience: the spirit world journeys of San shamans.

Figure 3 - San shamanic dance. A lengthy festive
gathering around the campfire for access to the outer world 

Many features from the important trance dance may be acknowledged like the manner in which the shamans gained access to the spirit world. The rock art is full of dancers with antelope hooves, indicating that they have taken on antelope power, just as San shamans in the Kalahari describe today. Shamans can be depicted climbing up the so-called "threads of light" that connect the sky-world and some sort of trance flight is described.

To illustrate experiences, artists used metaphors such as showing shamans to be underwater or dead. These translate passages of the rough and long trance journeys. The artists also drew shamans' actions in the spirit world, such as their capturing of the rain animal, and their activation of traditional pharmacology for use in healing or in fighting off enemies and dangerous forces.

The art is however far from just a record of spirit journeys. Powerful substances such as eland blood were put into the paints so as to make each image a reservoir of possibles. Each generation of artists painted or engraved layer upon layer of art on the rock surfaces and created potentially spiritual places.

Figure 4 - San rock art in one of the Kalahari's
hundreds of caves

On the South African eastern seaboard, the impacts of traders, slavers and explorers from Africa and countries around the Indian Ocean goes back to tens of thousands of years ago.
Traces of these pasts are still being discovered, or re-discovered and re-interpreted as our interests and approaches evolve. New archaeological sites are excavated, forgotten documents resurface, and new questions are asked of known sources.
With the huge developments in computer-aided research and digital equipment, and increasing affordability of high-tech processes, there are fresh opportunities for researchers to get access to information and give our contemporary world the opportunity to benefit from the rediscovery of these ancient masterworks.

Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanta - We are people through other people

A chat with the guards at the entrance and there we were, in the compound wondering our own way, guided by this yet-unexplainable curiosity for identities.

Figure 1 - The Origins Centre, Johannesburg, SA
"We are who we are because of who we were"

We started off the unexpectedly passionate exploration of the origins of humankind on earth. Hypnotizing.
Barely passed the introduction, we stumbled upon the place's porter, Brian. Brian had come across displacing a couple of chairs on his trolley and was curious to discover what books we were carrying in our vests. The poor travel guides had started an incredibly enlightened 40-minute long conversation, right in the middle of the busy hall. And there we were talking about our favorite subject : Identity.

It took Brian 2 minutes watch in hand to put us off. We couldn't believe our ears the extent of knowledge that was slipping out of his mouth. With his worn out t-shirt, his ol' shorts and half-torn shoes, Brian was one of a very few unsuspected over-cultivated persons. Reminding us of some of the great thoughts and actions french intellectuals had fostered on the old continent in the "lights century", Brian was contextualizing the extraordinary voyage of discovery we were about to experience - which begins with the origins of humankind, in Africa, and then moves through the development of art, symbolism, and technology around the world.

Figure 2 - The national library of Johannesburg, city's 
architectural heritage

Soon enough, the question of the astonishing lack of francophone literature available at the national library of Johannesburg, of which the dedicated shelves left about six times the size of the available contents in empty space, came up. To our surprise, he was aware. And admitted frankly that many books had been put away. As we asked why and where, he shamefully admitted that access to some knowledge was being withheld.
How was it possible for South Africa to hinder knowledge from its people and especially within a purposefully built and maintained place? It appeared to us as if Brian was supporting this initiative. Seeking for justification, he put forward the idea that we should limit access to some knowledge in order to contain risks of popular uprisings. "If you give these guys the keys, you don't know what other catastrophe you're up to"; "it's for everyone's own good".

Figure 3 - The knowledge triangle

Going on, he asked us what we thought about it and without any surprise came out the certitude that access to knowledge should be free. That no one could ever be entitled to grant exclusivity of knowledge to any one else. Knowledge can't be constrained to will and withholding any form of knowledge can only be a source of destruction on the long run. We never figured out if he had agreed with what seemed to us an evidence. His reflective silence was either the mirror of a shy agreement or the translation of his disagreement to our suggestions. We opted for the first assumption. After all, he did possess and use the impressive, rich knowledge of his on human kind and had demonstrated his awareness on the general, extensive progress freedom of information had undergone, with the debatable repercussions this evolution had had on the human condition.

Figure 4 - Improving knowledge

Brian went on with his teachings, plenty of intelligible facts and stories. His intellect was probably the fruit of his 8-year long work period alongside archaeologists and the subsequently encouraged curiosity and thirst for knowledge.

Finally pointing out to the human intelligence and how it had all been a matter of destroying our own kind's achievements throughout the thousands of years, he brought to our consciousness the feelings one has upon awakening and their relation with the true contents of our dreams and nightmares. Whereas the body requires so much rest per day; the brain itself never shuts, never rests. It remains indefinitely active. Or at least until the body experiences a total shut off.
And although unanimously experienced, which one of the 7 billion-strong human beings on earth was able to admit consciousness of thoughts at sleep? No one.

Figure 5 - The toughest code yet to break: our Genome

Figure 6 - An artist's impression on
a Genome breakthrough

Brian went on exposing the eternal and unique identity card each and every being on earth holds and indefectively transmits to his descendants : the Genome.
Constituted of this infinitely slow variability of thousands of gene chains each and every cell of ours holds, it is indeed the sole path to the discovery of who we are, who we have been and where we come from - as a species. These questions could very well constitute the ultimate human expedition. The decryption of who we are and why we are what we have become: the result of the identity baggage we have perpetually accumulated and lost from the sun rise of our existence to the sunset of this day.

Figure 7 - Mysteries of the human brain

Enabled with astonishing ease and logic, Brian had tightly bridged the gap between the 2 greatest mysteries of the human kind: the brain and the genome.
It was clear now that the cerebral activity of our sleep was the uninterpreted talk of our genome. Condemned to indefinitely pass by our consciousness and assuredly the resurgence of hundreds of years we - as the human kind - had witnessed and experienced. All of a sudden came to our consciousness the fascinating eventuality of having already encountered, in our unconscious sleepiness, some of our eldest ancestors, a part of their liveliness, bribes of their thoughts, wonders of conception and other sensations, specificities of their living that we were, by nature, barred from envisioning and understanding.

Of course, our conversation went a little further, a little longer.

We had realised how humanity in itself was a race to knowledge. How beyond the notion of race, color of skin, gender and sex - no individual could righteously prevent knowledge from any other individual. How as such, the 7 billion-strong of us were standing on an equal foot.

We had realised that time, as one of the best remedies for one's greatest tragedies, was inversely holding us from grasping the most precious ins and outs of our existential debate.

We had realised that the rightful place of the African continent could be restored in history - at the very beginning of mankind's journey to humanity.

   

Humanity's origins in Africa

When the first sun rose

It found us awake and awaiting

Long before others came to these hills

Our footsteps shaped the landscape

Tamed the buffalo and the gemsbok

We rode the wind

We silenced the hurricane

Yes, look at us

We have been here before.


Don Mattera
South African poet and author
Founding member of the Black Consciousness movement

Read his autobiography: "Memory is the weapon", Ravan Press, 1987