Cave paintings may shed new light on SA’s past

LONDON – A huge collection of cave paintings in central South Africa have been found to be far older than previously thought, and may give new insight into the history of the San people who were wiped out by the Europeans.

Using a dating technique called Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, archaeologists from Britain’s Newcastle University and Canberra’s Australian National University found that the paintings are 3 000 years old not 1 000 as previously believed. “Not only does this make them far older than had been thought, but it also means that we can now begin to match up the paintings with excavations in the rock shelters which we have already been able to date,” archaeologist Aron Mazel said.The paintings, which Mazel said were all of a religious nature and depict everyday scenes and animals, are in the mountainous uKhahlamba-Drakensberg park which borders Lesotho.The area was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000.”This is an important step forward in the interpretation of some of the world’s finest rock art,” Mazel told Reuters in a interview.”It will also help us to better understand one of the key periods of South African and world history”.Only discovered 150 years ago, the 40 000 paintings were initially dismissed as crude.But experts later re-evaluated them and now class the paintings as among the world’s finest examples of rock art.The San people, generally accepted as the first human inhabitants of South Africa, were hunter-gatherers.They are known to have been in the scenic Drakensberg area some 8 000 years ago, and their communities survived into the 19th century.But they were gradually wiped out by the steady expansion of the European settlers across South Africa during the 1800s through a combination of disease, war and starvation.- Nampa-Reuters”Not only does this make them far older than had been thought, but it also means that we can now begin to match up the paintings with excavations in the rock shelters which we have already been able to date,” archaeologist Aron Mazel said. The paintings, which Mazel said were all of a religious nature and depict everyday scenes and animals, are in the mountainous uKhahlamba-Drakensberg park which borders Lesotho. The area was declared a World Heritage Site in 2000. “This is an important step forward in the interpretation of some of the world’s finest rock art,” Mazel told Reuters in a interview. “It will also help us to better understand one of the key periods of South African and world history”. Only discovered 150 years ago, the 40 000 paintings were initially dismissed as crude. But experts later re-evaluated them and now class the paintings as among the world’s finest examples of rock art. The San people, generally accepted as the first human inhabitants of South Africa, were hunter-gatherers. They are known to have been in the scenic Drakensberg area some 8 000 years ago, and their communities survived into the 19th century. But they were gradually wiped out by the steady expansion of the European settlers across South Africa during the 1800s through a combination of disease, war and starvation. – Nampa-Reuters