Tsodilo Hills, Botswana
May 22, 2024
It took some searching and a lot more finagling to find a car and a driver who could take me to the site. The lack of petrol in town added to the wait while we waited for the tanker to deliver. But eventually we were on our way, back along the same north-south road I had come on, until we turned off into the dirt road. We jolted along a good hour or until the rounded hillock loomed ahead. Yet more jolting to the entrance station and with the mandatory guide in tow, the driver Chama and I walked along the Rhino trail. There are a lot of minerals in these hills shown in the striations along the exposed rockfaces. A natural palette of colors so to speak.
Scattered along the rockface of the trail are red ochre paintings, a group here and a group there. A hunting scene showed giraffes and kudu and antelope, easily recognizable. The supposedly big cat in one corner was more of a stretch. Even more so was the guide’s rhapsody of spiritual chakras attributed to a circular painting with spokes radiating from the center. To me it seemed more likely to depict the roof of the usual round huts that exist to this day. I have no idea how far apart in eons the various paintings are, but the rhinos on one rockface show a far greater skill than some others.
Less usual are one of the smaller paintings of a scorpion and perhaps a hare. It puzzles me that among all the animals, elephants seem rare. There is only one single depiction of an elephant. Maybe there are others among other trails and rockfaces. But what is singularly intriguing is the clear picture of a whale and a penguin. Perhaps the ocean lay closer in those days? Or was it that one or more of these artists had traveled to the distance shores? This was fascinating to see. As was the stretched skin on one painting, something I have not seen before. There are small cuplike depressions carved out of rock. The guide’s explanation was these were used to grind nuts but who knows what the answer is?
Although this area has seen human occupation for 100,000 years, the more than four thousand paintings on these hill are fairly new. Recent studies based on the kind of creatures depicted, indicate that they may be from the 1st millennium CE. I recall seeing the San paintings in Zimbabwe the last time I traveled in these parts dated from 1200 CE, also as recent.
Perhaps I should not make comparisons, but I cannot help thinking that amazing as they are, these are hardly in the leagues of the ones I saw in Saudi Arabia recently. Nor can they compare with the ones see in Gobustan in Azerbaijan. These do not even come remotely close to the incredible art of Catalhuyuk in Turkey’s Anatolia region in either skill or age.
ITCHY FEET TRAVELS 