Geometric imagery in South African rock art,
with particular reference to Blombos and Wonderwerk Caves.
J. Francis Thackeray
Transvaal Museum, South Africa
email:
2002
Blombos Cave, situated on the southern Cape coast of South Africa, has yielded evidence for the practice of rock engraving approximately 77,000 years before the present (B.P.) (Henshilwood et al 2002). Two engraved slabs of ochre characterised by geometric images have been interpreted as evidence of symbolic behaviour and belief among Late Pleistocene populations of "anatomically modern" Homo sapiens in Africa, more than 30,000 years before the beginning of the Upper Palaeolithic in Europe. In addition, engraved bone from late Pleistocene contexts at Blombos Cave has been interpreted in terms of symbolic behaviour (dErrico et al, 2001)
Thackeray et al (1981) reported examples of rock engravings.from Wonderwerk Cave in the northern Cape province of South Africa. In these instances, engravings were on slabs of dolomitic rock from sealed archaeological deposits which could be dated using the conventional radiocarbon dating technique.
Engraved geometric images from Holocene deposits,
Wonderwerk Cave (Thackeray, et al 1981).
All of the slabs reported by Thackeray et al were from Holocene deposits associated with Later Stone Age technology, and served to demonstrate that the practice of engraving in South Africa extended back at least 10,000 years. The recent discoveries from Blombos indicate that rock engraving was undertaken by "anatomically modern" Homo sapiens during the Middle Stone Age.
The question arises as to what such geometric images meant to prehistoric artists. One possibility is that geometric grids, of the kind found in engraved slabs from Wonderwerk and Blombos Caves, were conceptually associated with beliefs linked to altered states of consciousness. This possibility was suggested by Thackeray (1981) in the case of Wonderwerk engravings, based in part on the observation that grids are among the most common images perceived by modern human subjects under the influence of certain hallucinogens (Siegel, 1977).
Thackeray et al (1981) stated:
"Recent studies on human subjects show that grid systems and parallel lines of the kind represented in most of the Wonderwerk engravings are often typical of hallucinatory experiences"
Independently, Lewis-Williams (1980) had recognised that much of southern African rock art may have been associated with altered states of consciousness. This advance in understanding prehistoric art was based on interpretations of accounts given by 19th century informants who described rock paintings in the Drakensberg region of southern Africa. Lewis-Williams and Dowson (1988) went further to link geometric art from many parts of the world to shamanism and beliefs associated with altered states.
It would seem possible that geometric engravings from both Blombos and Wonderwerk Cave are indirectly if not directly related to beliefs associated with "entoptics", i.e., imagery perceived in altered states of consciousness.
References
dErrico, F., Henshilwood, C. and Nilssen, P. 2001. An engraved bone fragment from ca. 70,000-year old Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa: implications for the origin of symbolism and language. Antiquity 75, 309-318.
Henshilwood, C.S., dErrico, F., Yates, R., Jacobs, Z., Tribolo, C., Duller, G.A.T., Mercier, N., Sealy, J.C., Valladas, H., Watts, I. and Wintle, A. 2002. Science 295, 1278-1280.
Lewis-Williams, J.D. 1980. Ethnography and iconography: aspects of southern San thought and art. Man 15, 467-482.
Lewis-Williams, J.D. and Dowson, T.A. 1988. Signs of all times: entoptic phenomena in Upper Palaeolithic art. Current Anthropology 29, 201-245.
Siegel, R.K. 1977. Hallucinations. Scientific American, 237, 132 (October issue).
Thackeray, A.I., Thackeray, J.F., Beaumont, P.B. and Vogel, J.C. 1981. Dated rock engravings from Wonderwerk Cave, South Africa. Science 214, 64-67.