Bushman Culture Namibian Style

Annette does a rain dance around part of a petrified tree at Brandberg.

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We haven't done much cultural stuff since we arrived in Africa so decided to do something about it by going to visit a few bush paintings at Brandberg, Namibia, with a diversion en route to see a petrified forest.

Someone out here has been to marketing school as the petrified forest was actually three large tree trunks on their sides. They didn't even grow here but floated down from the Congo about 260m years ago, got covered in thousands of feet of sand which eventually eroded away, and are now hard as rock.

On then to Twfelfontein to see the rock paintings. Impressively,  access to the site is via an entirely recycleable visitors centre with a guided forty five minute tour around the paintings. (Or in Annette's case, fifty five minutes allowing for the time it took her to take a flying dive down some rocks and get herself sorted out again!).

Paul and Alison inspect the rest of it.

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The paintings are a bit of a misnomer as they are really carvings in the rock designed to show other nomadic bushmen where the water holes were and what animals were in the area about 6,000 years ago. There is also evidence that the drawings were used by shaman as records of their transendance via animals when in a trance which is why some of the animals have too many toes (five for a 'human' lion for example rather than the four they actually have). That's the theory anyway - personally I think they were just poor artists.

Interestingly, the water holes referred to in the area have not yet been found. The climate has changed significantly in the last 6,000 years and there is no longer any water in the area. As a result of that, the animals have moved on elsewhere as well.