Kondoa
Rock-Art Sites (United Republic of Tanzania)
Date of Inscription:
2006
Criteria: (iii) (vi)
Core zone: 233600 ha
Region Dodoma, District Kondoa
S4 43 28 E35 50 2
Brief Description On the eastern slopes of
the Masai escarpment bordering the Great Rift
Valley are natural rock shelters, overhanging
slabs of sedimentary rocks fragmented by rift
faults, whose vertical planes have been used for
rock paintings for at least two millennia. The
spectacular collection of images from over 150
shelters over 2,336 km2, many with high artistic
value, displays sequences that provide a unique
testimony to the changing socio-economic base
of the area from hunter-gatherer to agro-pastoralist,
and the beliefs and ideas associated with the
different societies. Some of the shelters are
still considered to have ritual associations with
the people who live nearby, reflecting their beliefs,
rituals and cosmological traditions.
