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| ROCK ART IN AFRICA: Significance |
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What
does the art mean?
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Rock
art is the only means left to tell us how our ancestors
thought and how they saw and portrayed their world.
Because most rock art belonged to cultures that disappeared
long ago, it is now difficult however to understand
why the artists painted and engraved, or what their
art meant to them. Many researchers believe that the
art had religious implications, expressing the art's
conceptions of reality and their position in the world
around them.
It must have been a means
of communication, but with whom? Bushmen artists
portrayed their visions of an integrated natural
and spiritual world. Did they do this to tell others
what they saw during trances or was it a means to
contact the earth's spirit and control nature? During
the 20th century in eastern and central Africa,
people have used and still use rock paintings to
bring rain, strengthen themselves and assist their
souls through those difficult moments of birth,
attaining adulthood, sickness and death. Perhaps
our modern beliefs have ancient origins.
African rock art can be
looked at in the context of some interpretive themes,
including: symbolism, shamanism and people's assumed
relations with certain animal species.
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SYMBOLISM
Much,
if not almost all earlier African rock art,
involves symbolism. Not only are geometric and
abstract images symbols, but so also are animals
and even some human figures. |
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SHAMANISM
Probably, shamans in hunter-gatherer societies created many, or even most, rock art images. Shamans acted, and some still act, as connective channels and mediums between the human and spirit worlds. |
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COMMUNICATION WITH THE DIVINE
In past times, rock art sites were used as places and channels for communication with the supernatural world. In Central and East Africa, sites with geometric designs amongst many other places were used to seek rain and fertility, and in some cases still are. |
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SACRED SITES
Many of Africa's rock art sites are still recognised by local people as sacred and some places are still used for ritual purposes when contacting ancestors |
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