1.African Prehistory and Early Cultures
Garder’s Art Through The Ages: A Global History, 13th Ed., pp. 394-395
Thousands of rock engravings and paintings found at hundreds of sites across the continent constitute the
earliest known African art. Some painted animals from Apollo Cave in south-western Africa (Namibia)
date to perhaps as long ago as 25,000 years, earlier than all but the oldest Paleolithic art of Europe. As
humankind apparently originated in Africa, archeologists may yet discover the world’s earliest art there as well.
Rock Art
The greatest concentrations of rock art are in the Sahara Desert to the north, the Horn of Africa in the east, and
the Kalahari Desert ot the south, as well as in caves and on rock outcroppings in southern Africa. Accurately
naturalistic renderings as well as stylized images on rock surfaces show animals and humans in many different
positions and activities, singly or in groups, stationary or in motion. Most of these works date within the
Past 4,000 to 6,000 years, but some may have been created as early as 8,000 BCE. They provide a rich record
of the environment, human activities, and animal species in prehistoric times.
Tassili N’Ajjer
A 7,000-year-olf painting (6,000 – 4,000 BCE) from Tassili n’Ajjer in
southeastern Algeria in the central Sahara (at that time a verdant savanna) is
one of the earliest and finest surviving examples of rock art. The painter
depicted a running woman with convincing animation and significant
detail. The dotted marks on her shoulder, legs and torso probably indicate
that she is wearing body paint applied for a ritual. Her face, however, is
featureless, a common trait in the earliest art. The white parallel patterns
attached to her arms and waist appear to represent flowing raffia
decorations and a raffia skirt. Horns – shown in the twisted perspective, or
composite view, typical of prehistoric art – are also part of her ceremonial
attire. Notably, the artist painted this details image over a field of much
smaller painted human beings, an indication of why it is often so difficult to
date and interpret art on rock surfaces, as subsequent superimpositions are
frequent.
Nonetheless, scholars have been able to establish a rough
chronology for African rock art, an art form that continues to
this day.
Although the precise meaning of most African rock art also
remains uncertain, a considerable literature exists that
describes, analyses, and interprets the varied human and
animal activities shown, as well as the evidently symbolic,
more abstract patterns, The human and humanlike figures
may include representations of supernatural beings as well as
mortals. Some scholars, have in fact, interpreted the woman
from Tassili n’Ajjer as a horned deity instead of a human
wearing ceremonial headgear.
Running Horned Woman, rock painting, from Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria, ca 6000-4000 BCE.
This early rock painting is thousands of years older than the first African sculptures. It represents a running
woman with body paint, raffia skirt and horned headgear, apparently in a ritual context.
http://www.cvsanten.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=77&limitstart=4
Comments from an article by Charles van Santan regarding Tassili n’Ajjer rock art:
Rainfall in the Sahara during the Neolithic period from 4000 BC to 2000 BC was higher as today as the
abundance of wildlife in that period shows. The many wildlife images depicted among the Tassili rock paintings
and engravings are a proof of this and include elephants, giraffes, lions, ostriches, gazelle, Oryx, mountain
sheep, rhinoceros, wild oxen, apes and wart hogs. We may assume that many parts of the Sahara during this
period were covered with savanna vegetation: scattered trees, covered with grass during the rainy season,
comparable to the present savanna vegetation.
Present day pastoralists in the Sahel zone, during the rainy season, move their herds from one suitable grazing
spot to another in the low lands, using seasonal rivers and creeks to water their herds. At the beginning of
each dry season, when grazing opportunities are running out, these herdsmen move their herds to areas near
rivers where still sufficient grazing and water is available for their herds.
The prehistoric Tassili people were likely pastoralists, who moved their livestock between different grazing
lands according to season, in the lowlands during the wet season and on the Tassili plateau during the dry
season.
The Tassili prehistoric rock paintings show a wide range of styles from the naturalistic to the near abstract.
Some of the paintings are really beautiful with a high artistic value.
Palimpsest: Overlapping of images.
Most paintings show several layers of images in different styles, which overlapping of images is called a
palimpsest. This overlapping of two or more layers of images in different styles shows that several different
cultural groups and generations of people have used the same area for their paintings, whereby each group
painted images in their own style, disregarding images from previous groups.
Source of the paint material or pigments, range of colors and painting technologies
The prehistoric artists obtained their pigment or coloring material from ochreous schists. Depending on the
exposure to sunshine the different ochre pigment colors range from dark to light depending on the number of
hours of sunshine received. Ochre is a mineral composed of clay and hydrated ferric oxide and is used as a
pigment varying from dark brown to light yellow. In the case of the Tassili n’Ajjer ochre schists, the range of
colors is very wide: The most protected schists gave a very dark ochre color, almost the color of dark
chocolate, while colors of other layers ranged from brick red, light red, and yellow shades up to a greenish hue.
A white color was obtained from locally available kaolin.
The artists grounded these pieces of ochre schist to powder in a stone grinder, which is confirmed by the many
examples of prehistoric grinding stones found in the Tassili caves. After the colored schist powder was
obtained it was mixed with a media. Most likely this was based on casein, a milk product, as cattle were ample
available to the prehistoric Tassili people. Another possibility for a media could have been acacia gum, taken
from the many acacia trees growing in the area.
In conclusion, when studying the extraordinary collection of the Tassili rock paintings, one is struck by the
observation that:
-The rock paintings cover a wide range of fascinating aspects of traditional village life,
which are rather similar to village life scenes of present day traditional West African
tribal rural societies.
-The Tassili rock paintings were probably created with the intention to be used in the
initiation of young generations of pastoralists in the African “bush school”.
I therefore formulated the hypothesis that the Tassili paintings were made to initiate the young Tassili
generations in the important aspects of the pastoralists’ life and that the paintings formed part of the teaching
material of the Tassili “bush school”.