ROCK paintings in Zimbabwe are found wherever suitable surfaces exist.
Granite and sandstone outcrops dotted across the country are replete with images of painted cultural treasures that illustrate a wide variety of animals, people and abstract shapes in an array of scenes.
These unique, ancient rock art friezes are thought to date back at least 13 000 years.
Painted by the hunter-gatherers, a great majority by women, few regions in the world can match the images that appear on the walls of thousands of caves and rock sites scattered across the region of Zimbabwe and what was once the area of Munhumutapa.
They inform us about the times, activities and achievements of the people who painted them.
But lamentably, due to forces of natural erosion, weathering and human intrusion, some are unrecoverable today.
The absence of ethnographic records relating directly to the ancient artistes behind Zimbabwe’s rock art images makes it difficult to fully understand their meanings.
Are the ancient rock art friezes significant records of their daily lives, or aspect of their beliefs, conveying concepts and ideas about their interactions with the cosmos and their spirit god?
Is it likely that these images in the rock art represent human emotions, relationships and interpretations of their world?
Or do they conjure metaphoric human relationships, both with each other and the wider world in which they lived?
Some archaeologists have interpreted these images as: “Recollection or careful reinvention of the visions the shaman experienced while in an altered state of consciousness or ‘trance’ (the so-called Trance Dance). Shamans would enter these states through strenuous dancing in order to contact the supernatural world, heal the sick, control animals (for hunting) and influence weather, most especially rainmaking.”
This suggests the paintings were created as a way of expressing and emphasising the extra-ordinary power behind these activities.
Animals in rock art represent metaphoric images. Different animals were imbued with wide-ranging symbolic meanings.
For example, the giraffe was possibly being associated with concepts of health and healing; felines, especially lions, to represent danger or evil or more likely strength.
The artistes exaggerated certain characteristics of some animals and suppressed others.
Similarly, the human figures are more than simple family representations; rather they conjure metaphoric human relationships, both with each other and the wider world in which they lived.
In marked contrast to some paintings of animals, such as antelope, which are highly detailed, fish species lack many of their distinguishing characteristics.
Fish depictions in the rock art of Zimbabwe, more often than not, are uncertain or even unidentifiable.
They reveal that the artistes painted fresh water species only; notably mormyridae and labeo spp and rarely catfish (clarias spp.; and bream (tilapia spp.).
Their silhouettes are not diagnostic beyond being able to distinguish between species.
Occasionally this is due to the poor state of preservation of the paintings, while in many other cases, the accurate portrayal of the species appears to have been unimportant.
Archaeological remains recovered from excavations in the caves in Matobo Hills show that the San hunter-gatherers were very familiar with their surrounding aquatic environment, making use of different species of fish, especially barbel (clariasgariepinus) as well as frogs, mussels, terrapins and water monitors.
Food from rivers and pans made a regular but small contribution to their diet.
Fish were more important to the ancient San people than simply a food resource.
Within the paintings there seem to have been several metaphors regularly used to describe the experience of trance, including death, submergence in water, fight and conflict.
The appearance of fish in a rock art possibly represented the ‘underwater’ experience of the shaman while in trance.
Alternatively, paintings of fish could symbolise and stimulate access to the spirit world through water and waterholes, the latter being particularly important place of potency for the Bushmen.
A pair of mormyrid fish surrounded by lines of specks suggest potency and power associated with these paintings.
Similarly, a pair of red catfish and one painted white is in association with serpents.
The unnatural pose of one of the fish suggests spiritual connotations.
Is there more to the presence of fish in rock art than symbolising access to the spirit world?
Rain supplication rituals are associated with the friezes depicting fish and cloud bursts.
Rain is life and its appearance or lack thereof dominates the land and the mindset of the people in Southern Africa. Uncertainty as to the rain season has dominated Southern African rituals; people beseeching the ancestral spirits and gods to send this life-giving liquid.
The Bushman believed that rain was an animal of no definitive species – but with two sexes.
Male rain was seen as the heavy thunderstorms while female rain was gentle and soaking.
Fish covered with flecks with an elephant painted in outline surrounding them could be a rain animal.
Various paintings show a number of unidentifiable animals, sharing characteristics with many species that are also thought to be rain animals.
Shamans would enter the spirit world to ‘hunt down’ this special rain animal.
Once found, the shaman would attempt to capture the rain animal and lead it back to the area where rain was needed most and kill it.
The spilt blood of the animal in the spirit world would fall as rain on earth.
Today a strong case can be made for the representation of such animals as an integral part of these elaborate rain-asking rituals practised by the hunter-gatherers in times past.
Based on the high number of women with fish-like tails in the art, an archaeologist writing on the rock art of the Matobo Hills speculated that only women might have ‘possessed’ fish during rain-asking rituals.
Why should this be so?
Possibly because the images represent
mermaids and not fish per se.
The different locations of fish paintings are of interest. Most paintings of groups of fish found in Zimbabwe are located within shelters high up on hills, usually with a commanding view of the countryside.
The paintings of fish are often part of a much larger tapestry, inter-linked with a large variety of other images.
It is tempting to speculate that such prominent places were extremely important ritual spaces, attracting participants from far and wide.
One can theorise that the rain-asking rites carried out in these locales were for the wider community, and perhaps meant to influence the weather over the whole region.
It also indicates that these areas enjoyed more water than is found there today.
Experienced rain-askers enjoyed special status in San-Bushmen society because they brought rain and thus controlled the life and health of the land.
It is possible that they exploited this power to enhance their status and prestige within society.
The spirit world was real and tangible through these images.
However, there are many more questions to be answered. For example: Were the colours used in the images important?
Were the numbers and types of fish painted significant?
Far from being mere images of what they ate, the corpus of our ancient rock art paintings is important indicators of their lives and beliefs.
Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and is a published author in her field.
For views and comments, email: linamanucci@gmail.com
