This giraffe has been called the finest animal painting in Zimbabwe. It's just one of the many treasures found in the Inanke cave.
Posted on 01/25/2010 9:46:02 AM PST by Palter
Inanke's prehistoric paintings are a celebration of life
The trail to the great cave of Inanke in southern Zimbabwe begins confidently with arrows painted on bare patches of granite and soon vanishes into four miles of often pathless wandering through fields of shoulder-high grass, dense scrub forests and formidable thorn bushes. Without the direction of our guide, the archaeologist Paul Hubbard, our group would never have found this cave containing some of the most magnificent prehistoric paintings in the world. But reach the approximately 30-foot-long frieze of intricately varied paintings and you will find it free of the man-made barriers, tourist hype and even substitution by reproductions that prevent modern visitors from directly experiencing most of the ancient sites in Europe.
The cave is one of hundreds painted by the San people (commonly called Bushmen) about 5,000 to 10,000 years ago and located in what is now Matobo National Park, an area best-known in recent years as a successful sanctuary for white and black rhinoceros. A sign at the entrance cautions visitors that "anyone seen or suspected of poaching activities may be shot on sight," and a ramble to the caves can entail an encounter with these solitary beasts or machine-gun-toting rangers, not to mention ubiquitous packs of baboons raging at trespassers crossing their territories. The park also contains a large population of leopards.
This giraffe has been called the finest animal painting in Zimbabwe. It's just one of the many treasures found in the Inanke cave.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
San, ping. Please don’t leave a Coke bottle behind.
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Those cave walls *are* magnificent! I remember thinking that as I wrote my name across one of them with a can of spray paint. [stolen joke alert!] |
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:)
exquisite. Great sense of proportion. Excellent control of the media. Is that one structural effect that looks like a tunnel or rock made with finger tips of paint? This is really lovely
Interesting that there is no black (charcoal) as fire was discovered long before that.
Those paintings are breathtaking. It is hard to believe that they are that old. They are not faded and the perspective is near perfect. They should be classed as one of the Wonders of the World.
Thank you for posting and thanks to Sunken Civ for pinging.
I guess the magnificent artists of Spain and France moved south for the summer.;-)
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