Tsodilo

For many thousands of years the rocky outcrops of Tsodilo in the harsh landscape of the Kalahari Desert have been visited and settled by humans, who have left rich traces of their presence in the form of outstanding rock art. The outcrops have immense symbolic and religious significance for the human communities who continued to survive in this hostile environment.

Tsodilo is situated in the north-western corner of Botswana. Its massive quartzite rock formations rise from ancient sand dunes to the east and a dry fossil lake bed to the west. They are prominent isolated residual small mountains surrounded by lowland erosion surface in a hot dry region. Their height, shape and spatial relationship have given rise to a distinctive name for each: Male, Female, Child, Grandchild.

Caves and shelters are one of the main resources of the rock outcrop from the human point of view. They show a long sequence of occupation beginning as early as 100,000 years ago. They indicate repeated use thereafter, the artefact densities appearing to reflect visits by small mobile group of people. Divuyu and Nqoma are two excavated settlements in the 1st millennium AD. Divuyu lies in a saddle at the top of Female; Nqoma is on plateaux below. A general pattern of public housing and living space, flanked by middens and burial areas, seemed to be the settlement plan.

The rock-art paintings are executed in red ochre derived from hematite occurring in the local rock. Much of the red art is naturalistic in subject and schematic in style, characterized by a variety of symbols, human figure, and animals. A distinctive series of white paintings occurs at only twelve sites.

The art is not well dated, although some of it could be more than 2,000 years old. Pictures with cattle are regarded as 600-1200, following the introduction of cattle to Tsodilo after the 6th century AD; geometric art is generally regarded as about 1,000 years old. The latest paintings date to the 19th century on oral evidence.

Hollows in rock are numerous at Tsodilo. One group, interpreted as a trail of animal footprints, is spread over several hundred metres and is one of the largest rock pictures in the world. These hollows may have been made in the late Stone Age.

The extent and intensity of mining activity on the mountains to recover items used for decorative purposes, is impressive. The mines are clearly pre-colonial.