The Khoi-Khoi, or sometimes Khoen-Khoen, are as combination as in Khoi-San are the indigeneous people inhabitating Sub-Saharan Africa for thousands of years. They lived as separate ethnic groups in pastoral (Khoikhoi) and hunter-gatherer live-style. With the arrival of various Bantu-ethnic groups such as the Zulu and Xhosa moving south-wards, they were more and more driven out of their habitats — even though they somewhat intermingled. Of course, this process intensified much more, when not much later the V.O.C. (the Dutch East Indian Trade Company) set up shop at Cape Town to replenish ships and the first white settlers inhabited the land.
San-people’s traditions are being shown e.g. at !Khwa ttu just north of Cape Town.
Their art however is visible all over South Africa.
Just out of Clanwilliam, there’s the Sevilla Rock Art trail, where one hikes along a beautiful river next to the Fynbos and beautiful flowers — seeing the San’s rock art, being between 8000 and 800 years old!
Above Elke shows an attentive Spring-bok fan the gathering of men around a fire(?) in black overpainted with a group of red figurines.
But there’s also, Elephants, Zebra-foals, and “monsters”, i.e. dinosaur-looking creatures:
As we learned, these drawings were made from a color mixed from Elands blood and fat: the fat would allow the color to drain the rock and fixate it, allowing it to withstand thousands of years of rain and other weather.
The landscape is amazing, with the close-by river allowing rich versatile range of live, no wonder, the San were amazed by the spirituality of this place:
The most magnificient piece is a small, supposedly unfinished set of baboons underneath a huge rock balancing on two points:
The last of the way-points detailed in the guide is #9 featuring lots and lots of drawings:
Wonderful adventurous rock-formations all along the way:
There was a bit of wild-live all along the way:
(ah, yes, this picture of this fast little critter was a bit tweaked, but not much, the lizzard really was that colorful in comparison to the red rocks!)