Something Fishy in San Art
SUN TIMES -- SEPTEMBER 13, 1998
Something fishy in San art baffles the experts
Images of mermaids in San paintings have sparked a new round of debate
BOBBY JORDAN
It's an unlikely place for mermaids. Half-human, half-fish - the
strange rock paintings in the mountains around Meiringspoort in the
Karoo have baffled scientists for generations. Though there is little
doubt about the artists - San hunter-gatherers who lived and painted
in the area for thousands of years - everyone still wonders about the
mermaids. Are they for real, drug-induced, or merely figments of
hunter-gatherer imagination?
The recent discovery of even more fish-like figures in Ezeljachtpoort
in the Karoo has sparked fresh debate. Real or not, the fact is that a
lot of people believe in mermaids. So much so that the last time
anyone said the M-word near Meiringspoort they had to
call the police.
That was in 1996, during the Oudtshoorn floods, when a radio DJ joked
about a mermaid who had been washed up and taken to a freshwater tank
in the local museum for safekeeping. Hundreds of people demanded her
release. "We even had the police here," said cultural
historian Anita Holtzhausen of the C P Nel Museum in Oudtshoorn.
"They said if we didn't put her back where she came from there
would be an even bigger flood. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
"People in the binneland feel strongly about mermaids. In
Afrikaans we call them wateranties or watermeids."
Mermaids are among the numerous strange figures that feature in San
rock art, a treasure trove of paintings and engravings etched into
dolerite boulders. There are thousands of open-air galleries, a jigsaw
puzzle of earthy folk- tales, each a potential clue to unravelling the
little-known history of South Africa's earliest inhabitants. New
paintings are still being found, astonishing international rock-art
experts who consider San art a vital window into a Stone Age past that
has almost completely disappeared.
"Paintings provide a dimension that one can seldom get, even from
archaeological excavations," said Professor Tim Maggs, a Cape
archaeologist. "No doubt we've already made huge strides in
piecing evidence together, and will continue to do so. It will always
be controversial because interpretations of paintings can seldom be
proved in a conclusive way," Maggs said.
Then there is the monster "zigzag" man who appears on a rock
face in KwaZulu-Natal, and several other monster figures, often
half-man, half-beast.
The famous Wit Vrou van die Brandberg in Namibia has also raised quite
a few eyebrows in its time: a black lower body with a white upper
body, whatever that means.
Some people claim to have found paintings depicting Phoenician sailing
ships or UFOs, though these are often smudged or faint, looking more
like Rorschach tests than ancient artwork.
There's even talk of a massive "Last Supper" engraving
somewhere on the banks of the Orange River, though to date it has not
been found. That's not to say that interpreting paintings is all
guesswork. Far from it. Several experts spend their time recording
artworks around the country, sometimes trekking to remote sites that
have never been publicised.
The Wits University-based Rock Art Research Institute sends field
workers far and wide to document paintings. There is particular
interest in a 12 000-page San ethnography written in the 1870s which
comprises a series of comprehensive interviews with /Xam clansmen from
the Northern Cape, offering valuable insight into the San heritage.
Though the /Xam did not paint or engrave, they believed their
grandparents probably did.
"Those texts are extensive and internationally recognised as very
important," said University of Cape Town art historian Pippa
Skotnes. The texts are irreplaceable - and help to explain the
significance of painting in San society.
The problem is that nobody went into too much detail about mermaids,
leaving experts happily flinging explanations at one another at slide
shows and conferences around the country.
One school of thought is that the mermaid or monster-like figures
represent the hallucinogenic experiences of the San people's shamans,
who did most of the painting. Others feel the figures represent the
departed spirits that regularly intervened in San society.
"The debate about mermaids in the art derives from comments by an
elderly San man last century, who said they represented
'water-maidens'," said rock-art expert Anne Solomon.
"I believe the 'water-maidens' relate to female initiation. /Xam
stories describe disobedient initiates abducted by the Rain [deity]
and drowned, but still seen at the water hole in various forms such as
flowers, stars or frogs," she said. Perhaps, as an elderly San
hunter once told a foreign journalist, the present can never
completely understand the past - a period he described simply as the
time when things happened that no longer happen today. Then again,
there is still talk of mermaids popping up in picturesque
Meiringspoort, a place of deep pools scoured out by age-old
waterfalls.
"We've had a couple of people who've claimed they've seen
mermaids there," Holtzhausen said. "Not so long ago a car
crashed there and overturned into a deep pool, drowning everyone
inside. One woman later said she saw a mermaid sitting at the edge of
the pool, staring into the water. Who knows?"
{Note The Sun Times is South Africa's largest circulation weekly newspaper with a readership of more than 2.2 million, for Gauteng (Johannesburg), Cape Town and Durban.}
