Rock art stumps experts

2004-05-17 14:00

Gerard Vandenberghe

Kalacha, Kenya - Thousands of years ago, images of giraffe, antelope, elephant and rhino were scratched onto rock faces in the middle of a desert near Kalacha, in the extreme northeast of Kenya.

To this day there is no consensus on exactly why.

Almost every twist of the path along the base of the embellished hill offers another tableau.

"Hunters would come here, where they could look down at a sunken waterhole where animals came to drink. They just had to block the way out and would kill their prey with spears and arrows safely from their own sort of balcony," explained Worabu, a guide.

The animal images look like hunting trophies, or perhaps a score-card of kills, or some sort of prehistoric shopping list.

Power of the animal

"Don't be fooled into thinking it's a hunting picture, it's more likely to be something about magic, shamanism, or the power attributed to this or that animal," warned David Coulson, a British expert who has scoured Africa, and especially the Sahara, to record its rock art.

From his Nairobi base, Coulson has published several books on the subject with Alec Campbell, with whom he sits on the committee of the Trust for African Rock Art, which works to preserve the ancient images.

"The giraffe, which we find depicted in the Sahara and east Africa, is clearly considered to be an animal with particular powers," he explained.

Giraffes and rain

"Sometimes we've seen them with their heads poking through the clouds, getting rained on. The giraffe seems to be associated with rain, which is essential for hunters who depend on lots of game," he added.

So what about the other animals portrayed at Kalacha and two other sites in the region, close to Lake Turkana and the Ethiopian border?

"The trouble, or perhaps the appeal, of the east African carvings is that nothing is known with certainty about them," said Coulson.

"I recently took part in a seminar of experts in London. The conclusion, quite normal for rock art matters, was 'we don't know'."

Even the exact date of the Kalacha images is unclear because carbon dating techniques, which might help if the pictures were applied with paint, are of no use with engravings.

When quizzed, the National Museums of Kenya said it had never conducted a detailed study of the Kalacha site.

"They could be one or two thousands years old. Probably not much more because 2 300 years ago the area was under the lake," noted Coulson.

"The closest thing we have seen to them are in the Sahara. There are giraffes there as well. Those ones are just as hard to date. Perhaps a couple of thousand years," he said.

Equally difficult is identifying the artists.

"A whole series of different peoples lived here in succession and disappeared during numerous clashes over the centuries," he explained.

One thing Coulson is sure of is that the images need to be protected from the elements and tourists if they are not to be lost forever.

- AFP