Historical Site - Stone Age
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The
Kondoa-Irangi rock paintings
The area between
Singida and the Irangi Hills contains one of the world's finest
collections of prehistoric rock paintings, with an
estimated 1600 individual paintings at almost two hundred
different sites, the most accessible of which are in the Irangi
Hills north of Kondoa. The most recent date from just a century or
two ago, but the oldest are estimated to be between 19,000 and
30,000 years old, ranking them among the world's most ancient
examples of human artistic expression.
In the African
context, the paintings 每 together with other sites in Masasi
(southern Tanzania) and Bukoba (in the northwest) 每 form part of
a wider chain of stylistically similar sites ranging from the
Ethiopian Highlands to the famous San (Bushmen) paintings of
southern Africa. There are also intriguing similarities with the
world's most extensive rock art area in and around the Tassili
n'Ajjer Plateau of the Algerian Sahara, notably the curious
"round-head" style used in depicting human figures. Some
of the paintings are believed to have been the work of the
ancestors of the present-day Sandawe and Hadzabe tribes, both of
whom have preserved ritual traditions involving rock painting. The
Sandawe, who live to the west of Kolo and Babati, were
hunter-gatherers until a few decades ago, whilst the Hadzabe,
around Lake Eyasi to the north, still adhere to that ancient way
of life, albeit against increasingly unfavourable odds. It's no
coincidence that the Sandawe and Hadzabe are also the only
Tanzanian tribes speaking languages characterized by clicks. The
parallel with the Kalahari San Bushmen 每 who speak a similar
click language and are themselves responsible for an astonishing
array of rock art 每 is irresistible, and suggests that a loosely
unified group of hunter-gatherer cultures covered much of southern
and eastern Africa until they were dispersed, annihilated or
assimilated by Bantu-speaking tribes, the first of whom arrived
some two to three thousand years ago.
Most of the paintings
are located in rock shelters 每 either vertical rock faces with
overhangs, or angled surfaces that resemble cave entrances 每
both of which have served to protect the paintings from millennia
of rain, wind and sun. All the sites give striking views of the
surrounding hills, and most overlook the Maasai Steppe to the
east. The paintings vary greatly in terms of style, subject, size
and colour: the most common consist of depictions of animals and
humans done in red or orange ochre (iron oxide bound with animal
fat). Particularly remarkable are the fine elongated human
figures, often with large heads or hairstyles, unusual in that
their hands generally only have three fingers, the middle one
being much longer than the other two. The figures are depicted in
a variety of postures and activities, some standing, others
dancing, playing flutes, hunting and 每 in an exceptional
painting at Kolo B1 dubbed "The Abduction" 每 showing a
central female figure flanked by two pairs of male figures. The
men on the right are wearing masks (the head of one clearly
resembles a giraffe's) and are attempting to drag her off, while
two unmasked men on the left attempt to hold her back. Animals are
generally portrayed realistically, often with an amazing sense of
movement, and include elephant, kudu, impala, zebra and especially
giraffe, which occur in around seventy percent of central
Tanzania's sites and which give their name to the so-called giraffe
phase, tentatively dated to 28,000每7000 BC. The later bubalus
phase (roughly 7000每4000 BC), generally done in black
(charcoal, ground bones, smoke or burnt fat), depicts buffalo,
elephant and rhinoceros. Of these, the highly stylized herds of
elephants at Pahi are uncannily similar to engravings found in
Ethiopia. The more recent paintings of the dirty-white phase
(kaolin, animal droppings or zinc oxide) generally feature more
abstract and geometric forms such as concentric circles and
symbols that in places resemble letters, eyes or anthropomorphs.
As to the meaning of
the paintings, no one really knows. Some believe they held a
magico-religious purpose, whether shamanistic or as sympathetic
magic, where the intent was to bring to life the spirit of an
animal by painting it. This was either to enable a successful
hunt, or was symptomatic of a more complex belief system which
summoned the spirits of certain sacred animals, especially eland,
to bring rain or fertility. The latter is evidenced by the
practice of San shamans "becoming" elands when in a
state of hallucinogenic trance. Another theory states that rock
shelters 每 as well as baobab trees 每 are Sandawe metaphors for
the "aboriginal womb" of creation. Indeed, the Sandawe
have a dance called iyari which is performed when twins are
born, and part of the ritual surrounding the dance involves rock
painting. Other theories, nowadays pretty much discredited, go for
the simple "art for art's sake". Either way, the rock
art of Kondoa gives a vivid and fascinating insight into not just
Tanzania's but humankind's earliest recorded history and way of
thinking.
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