Thursday, November 23, 2006

African cave art depicts peace
n the caves of South Africa's Cederberg mountains, an ancient people left a legacy of rock art that could teach modern man a valuable lesson or two about living in harmony with nature.

That is the view of John Parkington, professor of archaeology at the University of Cape Town, who has spent 40 years in the Cederberg and neighboring areas researching rock paintings and other artifacts left by the pre-colonial hunter-gatherers who once roamed southern Africa.

The Bushmen, or San, left tens of thousands of paintings in ochre and clay, most depicting humans or three or four key animal species, and some showing men with the heads of animals.


Unfortunately, this goes against much recent research and appears more of a political hypothesis than a scientific one.