Rock art and performance in the Stormberg, South Africa

Witelson, David M.

doi:10.1080/0067270x.2022.2156719

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…By implication, the many lateral perspective examples, some of which have two (front and back) legs rather than four, must also depict one-horned creatures. There are shaded and unshaded examples of these beings, suggesting that the concept had a precolonial origin (Witelson 2022, 265ff). Collectively, they suggest that Barrow probably did see a rock painting of a one-horned creature and correctly identified it as such.…”

Section: Searching For Unicornsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…[Lewis-Williams, unpublished fieldnotes]Similarly, in nineteenth-century South Africa, stock raiders with San members called down rain ‘by blowing a blast on an eland horn’ to hide themselves from the pursuing colonists (Vinnicombe 1976, 52). Collectively, these details point to a geographically widespread and potentially ancient stratum of San rain-influencing practices (Witelson 2022, 260ff). This possibility is especially intriguing in light of Sigrid Schmidt's (1979) suggestion that the antelope-like (rather than serpentine or cattle-like) form of rain-animals is the original, pre-contact form of the rain among autochthonous southern African hunter-gatherers.…”

Section: Revisiting the South African Unicornmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Revisiting the South African Unicorn: Rock Art, Natural History and Colonial Misunderstandings of Indigenous Realities

Witelson

2023

CAJ

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European ideas about unicorns spread across the world in the colonial era. In South Africa, hunts for that creature, and indigenous rock paintings of it, were commonplace. The aim was proof from ‘terra incognita’, often with the possibility of claiming a reward. There has, however, been little consideration of the independent, local creature onto which the unicorn was transposed. During cross-cultural engagements, foreign beliefs in the mythical unicorn and a desire for evidence of its natural history intermixed to an extraordinary degree with local beliefs in a one-horned animal. For over two centuries, colonists and researchers alike failed to realize that the local creature, by chance, resembled the European unicorn. A new synthesis of southern African ethnography, history and the writings of early travellers, missionaries and colonial politicians provides unambiguous evidence that one-horned creatures obtained in local beliefs before the arrival of colonists. Moreover, it shows that these creatures are depicted in South African rock art, and that they are a manifestation of San (Bushman) rain-animals. By ignoring relevant beliefs and images, previous scholars have failed to acknowledge that the South African unicorn was, apart from its four legs and single horn, a creature wholly different from the European one.

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Section: Searching For Unicornsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Revisiting the South African Unicornmentioning

confidence: 99%