Rock Paintings in Southern Africa Showing Bees and Honey Hunting

Anthropo‐entomophagy: Cultures, evolution and sustainability

“…Pager (1973), discovered ancient rock paintings in Natal, South Africa where one can appreciate the image of honey collector, who carries a sack on his back, using several lianas to form a ladder to reach the bees' nest. Furthermore, in the Matopo Hills, a rock was found with a painting that showed a person smoking a lit torch at the entrance of a bees' nest in Zimbabwe.…”

‘The bees are our sheep’: the role of honey and fat in the transition to livestock keeping during the last two thousand years in southernmost Africa

“…/Xam) in which the dancers mimic a swarm of bees in dance and song, while performance of a similar dance has been described among the !Kung, who use it to harness the bees' supernatural potency when they are swarming (Marshall 1969;Lewis-Williams 1982, 1988a. Overall, the connection between bees (and bee symbolism) in the rock art and potency can thus be considered well established (Pager 1973;Lewis-Williams 1981a, 1981b, 1988a, 2002Dowson 1989;Yates and Manhire 1991;Challis 2010, 2011). Katz (1982: 94) specifically notes that bees contain potency among the !Kung and in a rock painting at Ebusingata, KwaZulu-Natal, a man shown bleeding from the nose is depicted carrying honeycomb and surrounded by bees (Woodhouse 1987), thereby connecting the notions of trance, honey and bee potency.…”

Themes in the prehistoric art of Zimbabwe

“…These also emerge from a gap in the circle and stream across the cave wall. Those who see the ovals as beehives take the Zombepata arrowheads and stippling to represent bees (Pager, 1973). Earlier authors have produced good reasons to suppose that if the arrowheads are an attempt at realistic representation, it is of birds rather than bees (Petie, 1974: 3;Cooke, 1969).…”

“…Amongst the more popular interpretations is Frobenius' (1931) that they represent landscapes, dominated by granite boulders. The current one (Pager, 1973) that they represent bees' nests is generally accepted (Huffman, 1983: 51;LewisWilliams, 1983b: 6). All interpretations have assumed that the designs are attempts at realistic representation, even though every suggested likeness looks pretty far-fetched and tenuous.…”

“…The stippling often found with them then becomes bees and the occasional grids of lines associated with rare South African examples of these designs become honey-hunters' ladders (Pager, 1973).…”