Rock Art of the Western Cape: The Sevilla Trail & Travellers Rest

Title: Rock Art of the Western Cape
Subtitle: The Sevilla Trail & Travellers Rest
Author: Peter Slingsby
Series: Rock Art of the Western Cape, Book 1
Publisher: Ekkoprint
2nd edition. Lake Side, South Africa 1996
ISBN 0620198109 / ISBN 0-620-19810-9
Original softcover, 15 x 21 cm, 52 pages, throughout illustrations

Condition:

Very good. Clean, like new.

Beschreibung:

Archaeological evidence points to continuous human inhabitation of this corner of the world for over 150 000 years. Increasing evidence suggests that Homo sapiens arose in Southern Africa, and there is a growing number of scientists who feel that the San were the branch of humanity who "stayed behind" while the rest of our Negroid, Caucasoid or Mongoloid ancestors migrated away and colonised the Earth. It has been suggested that the San remained genetically closest to those first true humans. Small and finely built, they evolved a gatherer-hunter existence which co-existed in close harmony with the natural environment. Somewhere beyond about two thousand years ago the San's lonely human occupancy of Southern Africa was challenged from the north west by their herder cousins, the Khoi-khoi, and in the east by the herder-pastoralists, the antecedents of the present-day Nguni peoples. The evidence suggests that despite enslavement, absorption and hostility the San survived these invasions by maintaining their lifestyle in the mountainous areas that were less hospitable to herders and pastoralists. However, in the mid-seventeenth century European invasion from the south west pushed the Khoi eastwards until they came up against the Nguni. In this pageant of human pressure the southern San were the ultimate losers: they were massacred, enslaved and absorbed until their culture was extinct. Today their cousins are found only in the inhospitable deserts of the Northern Cape, Namibia and Botswana. One hundred thousand years of history came to an end in a few short centuries.

Content: Rock Art of the Western Cape: The Sevilla Trail & Travellers Rest

Introduction
The Paintings
Dating the Paintings
Materials
Interpretation and Significance
How the paintings were reproduced
Do's and Don'ts
Travellers' Rest: Accommodation and the Trails
Maps: Sevilla Trail and Salmonslaagte
Plants of the Sevilla Trail
The Sevilla Trail: Sites 1 to 10
Salmonslaagte
Sensitive Sites: The Human Form
Sensitive Sites: Animals
Sensitive Sites: Painting of Events?
Some Controversies