A Stone-Age Creation Myth

A Stone-Age Creation Myth

Have you ever wondered what life must have been like during the stone-age, when people hunted with spears and arrows tipped with a bit of flint or bone? Well, if you were living in Natal a hundred and fifty years ago, you’d have found out.

 

This story is taken from my book ‘Child of the Dragon Mountains’, dealing with the lives of a San (Bushman) family living during the 1800s in the Drakensberg Mountains of Natal.  The San central to the story is named !Bo.

 

The exclamation mark in the name can be produced as an explosive pop! if you extend your lips to form a short funnel, then withdraw your tongue sharply from behind your front teeth. On balance, it’s better to warn people before you experiment with the name at a formal function or the dinner table.

 

As a young man, with several shamans in the clan from whom he could learn, !Bo had accumulated an impressive store of knowledge and some wisdom about the role of a shaman. Two older women of the clan were active in the shamanic rituals, and in many cases excelled the men in making rain and the laying on of healing hands.

 When !Bo confided to his mother his interest in learning more about the craft, Xama suggested he be apprenticed to one of the women. Most successful and experienced was the wizened, elderly matriarch named Mikau who had explained so clearly years before how Cagn had created the eland. Her husband and children had drowned many years before during a flash flood, when she was a young woman.

 

She had been inconsolable, yet never spoke of her grief. Perhaps to comfort herself and occupy her time productively, Mikau had turned her considerable talents to refining her shamanic skills. Everyone throughout the region knew the old woman. During the more settled times of her youth, the amaZizi had often asked her in years of drought to bring the soft, soaking she-rain to their small maize plots.

 Although Mikau was old and frail, and mumbled when she spoke, she made very good sense when she did. !Bo was wary of her at first, because he saw her watching his furtive attempts at art. He resolved to ask her courteously for guidance.

 “Mother Mikau,” he asked one morning when out of earshot of the others, “will you please teach me how to make rain, and how to heal?”

 

“You are a very forward young man,” Mikau replied. “You dare to ask me?”

 

Then she smiled, and said that she was willing to tutor !Bo because, as she put it:

“You are already a hunter known in these parts, but so are many other men, and even one or two women. That brings us food. It is important, but it is not everything.”

 

She paused, and chose her words with care.

“Your other talent is more crucial to our clan. It is this; you are becoming a great artist. Now that is really important.”

“Why so, Mother?” asked !Bo, guessing at the reply.

“It is because you have the ability to represent in your painting the mind of the trance experience, and the power that God can bring to us. And your first lesson is to not call me ‘Mother’, as if I was some old hag.”

She paused, and then went on. “Now think on what I have said.”

As she got up to busy herself with preparing the evening meal, she said:

“Yes, I will tutor you. But, it is only because you are an artist. Also, I shall do it because you have shown much determination. Otherwise I would not waste my time with you.”

The arrangement met with general approval.
 

Dying eland and shamans

 

A few days later, !Bo sought her out again, and they sat some distance from the others. Would she reaffirm what //Zamkau had said? The old woman did not disappoint him.

“But with respect, mother Mikau … er, Mikau, why is painting important in becoming a shaman?”

 “Because only if you paint what you experience in trance will your paintings have potency and continue to help you with the work of healing and bringing rain and fighting the evil spirits. They hold much potency in themselves. Painting without potency is just the making of images, or a record of things seen; and not experienced in trance. There is potency and power in the dance, and in paint.”

“That is what the great artist //Zamkau told me.”

“That is why //Zamkau is known as the greatest artist of this region.”

“He is indeed. And he spoke of Cagn.”

 

“Cagn was the first being, as I have told you before. His wife is Coti. She came later, with those who brought the sun. Only the initiated men of the dance can explain it all. Those who do are the proper shamans.”

“Why is Cagn important?”

“Cagn made all things; the sun and moon and stars and wind and rain, and mountains and animals. Only he made them, yet he has shared them. They belong to us all.”

“So he is the most powerful?”

 

“Yes. Cagn had two sons, Cogaz and Grewi. There are three great chiefs, Cagn, Cogaz and Quanciqutshaa, but only Cagn is the Creator who gives orders. He is by far the most powerful of the three.”

“Cagn made all things and we pray to him. At first, he was very good, but even he became spoilt by fighting many battles and overcoming many problems. We pray by imploring; ‘O Cagn, are we not your children? Did you not create us? Feel our hunger!’”

 “What does Cagn do?”

“He gives with both hands full.”

“What of the eland?”

“As I have told you before, Cagn knows where his eland are, and they know where Cagn is. There are many eland in his great place. He gives some, yet he loves them.”

 “So he is supreme?”

“Yes, there is a supreme Creator,” Mikau told !Bo, “in charge of all life, and responsible for the rising of the sun each day, and for the rain. He created the sky and the mountains, from which water comes. It gives life, and falls from the sky and runs down from the mountains, but also seeps up from the rocks. The Creator rules the spirit world that is in the sky and even in the mountains, and within the rocks of our shelters. He has a family to help him in all he does, but they are sometimes disruptive beings with their own view of things. Sometimes they help him, and sometimes they have to be disciplined.”

 

“But my father and //Zamkau have spoken of evil spirits.”

“Yes, there are also some lesser spirits, and they bring illness and death since they rule the underworld. But you must never fear death, because you will die many times in the trance, but if you comport yourself well you will surely return and influence the living … and so you are not dead.”

“Is that why some of the ironworkers and even our own people throw a pebble down? Because of spirits?”

 “Indeed, it is because of the evil spirits that can haunt a place that we sometimes throw a pebble down at the path side. We do it to reach the good spirits in the vicinity and so implore them to keep the evil ogres away. I know that travellers do that often beyond the great river … the uThukela as the Zulus call it. It is because many man-eaters live in those parts; and if you go through their lands, you’d better ask the spirits for protection before you venture there. And, when we bury a person, the spirit remains. It lives above the grave. You can seek their protection as well.”

“And who do I follow at the dance?”

 

Like //Zamkau before her, Mikau sighed. It was a long, deep, condescending sigh.

“You follow no one,” she said patiently. “That was when you were a novice. You are a man now. There is not much that I can teach you. The spirits will do that. Give yourself to them. Reach them through the dance. Climb to the sky, and penetrate the rocks.”

 

“You are a teacher with much wisdom.”

“You will learn to be a shaman by dancing,” she continued, slowly and almost whispering. “This means dancing in the way that the spirits direct. The great Creator created all things. He loves his creatures. However, of them all, he favoured the eland. He has given it great potency. The eland feeds us and provides our needs, but it must die to do so. We take the eland, and in turn, we who are shamans must die the death of the eland to atone for our killing of it. In turn, we will get great potency. So, dance until you are exhausted, and live the death of an eland. Your nose will bleed, as the nose of the eland does. Smell the blood so that it will help you to achieve potency. Potency will rise from deep within you. You will learn to master your rising potency. It is dangerous and terrifying.”

 “But many do not become shamans. My father told me so.”

“Your father was correct; many who try do not become shamans. Remember his advice. Only if you are willing to heal others will you become a shaman. You must wish to heal people before you can climb the rope.”

Exhausted by the long ramble, Mikau sighed and then lapsed into silence and sat brooding for a while.

“Thank you Mikau. You are a great teacher.”

“And one day you will be a great shaman,” the old woman mumbled, “because you want to learn.”

 

!Bo now gave himself more completely to the dance. He liked the freedom that Mikau’s tutoring gave him, and he saw increasingly the important role in the clan of women such as she was.

“It is they who sit at the centre of things, directing potency through their songs and the rhythm of their clapping,” he told himself.

 

A few days later, he approached Mikau again.

“You began to speak of the trance dance,” he said. “Please tell me more.”

“Cagn it was who provided the potency song to accompany the trance dance. The dancers die, but Cagn raises them to life again. It is a circular dance and as you well know, the dancer-shamans perform all night for maximum potency. Many dancers fall down, maddened and exhausted, as you have seen. Blood sometimes comes from their noses, as it would from a dying eland. The shamans sometimes take snuff that contains charm medicines with powder from burnt snake venom in it.”

“Does the snake venom make their noses bleed?”

“I do not know. No one knows.”

“And how does one heal?”

“In the healing dance, the shamans will dance around the sick person, and hold him up, propped under the armpits. They will press their hands to where the pain is, and sometimes the patient will cough up the evil spirit. You will learn by watching closely, and then doing it.”

 

On the day of a major kill some days later, !Bo extended his experience of the dance greatly. The clan was assembled, together with several kinsmen who had shared in the meat of the eland, and a dozen dancers stepped into the deep rut that would guide their dance.

“It is a great time for the dance,” commented old Mikau. She looked tired yet strangely ecstatic. “They say the bees of Coti are swarming down the Umlambonja, and that always signifies great potency. It is a time of life, and a time of death. It is perhaps my time.

 

The women seated themselves in the centre of the circle with two ill persons amongst them. They began singing and clapping to attract the spirit animals embodied in the paintings on the rock walls of the shelter, now reflected in the firelight.

 The dance began with a slow, rhythmic, plodding shuffle. Slowly the tempo rose as the dancers moved, first clockwise and then anti-clockwise. Since they were targets for the malevolent forces of the darkness outside the cave, each dancer carried a flywhisk of jackal tail with which they flicked away the arrows of sickness and disaster that the demons of the dark shot at them.

 After some hours of dancing, several of the dancers bent forward in increasing pain. It was a pain that welled up from the stomach; so severe that some dancers used sticks to support them or symbolise the staggering legs of a wounded creature. It was the agony of an antelope driven to exhaustion by the loss of blood, by poison, and by their exertions to escape during the tracking phase of a hunt.

 

!Bo found himself in a state of near-collapse, and could sense the presence of blood welling up in his nasal cavities with the exertion done in the thin air of the mountains. Two of the older men were also bleeding freely, and one collapsed writhing and shrieking. He staggered out of the circle, supported by two women who prevented him from collapsing onto protruding rocks, and then sank to the ground to sleep’

 !Bo had several times glimpsed luminous, fleeting shapes during previous dances, but on this occasion, he experienced an explosion of geometric shapes he did not understand. He felt himself sucked into a tunnel or vortex of swirling images. Pulsating zigzags, grids, clouds of dots, curves, and webs assailed his senses. There was a bright light at the end of the vortex.

 Looking for further inspiration, he caught a flash of the eland imagery painted on the cave walls, and in his mind transformed into an eland. His hands and feet became hooves and a great heavy dewlap developed beneath his chin. He staggered as an eland would stagger when expiring, and stood trembling with blood pouring from his nose. Finally, a rope ladder or perhaps a bridge appeared as !Bo transformed into a leopard capable of scaling it. He then encountered a sinuous line, along which he bounded in huge leaps.

 
He could feel the potency boiling up from his stomach to erupt from the top of his head. His very breath became an animal that carried him forward with amazing speed. He travelled like the wind, entering a large underground hole and penetrating the rock face as he entered the spirit world. At this stage !Bo believed he had made contact with the Creator, although he could not explain later the nature of that being; nor could he explain the vivid image of Mikau that he saw.

 !Bo staggered and fell down hard outside the dance circle; as the last to do so. He lay there entranced, cataleptic, and hyperventilating before losing consciousness and then falling into a deep sleep.

 “We thought you would not wake up.” The voice was /Toma’s. !Bo could see his father’s anxious face, with his mother peering over his shoulder. “You must indeed have travelled…”

“I have seen great things,” !Bo said simply. “Mikau was there.”

“Most of the others woke yesterday morning and gave their healing. We could not wait for you.”

 

“How long have I been asleep?”

“This is the second day. The other family have waited. You, my son, are surely a great shaman. Do not disappoint the families. Do not disappoint Mikau.”

“Where is she,” he asked. “Was she pleased with the dance?”

/Toma and Xama looked at each other. Neither spoke.

/Toma took !Bo gently by the wrist.

“Old Mikau died during the dance, but woke for a few moments before passing on. She spoke of you before she died. She is with the spirits.”

 !Bo found no answer and sat in silence for a time. He walked a short distance from the cave and sat apart on a rock, needing to be alone with his thoughts.

 

The families were then assembled, and !Bo spoke of his seeing visions of strange shapes twisting and whirling. He spoke of bright lights and long ladders reaching to the sky. He spoke of travelling like the wind as a leopard, and his transformation to become the eland. He also told of how he had died just as the eland dies, and spoke of his communion with the Creator after he had penetrated the veil of rock that hid the spirit world from view. He had pleaded for the souls of the sick, he said, and had seen their sickness expelled through the back of their necks.

 

The two San who had been sick recovered steadily. Within a week, they were both walking again. They came to thank him.

“I do not understand it,” he said simply. “But it is Mikau who you should thank. She gave me guidance.”

 !Bo found a great release in the dance. It was something that he could engage in without self-consciousness or embarrassment, and he used the freedom it gave him to extend his understanding of the wild creatures that shared the world with him and his community.

 
In lighter moments, to teach the children, !Bo practised the mimicry of animal behaviour. The family would gather around the fire on a pleasant evening and !Bo would mimic one or other animal.
 
The eland was always popular because they were so important in the lives of the San. !Bo would vary his performance, perhaps showing the threat display of a large bull intent on intimidating a rival. This involved lifting the muzzle with ears raised, shaking the head, and perhaps stabbing with the horns if the shaking display produced no result. Finally, there might be a determined head-down charge with ears back; an action that would send the watching children into mixed screams of terror and joy. He would then show the submissive gesture of head shaking with the ears and head lowered, as a competitor expressed subservience to the dominant bull after a charge.
 

The leopard was another favourite, moving with sinuous grace and marking its territory with urine and faeces, clawing the bark of trees and vocalising in a series of threatening rasps. The contented purr transformed in a moment into a growl, spit and snarl of anger that showed response to a threat. !Bo would also show a low-slung stealthy stalk with moments of freezing if the prey looks up, to a final rapid charge, leap, grasp and bite to the neck.

 

More humorous was the mimicry of a family of dassies (hyrax), with their wide repertoire of calls, male-dominance threats, and submissive behaviours. It was the baboons, however, that would get the children shrieking with laughter. The children loved the displays of foraging, showing submission, standing guard, and giving threat displays that showed the remarkably long fangs; but most enjoyed of all were the tantrums thrown by a baby baboon when its mother refuses to give it a ride on her back.