The mind of a stone age artist

The mind of a stone age artist

An elephant-shaman

Look at the ‘painting of a painting’ at the head of this piece of writing. Look especially at the main focus, an elephant-shaman figure. It was painted by a man or woman one might describe with superiority as a ‘late stone-age’ being. One thinks of a primitive ‘cave-man’. But clearly, the artist was no shambling idiot. They were perceptive, intelligent and creative. How did they think?

Ebusingatha Elephant-Shaman

Exploring the mind of a stone-age artist is not the easiest excursion one might make. For a start, one has to shed the stereotype of the person as an uncouth, grunting creature with a brain ruled only by instinct. These were people as fully human as we modern, ‘sapient’ humans are. They might have differed in physical size, but barely at all in cognition. Perhaps they were a tinge more imaginative. Their incredible mythology bears witness to that.

Now study the main figure of an elephant-shaman in conjunction with the swarm of bees. Of the picture you’re looking at, these two images are all that the San (Bushmen) painted. The rest of the images, including the small, high-set cave with beehive and vulture droppings as well as the two human figures on a floating sandstone platform, were painted by the writer as a surrealist work to more completely explore and define the mythical world of the artist.

The original

The original rock painting was done perhaps two hundred years ago on an overhang (cave) wall at Ebusingata, a few kilometres south of Royal Natal National Park in the northern sector of the Natal Drakensberg Mountains of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. And that original is a masterpiece of technical skill and imagination. It also provides a brilliant historical record.

The original composition includes the large figure of a shaman bedecked with white paint and equipped with hunting equipment. He is probably in a state of trance, bent on extracting honey from a small cave in a rock-face crack high up to his right. The bees and their honey were associated with a high degree of potency (religious empowerment).

The modern artist has shown the yellow of the honeycombs of the wild African bees, to indicate the origin of the swarm and provide further context to the lively movements of the figure as focal point. A smear of vulture droppings also shows up white on the ledge of the cave to explain the action further.

Elephant man and the bees

The shaman, naked but replete with bow and arrows, has transformed mentally into an elephant, in the belief that the tough hide of that great beast will protect him from the bee stings. One can see the angry swarm diving and dashing in frenzy around him, but the man-beast (therianthrope) is focused and unperturbed as he strides towards the cave.

Since bees were thought by the San to have great potency, each bee can be seen as a symbol of the power that could be brought to the San shaman by encountering them in their agitated state. Filled with potency by Cagn, the great creator-god, the bees will enter the shaman’s body to travel through his gut and up the spine, to exit at the back of the neck or top of the head. The comprehensive empowerment then enjoyed by the shaman will enable him commune with Cagn during the trance dance, heal the sick, make rain, paint with sensitivity and perhaps be successful in the next hunt.

The shaman figure as art

The therianthropic figure is full of action, powerful and determination, set on a successful encounter with Cagn’s great potency. He is striding forward unflinchingly to the encounter, his limbs and body transformed to that of a great elephantine beast  The penis is infibulated to show his purpose untroubled by any sexual distractions. The San artist has in effect described a shaman in a state of trance, his imagination perfervid and roaming free of critical cortical control.

The mind that painted it

The minds of the San appear to have been modern in every sense, although during their history they suffered denigration and ridicule even from other indigenous groups because of their simple lifestyle. The fact that they were hunter-gatherers and not agriculturists or pastoralists with a sense of property ownership set them apart.

They were outlawed everywhere, and driven to extinction in the Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains) by genocide. On the other hand they possessed incredibly creative imaginations that developed a library of myths to explain their experience and experiences, and the capacity to transform their thoughts into commendably enduring works of art. Their creative thinking is very clear from the painting.

Critical thinking

Their development of effective poisons, oil-based paints of various colours, hunting instruments, clothing suitable for bitterly cold winter conditions and artwork of imagination reveals a capacity for rational, critical analysis and the use of hypotheses. This implies putting forward tentative solutions to problems, and then testing them to find successful patterns. Their record of thriving in montane and desert environments supports the contention.

Their language sounds peculiar to our ears; based on four or so sucking clicks and explosive pops! Peculiar, yes indeed; yet their sparse speech was adequate to their needs. Their sense of sight was marvellous, no doubt honed by their vocation as hunters, and their hearing was also acute.

They excelled us ‘modern people’, with our disposable society, in preserving their environment and not fouling the nest. That is something we who discard things so easily have not yet learnt. They held living things in high esteem, and celebrated and atoned to the creator-being each time they killed a large creature to satisfy their needs. They accorded to nature incredible powers, and tended to credit natural phenomena with human capacities and propensities.

Their womenfolk knew the characteristics and uses of a very wide range of plants, and could predict the seasons when each plant’s roots, fruit, berries or shoots would be available and most crucial to survival. That implies systematic as well as systemic thinking. The women were most astute in rain-making, since they brought the soft, soaking she-rain and not the thunderstorms that would rend the earth and destroy vegetation with its masculine aggression.

Creative thinking

Their great library of mythical stories show the extent of their creative talents. They have stories dealing with creation, great hunts, encounters with cannibals, the characteristics of wild creatures and much more. They had great skill in imitating a wide variety of wild creatures by use of gestures and posturing, and often inserted humour into their displays. These were learning experiences for the young, who would acquire gathering skills from their mothers; and if they were male, hunting skills from the men. A rudimentary education system was in place.

The two human figures

The two San (Bushmen) at lower right are not a part of the original painting, but are human images painted by the artist to give greater commentary, definition and explanation to this surrealist artwork. They are the two compatriots of the shaman whose minds also engage with the elephant image to gain protection in their quest for honey. The hive is no doubt their possession, having been in their family for years. The thong and stick ladder was perhaps fixed to the rock face a century before, and would be maintained from time to time. It is probable that the hunters would make a fire on their imaginary platform of rock to smoke the bees away from the site.

Visualisation

Many great thinkers of the Western and eastern scientific traditions used images, diagrams and other forms of visualisation as a cognitive strategy to clarify their scientific ideas. The San did the same. Their oil paintings show complex hunts, healing scenarios, battles, trance dances, attacks by wild beasts, securing a rain-making creature, cattle raids, and home life.

They are a startling testimony to the depth of intelligence of these diminutive people who suffered genocide and death from farmers and pastoralists who had lost stock from San cattle and horse raids. The San had no concept of property ownership such as that prevalent in most cultures in the world. They suffered heavily for that deficit within their conceptual libraries.

They also suffered genetic dilution through intermarriage with African tribes until a little more than a hundred years ago, when genetically ’pure’ San disappeared from the history of Natal.

More on the contemporary contribution

The circular shape of the central rock wall in the picture is a device to keep the viewer’s eyes from wandering out of the picture. Reds and yellows serve to accentuate the focal points, and edges are a little sharper near focal points to give them further emphasis.

The painting was blocked in initially with a quite thin mix of oil paint and turps to provide a warm tonal under-painting. Darks were subjected to some glazing, and the paint was scumbled in to accentuate the lights. Sandstone is subject to weathering, and one had to be careful not to sharpen edges too much because that would give an unnatural flint-like sharpness that sandstone doesn’t have when well weathered.

Child of the Dragon Mountains

The book Child of the Dragon Mountains tells the story of the San rock artists, hunters, shamans, healers, rainmakers, in the form of a novel. It is based on forty years of research in the Drakensberg Mountains and is an authentic view of the fascinating lives of these diminutive people. The suffered genocide over more than a century, and had disappeared from their range in the montane regions of Natal by about 1900.

It is accessible on www.alexeducational.co.za and back through the linked blogsite www.alexstoriesandart.blogspot.com  The book is available on Createspace in hard copy, and also Amazon Kindle in digital form.

You might prefer to just look at the fifty oil paintings or check out a blog that interests you.