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BELIEFS AND CURIOSITIES · 01

Ritual without a universal key

Paintings, stories and healing practices

Dances and narratives help to propose interpretations of the paintings, but they do not explain all their scenes.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

GAME PASS · ORIGINAL ROCK PAINTING · 2004 PHOTOGRAPH

Documentary original · Exact correspondence

Real and intact photograph of the painted motif of Game Pass in 2004. No figures have been repainted nor pigments completed. Its ritual interpretation is a situated proposal, not a universally proven meaning.

Alan Manson (Alandmanson) · CC BY 4.0

Source and provenance ↗Terms of use ↗
Rock painting of Game Pass: a low-headed eland and an anthropomorphic figure beside its tail, photographed in 2004 by Alan Manson.
GAME PASS · ORIGINAL ROCK PAINTING · 2004 PHOTOGRAPH

Documentary original · Exact correspondence

Real and intact photograph of the painted motif of Game Pass in 2004. No figures have been repainted nor pigments completed. Its ritual interpretation is a situated proposal, not a universally proven meaning.

Alan Manson (Alandmanson) · CC BY 4.0

Source and provenance ↗Terms of use ↗

History and context

Game Pass and healing dances allow discussion of transformation, eland and collective experience through explicit analogies.

Comparison gains value by maintaining distance: a 20th-century record does not translate every painting, and no practice constitutes a pan-San pantheon.

Evidence and interpretation

Documented fact: Protected panels and situated !Kung/Ju recordings document concrete images and practices. Interpretation and caution: Do not present a single shamanic reading, Palaeolithic continuity or direct equivalence between panel and ceremony.

Catalogue facts

Scope
Ritual without a universal key
Culture
San peoples of southern Africa
Reference part
The eland and an image without subtitles
Reading
Fact and interpretation are presented on separate layers

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: .

A specific interpretation of the eland

The Game Pass presentation elaborated by Witwatersrand relates the eland’s fat to a spiritual power attributed to the animal in San testimonies. From that interpretation, accumulating its images contributed to the power of the place, to which one could resort in ritual practices. It is a historically specific explanation of the animal’s value, more precise than simply calling it sacred. The source connects this reading to later pilgrimages to the shelter. It is advisable to keep this interpretative proposal identified to distinguish the researchers’ argument from what the painted surface allows direct observation.

Location and territory

Physical world map with routes of human evolutionPresent-day world coastline from Natural Earth in an equirectangular projection. The overlaid markers let you explore each milestone.Map base: Natural Earth 1:110m · public domain · present-day reference coastline

REGIONAL AREA

Orientative scope of San communities and landscapes in southern Africa; not an ethnic or state boundaryOrientative scope of San communities and landscapes in southern Africa; not an ethnic or state boundary. The footprint marks the orientative centre of the scope, not a boundary nor an exact point.

Sources and references

Expand this belief or curiosity on its sources

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