02 · CULTURAL LANDSCAPE · BOTSWANA

Tsodilo

The paintings of Tsodilo

More than 4,500 paintings from different periods are preserved in a place sacred to San and Hambukushu communities.

Museum documentation · free public access, no account required.

Tsodilo Hill, Botswana, photographed by Joachim Huber in 2007; quartzite and vegetation, no visible people. — **TSODILO · 2007 PHOTOGRAPH · LANDSCAPE AND LIVING HERITAGE**
Documentary original · Exact correspondence
An intact, real photograph of Tsodilo taken in 2007. It documents the site’s landscape; it does not reconstruct an ancient period nor attribute its paintings to a single community.
Joachim Huber · CC BY-SA 2.0
Source and provenance ↗Terms of use ↗

History and context

Tsodilo brings together prolonged occupations and thousands of paintings within a relatively compact area.

It is a sacred place for San and Hambukushu communities; living authority does not allow attributing each image to the same population or date.

UNESCO describes a concentration of more than 4,500 paintings, besides vestiges of prolonged occupation. Different panels belong to different moments, techniques and authors.

Tsodilo remains integrated in local San and Hambukushu memories and practices. Heritage protection must include these living relationships and not limit itself to counting images.

Evidence and interpretation

Landscape, approximate number of paintings and community uses are documented. Authorship and individual chronology vary.

Catalogue facts

Narrative date: Long-term occupation · living heritage
Location: Tsodilo · Botswana
Material: Shelters, painting and landscape
Context: Shared landscape
Curatorial reading: The documented fact and its interpretation appear separately in the evidence block.
Corpus: Over 4,500 paintings recorded
Living authority: San and Hambukushu communities
Documentary coverage: 2 museum, heritage, primary corpus or research sources for this stop.

A closer look

About 1 min to read · 1 section. Further reading and sources · free access. Editorial review recorded: September 5, 2026.

Quartzite, dunes and a vanished lake

The Tsodilo Hills rise between ancient dunes to the east and the bed of a fossil lake to the west. Their quartzite, resistant to erosion, helped preserve shelters and painted surfaces. This combination of relief and sediment allows the study of environmental changes alongside human activities. The archaeological sequence spans at least one hundred thousand years, but contains interruptions: it does not describe continuous residence. Observing the terrain around the panels helps understand why the place attracted successive visits and offered resources in landscapes that were also changing.

Heritage · UNESCO · TsodiloAccess recorded: September 5, 2026.

Location and territory

REGIONAL AREA

Tsodilo · BotswanaMarker of the shared cultural landscape, not of a single community or period.

Sources and references

Expand this information and consult its sources

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