san

SAN

San Ethnography enlarged map

Geographical locations of major Khoisan speaking groups.

Arts of the San People in Nomansland enlarged map

Situated just south and east of Lesotho, the shaded portion highlights Nomansland, one of the last sites where the San people painted.

The San were a hunter-gatherers population of South Africa (40.000 years ago). They have left a lasting record of their life through thousands of paintings – rock art. Though more closely related to their cultural and spiritual life, many of the paintings give a San perspective on those who came into their land and displaced them. In particular those paintings show sheep, sailing ship, horse-drawn wagons and images of San being hunted by rifle-toting horse-riders (potentially either Xhosa or European).

Storm Shelter Moreover San's rock art is the expression of relationship between human and spiritual in the mystical cerimonies. Central to these rituals is an invisible energy, said by the San to be found in almost all animals but in great quantities in the eland (antilope). San shamans harness this supernatural energy in order to undertake the dangerous journey to the world of spirits, where they must perform various tasks such as rainmaking, fighting off evil spirits, and curing the sick. This potent energy was to be found, particularly, in the eland's blood, fat, and sweat. Oral testimony from a man who painted with San people in the nineteenth century as well as chemical tests show that many of the images of eland are made with blood; the art itself is redolent with this supernatural energy.

They contacted that obscure world through the healing or trance dance. This dance was, and still is in the Kalahari, the central mechanism for harnessing the supernatural power residing in eland and other animals. Often performed around the carcass of a recently killed animal, the trance dance is circular in movement; men and older women shamans dance in a circle, while young women sit, clap, and sing songs (themselves thought to carry supernatural energy). The rhythmic singing and clapping and the intense dancing for hours on end produce altered states of consciousness in which the shamans experience, first, visual imagery, and later, more complex multisensory hallucinations.

The most intriguing images of Nomansland are those with large, detailed heads.

The uniqueness of each head suggests that it is a form of portraiture depicting powerful individual shamans.

For the San, these experiences are deeply moving and profound revelations of a religious reality beyond this world. In order to experience these revelations, they believe that one must harness the supernatural energy from the dead animal. This energy enters the body, where it "boils" in the stomach, forcing it to rise into the heads of the dancers, where it explodes, catapulting them into the other world.

Alongside the numerous images of eland are ubiquitous depictions of healing or trance dances and the various experiences that the shaman-dancers have when they enter the other world, such as transformation into animal form. These images often interact with the rock surface; they appear to enter or leave cracks, steps, and other openings in the rock surface. So the rock surface functioned as a veil between this world and the spiritual one. Filled with supernatural energy, the images are depicted on this veil, on the very liminal space between two worlds. These images were more than just representational—they were the actual inhabitants of the spirit world.

One of the characteristic eldritch images of Nomansland. These figures are frequently grotesque in appearance. In this example, the figure bends forward as the supernatural energy begins to "boil" in the stomach, causing a transformation into an antelope form.

This very detailed scene of a trance dance features a large number of women and five shamans. It clearly depicts one of the two types of trance dance still practiced by the Kalahari San. The first type involves women sitting around a central fire singing and clapping while the men and an occasional woman dance in a circle around them. The second type, depicted here, features shamans who dance in the centre, while the women stand in a circle around them, clapping and singing. Inset: Human figure bending backwards and with arms behind the back; another trance position.

Close-up pictures of the same trance dance show some interesting details. The brown arrow points at the women clapping with splayed hands; the green arrow shows a squatted figure that may have a nasal bleeding; the red arrow points at the uppermost shaman (12 cm in length) who seems to be floating during trance. All the five shamans are bending over and have to use sticks to be able to continue their trance dance. The shamans are wearing shamans' eared caps. The orange arrow indicates a much larger human figure that seems to bending over, the hands raised to the nose, an indication of a possible nasal bleeding. This figure has been painted over with the clearer and smaller figures. This may indicate a lapse in time, but equally it may point to an intentional addition to a similar graphic statement.