Twyfelfontein Rock Art

Twyfelfontein Rock Art

Twyfelfontein Rock Art is the largest collection of rock engravings in the world, with over two thousand recorded images to date. Most of the well-preserved engravings depict rhinos, elephants, ostriches, and giraffes, as well as human and animal footprints. The site also includes six painted rock shelters featuring human-themed images carved in red ochre.

These engravings were unearthed alongside artifacts from two heritage sites, including stone tools from the Late Stone Age, ostrich eggshell beads, and slate pendants. Human or bird figures are rare, and it is said that these carvings illustrate rituals where humans transformed into animals. The most famous example is the “Lion Man,” a lion with five toes on each paw. This carving indicates that the rock art is linked to the belief systems of hunter-gatherers who inhabited the area before pastoralists arrived around the year 1000 AD.

Twyfelfontein Rock Art provides a coherent, extensive, and high-quality record of the ritual practices associated with hunter-gatherer communities in this part of Southern Africa for at least 2000 years, and convincingly demonstrates the connection between the ritual and economic practices of those hunter-gatherers.

Twyfelfontein or /Ui-//aes

Why go: The world’s largest concentration of rock engravings

Continent: Africa【Africa】

Country/Region: Namibia[Namibia]

Province/State: Kunene Region [Kunene Region]