The valley at Twyfelfontein in Damaraland looks ordinary until you are three metres from the rock face. Then the surface resolves into something extraordinary: a lion paw print the size of a dinner plate, pecked precisely into the pale sandstone. A giraffe in perfect profile, its neck extending upward in elegant proportion. A cluster of human footprints overlaid with those of an eland, pressed so close together that their relationship seems intentional.
These images were made by San hunter-gatherers over a period spanning at least 2,000 years. They are found at Twyfelfontein in Damaraland, in the Tsisab Gorge at Brandberg, at Spitzkoppe, and at numerous smaller sites scattered across the Damaraland landscape. They represent one of the largest and richest collections of hunter-gatherer rock art in the world.
Understanding what they mean, who made them, and why they matter transforms a visit from a tourist experience into something more like a genuine encounter with a vanished way of life.
Who Were the San?
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The San, also known as Bushmen or Basarwa, are the indigenous hunter-gatherers of southern Africa. Genetic evidence indicates that they are among the most ancient human populations on Earth, with lineages extending back 100,000 years or more. They inhabited the southern African subcontinent for tens of thousands of years before the arrival of Bantu-speaking farmers from central Africa (approximately 2,000 years ago) and European settlers (from the 17th century).
In the Damaraland region, San communities lived as mobile hunter-gatherers, following seasonal game movements and the fruiting of wild plants across a landscape they knew intimately. They used the Damaraland watercourses, including the spring at Twyfelfontein, as reliable water sources and returned to key sites repeatedly across generations. The rock art at these sites was made over this extended period of occupation.
The San who made the Damaraland rock art no longer inhabit the region. Their descendants survive in parts of Botswana, Namibia’s Kalahari region, and South Africa’s Northern Cape, but the direct cultural and spiritual traditions connected to the specific sites have largely been lost. Interpretation of the art relies on comparative research, ethnographic analogy with living San communities in other regions, and the growing academic framework of rock art studies.
Two Types of Rock Art in Damaraland
Rock Engravings (Petroglyphs)
The images at Twyfelfontein in Damaraland are engravings: made by removing the dark desert varnish from the surface of sandstone outcrops to reveal the lighter rock beneath. The tool was almost certainly a sharp quartzite point; the technique is pecking rather than incising, with repeated small strikes building up the image. The desert varnish layer is only a few millimetres thick, but its removal is permanent and irreversible.
Engravings at Twyfelfontein include rhino, elephant, giraffe, lion, eland, ostrich, and a variety of less clearly identifiable animals, alongside human footprints, animal tracks, and a number of geometric forms. The site has over 2,500 individual images, the largest concentration of San engravings in Africa.
Rock Paintings
The art at Brandberg’s Maack Shelter and at Spitzkoppe is painted rather than engraved: mineral pigments (red and yellow ochre, white kaolin, black manganese) mixed with animal fat or plant resin and applied to sheltered rock surfaces. Paintings are more vulnerable to weathering than engravings and are typically found in sheltered overhangs and caves where they are protected from direct rain.
The Brandberg paintings are among the most technically accomplished and visually complex in southern Africa. The White Lady panel at Maack Shelter contains over 40 individual figures painted in multiple phases across an unknown number of generations.
What Do They Mean?
This is the question every visitor asks, and the honest answer has evolved significantly over the past half-century.
The Old Interpretation: Sympathetic Magic
Early researchers (19th and early 20th century) proposed that rock art images were made as sympathetic magic: painting or engraving an animal would bring hunters luck in finding and killing it. This interpretation was partly influenced by similar theories applied to European cave art and partly by the assumption that hunter-gatherer art must be primarily functional.
The sympathetic magic interpretation has largely been abandoned. Most rock art images do not show hunting scenes or wounded animals. The combinations of species, the inclusion of human figures in unusual postures, and the existence of geometric forms that clearly do not represent animals all point to a more complex motivation.
The Shamanic Interpretation
The dominant contemporary framework for understanding San rock art, developed primarily by researcher David Lewis-Williams from the 1970s onward, proposes that most images are connected to San shamanic practice.
The San believed that certain individuals, through an altered state of consciousness induced by rhythmic singing and dancing (and occasionally by plant medicines), could enter a spirit world and interact with supernatural forces. These forces controlled rain, animal movements, healing, and other aspects of life crucial to a hunter-gatherer community. Individuals who could reliably achieve this state, called shamans or healers, were of central social importance.
Lewis-Williams argued, on the basis of detailed interviews with living San communities and comparative analysis across thousands of sites, that rock art images represent what was experienced during these trance states: the animal power that the shaman took on, the supernatural entities encountered, and the visual forms that appear during the transition into and out of the altered state (phosphene patterns, visions of transformation between human and animal form).
This explains several features of the art that the sympathetic magic theory could not:
The frequency of the eland. The eland, a large antelope, appears more often in southern African rock art than any other animal despite not being the most common prey species. In San belief, the eland is the animal most closely associated with supernatural potency; its fat is used in healing ceremonies; it is the animal most connected with the spirit world. Its prevalence in the art reflects its spiritual rather than dietary significance.
Figures with animal characteristics. Images of humans with animal attributes, hooves instead of feet, antelope heads, and tails are common across San rock art. These are understood as depictions of the shaman in a state of transformation: taking on the attributes of a power animal during the trance.
Geometric forms. The phosphene patterns that appear during the early stages of an altered state of consciousness are consistent across humans regardless of culture: grids, spirals, dots, nested arcs. These forms appear in San rock art and are understood as depictions of what was seen during the trance entry phase.
The “White Lady” at Brandberg. Under the shamanic interpretation, the central figure at Maack Shelter is not a woman but a shaman in the midst of a trance state. The “white” elements are the same white pigment used across the southern African rock art tradition; the plant and cup held in the figure’s hands may represent implements used in healing ceremonies.
What We Cannot Know
The shamanic interpretation is the best-supported framework currently available, but it should be held with appropriate humility. The San who made these images are gone from Damaraland. The specific meanings of specific images at specific sites are almost certainly more particular and complex than any general framework can capture. Visiting with intellectual curiosity rather than the expectation of definitive answers is the honest approach.
Twyfelfontein vs Brandberg: The Differences
Both sites are San in origin and both are extraordinary. They have distinct characters that reward visiting both if time allows.
Twyfelfontein in Damaraland is the larger and more accessible site. The engravings are at eye level on relatively flat outcrops in an open valley. The guided circuit covers the principal panels in a walk of 90 minutes. The scale is both impressive and manageable.
Die White Lady at Brandberg requires a 45-minute gorge hike to reach a single shelter with a complex painted panel. The experience is more physically involving, the imagery more concentrated, and the setting more dramatic. The paintings are harder to read than the engravings but arguably more sophisticated in composition.
For a visitor with time for only one: Twyfelfontein for its scale and accessibility; Brandberg for the concentrated quality of the single panel and the gorge setting.
Visiting Responsibly
Rock art is irreplaceable. Every mark left by a human hand that is not the original artist is a permanent loss.
At both Twyfelfontein and Brandberg, guided access is mandatory precisely because sites left to unguided visitor traffic deteriorate rapidly. Follow the guide’s instructions on what not to touch. Do not use flash photography; the repeated heat discharge from a flash at close range accelerates surface degradation. Do not rub chalk or any other material into the engraved lines to improve visibility; this is a practice from the early years of Twyfelfontein tourism that caused significant damage and is now entirely prohibited.
Die responsible tourism guide covers visitor ethics across the broader region.