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Friday, Feb 26 9:42am SA time / 5:42pm IA time
This day is cooler, with the neon buzz of an approaching storm. In this luminous world, we climb in a minibus and head out to the “karoo” — a thornveld expanse of land that looks slightly like the American west, yet pockmarked with thorn trees instead of cactus, and covered with an alien braille of tall abrupt hills. David Morris, Head of Archaeology at McGregor Museum and Professor at Sol Plaatje University, sits in front, directing us to a little-known site of ancient rock art; today we will be his guests at this unmapped location. After traveling the long expanse of highway, then the gravel, then the mud and wet clay roads where our minibus wobbles and veers through the quicksand-like ditches, we arrive at “Driekopseiland” (“Three-Headed Island”), a ravine of glaciated rock indented in this desert planetary landscape. We walk down into the deep bank, stepping over baboon prints in the sand, and enter a sunken river and a long snake-like bed of grey rock.
Formed during the “Karoo sequence,” this andesite rock is over three hundred million years old. As we move closer, the rock reveals itself to be patterned with carving after carving of geometric shapes. Unlike the rock art found in the higher areas of this region, these carvings do not depict animals or people. Instead, step after step in the dry heat, we look down at circles with Xs in them, squares containing tightly packed chevrons, triangles, graphs and polygons. Immediately I think “this is the work of aliens” and, as if on cue, David says “many people see these and think extraterrestrials…” He explains that nothing has been confirmed as to the explanation for this art, although his theory revolves around a coming-of-age ceremony for women, and the legend in this area of a “water snake.” The water snake is a powerful creature, protective over certain places, requiring permission for outsiders to roam.
It crosses my mind that performing some ritual for this water snake might be very important now, as we are walking here near the river, on ancient (alien?) drawings. So I ask if there is something specific we can do to appease it. “Take a stone and rub it in your armpit, then throw that stone in the water,” David explains. I think “Well I am definitely doing that.” I pick up a stone and follow the directions, hoping our visit is a welcome one.
The drawings continue down the rock, over and over, no two the same - spirals, crosshatches, concentric circles - there does not seem to be a written language here, but I begin to wonder if maybe these carvers were signing their names, making their personal mark? Down in this river bed, surrounded by eroded cliffs and a patch of trees, I lean down to touch a specific carving that keeps drawing me back. It is a shape with several nested chevrons inside it and an outcropping of squares on one side. A sentence enters my mind, as though heard: maybe this was my name.
We leave the site in a hurry, trying to beat an approaching thunderstorm back into town. The lightning hits the landscape in a definite way, like “THAT’S RIGHT, I’M LIGHTNING” and we speed along as the clouds mount up through the sky like another hallucinogenic neon painting. Someone once told me that the light in South Africa was like being on acid — (!) — and although I’ve never tried the stuff, after having seen all this, I won’t ever have to. I get it now.