Rock-Paintings of 'Eland-Fighting' and 'Eland-Jumping'?

Abstract

Some years ago I drew attention to a rock-painting in Eland Cave, Umhlwasine Valley, which depicts elaborately attired men in close relationship to an apparently bemused eland (Woodhouse, 1964, 1966). I suggested that at a time when game was prolific the technique of hunting might have been developed to a point where it had become a ceremony akin to bullfighting. Such a situation is rendered more likely when one recalls that the eland, most common animal in rockpaintings south of the Limpopo, is 'rather indifferent to other animals, including man' (Sanderson, 1955). At the time of my first observations on this subject I described two hunters, one wearing a large headdress with long streamers trailing behind him and the other a frightening mask with enormous eyes. I went on to write that the eland had been painted with two heads, against one of which a 'rather shadowy' human figure was leaning. Further study of the painting shows that this statement is wrong. The lower of the two heads originally accredited to the eland is actually another large mask worn by the 'rather shadowy' figure which, when this is realized, takes form as a third, elaborately attired, member of the ceremonyif such it is. Another painting of men in close relationship to an eland is to be found at Game Pass, Kamberg (Willcox, 1956), where a man with nonchalantly crossed legs grasps an eland by the tail while another wearing an animal-head mask makes a deep bow to a third figure and gestures towards the first. One might be tempted to deduce that he is drawing attention to the accomplished manner in which the bold action is being performed.