African Shamans, Rock Painting

Rock art played an important role in ritual practice among southern African hunter-gatherer communities. Painting and engraving traditions developed over the last 20,000 years into a highly sophisticated way of expressing complex beliefs about the supernatural world. 

Rock art was the preserve of medicine people, or shamans, and had two functions: as a means to enter the supernatural world and record the shaman's experiences in that world.

Travel to the spirit world. The shaman prepared to enter the realm of the spirits by achieving a state of trance or altered consciousness. This could be done by dancing to rhythmic clapping or chanting or hyperventilation, dehydration, sensory deprivation or intense concentration.

There is no evidence that shamans used drugs or other artificial means to induce trance, although this is possible. The shaman carried out important tasks while in the natural realm, such as healing the sick, making rain and communicating with powerful spirit forces. 

The Image above is the famous 'dancing kudu' rock engraving at Twyfelfontein, which is surrounded by geometric patterns chipped into the surrounding rock, Geometric riddles.

The shaman’s vision became disturbed at the start of trance, and he would 'see' patterned flashes of light. Produced in the brain, these flashes are also known as entoptic images or images ‘in the eye’. They are depicted in the seemingly abstract geometric images in the rock art. Meanders, dots, lines, grids, spirals and whorls resemble entoptic or inner-eye images recorded in neurophysiological experiments. Although entoptic images are similar for all people in the world, the associations formed in a state of trance are contextual. 

The shaman fuses his hallucinatory visions with images of animals and other potent spiritual symbols.

It is likely that making the engravings helped to prepare the shaman for a state of trance. The repetitive chipping at the rock and the monotonous sound could have contributed to mental concentration. Perilous journey. 

Entering into the stare of trance, the shaman would experience a variety of physical sensations: he might feel as if his legs are growing unnaturally long, or that he is rising from the ground. He would shiver and struggle to control his movements, sometimes collapsing on the ground with a gushing nose-bleed. This second stage of trance was known as the ‘little death’, the moment of entering the spirit realm. 

Transformation. Following the death-like stage, the shaman would take on the form of a supernatural creature.   This ability to enter the supernatural world and return alive was a rare gift not possessed by everyone. Shamans were extraordinary men and women, who left an exceptional artistic legacy. About 35,000 years ago, some our ancestors who are well established in South and Central Africa began to express their artistic prowess.

This might be a familiar animal, such as a giraffe, elephant or lion, one that has special powers such as to heal or make rain.

The evidence is from the elegance of prehistoric African art unearthed in southern Africa, presently located in the Pretoria Museum, approximately 30,000 years old. Cut by flint stone tools by prehistoric indigenous Africans. In addition, was the reconstruction of a stone age African skull-cast, such African lived during the same period as the artist who made the original cast about 25,000 BCE. To

To view a Prophetic Sharman from South Africa please watch this video, Credo Mutwa - Visions of The Future and draw your own conclusions.

Ancient America, Brazil, Mexico, USA

 Findings of Human remains in Mesoamerica and South America: The oldest of these are of the Australoid racial type, the next oldest are of South-Asian Polynesian racial type, these are much older than anything in North America.   

This indicates that the migration pattern of the first settlers of the Americas was Not from North America going south – but rather, from South America to North America. Then of course there are the Olmec – the people who brought civilization to the Americas with their Technology, Art and culture. When all the new information is compiled it is clear that there was not one peopling of the Americas, but rather, there was at least five.

DNA: Wendel, Schnabel, and Seelanan (1995).

Pedra Furada Brazil

This indicates that the migration pattern of the first settlers of the Americas was Not from North America going south – but rather, from South America to North America.

Then of course there are the Olmec – the people who brought civilization to the Americas with their Technology, Art and culture. When all the new information is compiled it is clear that there was not one peopling of the Americas, but rather, there was at least five. For more than 100 years, researchers have claimed that there were very early human sites in the tropical forests of eastern South America.

This indicates that the migration pattern of the first settlers of the Americas was Not from North America going south – but rather, from South America to North America.

Then of course there are the Olmec – the people who brought civilization to the Americas with their Technology, Art and culture.

When all the new information is compiled it is clear that there was not one peopling of the Americas, but rather, there was at least five.

For more than 100 years, researchers have claimed that there were very early human sites in the tropical forests of eastern South America. Pedra Furada includes a collection of rock shelters used for thousands of years by human populations. Site investigators found stone tools and charcoal hearths at the earliest levels. The first excavations yielded artefacts with Carbon-14 dates of 48,000 to 32,000 years B.C.E. Repeated analysis has confirmed this dating, carrying the range of dates up to 60,000 B.C.E. Archaeological levels that are well excavated yield dates between 32,160 ± 1,000 years B.C.E., and 17,000 ± 400 B.C.E. The collection of Stone Age artefacts includes darts and atlatls but no arrows or bows.

Unlike Clovis sites, those in Brazil include painted caves and rock shelters. 

Food remains include nuts, legumes, fish, shellfish, and small game animals. Among the artefacts are triangular, sometimes stemmed points but no fluted points, (points referrers to spear and arrow tips). The newly dated sites include Caverna da Pedra Pintada, Santana de Riacho, and Boquete in Brazil. News-Story: Brasilia (AFP), 09-10-2013. A new exhibit in Brazil showcases artefacts dating as far back as 30,000 years ago -- throwing a wrench in the commonly held theory humans first crossed to the Americas from Asia a mere 12,000 years ago.The 100 items on display in Brasilia, including cave paintings and ceramic art, depict animals, ceremonies, hunting expeditions -- and even scenes from the sex lives of this ancient group of early Americans.

The artefacts come from the Serra da Capivara national park in Brazil's North-eastern Piaui state, on the border of the Amazon and Atlantic Forests, which attracted the hunter-gatherer civilization that left behind this hoard of local art. Since the 1970s, Franco-Brazilian archaeologist Niede Guidon has headed a mission to carry out large-scale excavation of Piaui's interior.  

"It's difficult to think there exists a site anywhere with a higher concentration of cave art," the 80-year-old Guidon told AFP. 

Other traces of the civilization include charcoal remains of structured fires, explained Guidon, who hails from Sao Paulo. "To date, these are the oldest traces" of human existence in the Americas, she emphasized. 

The widely held theory has suggested human beings only reached the Americas some 12,000 years ago from Asia, crossing the Bering Strait to reach Alaska.  Some archaeologists contend flaked pebbles at the Brazilian sites are not evidence of a crude, human-made fire hearth made some 40 millennia ago, but are rather geofacts -- a natural stone formation, not a man-made one. 

But Guidon said she believes the Serra dwellers may have come originally from Africa, and she said the cave art provides compelling evidence of early human activity. The paintings are estimated to date back some 29,000 years, she said, noting: "When it began in Europe and Africa, it did here too." Other sites, including Valsequillo in Mexico and Monte Verde in Chile, also indicate the presence of communities tens of thousands of years ago.

These sites have led archaeologists to speculate that peoples travelled various routes to reach the Americas and at different stages, archeologist Gisele Daltrini Felice told AFP. Scientific analysis of early skull finds in the US has often been halted by Native American custom which assumes that any ancient remains involve their ancestors and must be handed over.  However, this evidence that another race may have pre-dated Native Americans could strengthen legal challenges from researchers to force access to such remains.

Archaeologists:  Niede Guidon , Gisele Daltrini Felice