Having identified the subject of formlings through defining their forms and comparing their morphology and decorative attributes against biological phenomena, I state that formlings are representations of termitaria. In a few definitive examples the flying termites are even depicted in association with formlings. In some marginal formlings honeybees’ nests and honeycombs, as studied by Harald Pager, were possibly conflated in the depictions. This probable association augments my argument that termitaria and flying termites are the key subject matter of formlings – exploring the conflations and associated imagery reveals the symbolic spectrum of the subject matter.

In the first part of this chapter I focus on the painting contexts of formlings. My analysis shows that formlings were structured in a manner that adheres to the general manner of San graphic representation in southern Africa. Understanding formlings’ relationships with associated imagery, as individual metaphors in their own right, allows interpretation of their symbolic associations and may help to place an enigmatic image or class of paintings in a category of San life and belief.

Since San rock art is currently approached from a detailed understanding of San ethnography, the second part of this chapter deals with aspects of San belief and cosmology which revolve around termitaria, flying termites and also, as a supplementary metaphoric layer, bees and honey. The significance of the metaphoric links between these insect forms and aspects of San belief and spiritual world view is relevant to unravelling formling painting contexts. In order to comprehend the painting contexts, I review the significance of these insect forms and suggest why they, and not other insects, were chosen for depiction. I also discuss both the mundane and the supernatural values these insects have in San thought in order to elucidate the symbolism of formlings.

In previous chapters I described early views on the formlings and botanical images. Most were derived from perspectives formulated in the early 1900s. The late 1960s were a transitional period ushering in a new paradigm, the ethnographic approach. The earlier subjective and haphazard guessing at the meaning of San images was discredited as researchers began to seek scientifically objective ways of reading and explaining rock art. To understand and assess the changes in approach to formling interpretations over time, it is necessary to examine briefly the series of methodological advances that took place from the late 1960s onwards. New studies introduced rigorous and sensitive ways of analysing and interpreting San rock art. One advantage of scientific rigour was that it demonstrated distinguishing patterns in the choice and combinations of subject matter. This led to the realisation that the imagery was not haphazard but followed a graphic grammar that made the art a coherent system. Eland, for instance, were confirmed to be the dominant species in the Drakensberg and Cederberg, leading to a closer examination of the significance of this theme. This rigorous foundation led to the ethnographically informed understanding of San rock art symbolism. In relation to formlings in particular, it contributed fresh insights that opened up new vistas of knowledge to fill the previously longstanding lacunae.

Tim Maggs and Patricia Vinnicombe developed statistical analyses of rock art in South Africa. Further quantitative analyses were initiated in the 1970s and soon the emphasis was on creating numerical databases. Noteworthy patterns emerged, such as the predominance of certain themes in particular regions and the absence of others. These new approaches eliminated the previous guesswork, subjectivity and unsubstantiated explanations. Importantly, they revealed that the old assertions were essentially false. Nevertheless, such scientific empiricism in turn introduced its own problems. Quantitative numbers of images alone could not reveal anything about their meaning. In order to understand San rock art there was a need to ‘move from quantitative generalisations that sum up the art in many sites to a more particularist position’ that considers different panels in their own right.

My journey to uncover the meanings of two painting themes in San rock art led to insights that have eluded writers for a century, and revealed the depth of San spiritual world view and related forms of symbolic expression. However, I was deeply saddened by realising ever more sharply the fact that this long tradition of expressive culture and the hunter-gatherer way of life have disappeared almost completely, except for a few small and circumscribed places in the Kalahari. This unravelling over time of the millennia-old San hunter-gatherer artistic tradition was in part due to the impact of the arrival of populations with competing ways of life and divergent systems of belief. The archaeological, linguistic, historical, rock art and other forms of evidence indicate that the first group of alien cultures came from the northern fringes of the sub-region, around the riverine environs spanning northern Botswana, the southern borders of both Angola and Zambia, and northwestern Zimbabwe. After adopting the herding culture from the north, this Khoekhoen group of click-language speakers introduced the first domestic animals, sheep and cattle, in various parts of southern Africa (ca 2 000 bp). Then a few centuries later (ca 1 600 bp) came the second wave of immigrants from as far afield as the inter-lacustrine environs of the Central African Great Lakes region. These Bantu-speaking populations brought the mixed farming culture, herding animals and growing crops alongside iron smelting and pottery. These groups shared the landscape for at least another millennium with the hunter-gatherers. They introduced diverse cosmological belief systems, economic pursuits and forms of social organisation that permanently dislocated the original San way of life. However, it was the arrival of European settler communities from the mid-1600s onwards that accelerated the decline and caused the eventual demise of the San hunter-gatherer way of life. Along with its expiry, one of the oldest and most remarkable artistic traditions in the world also disappeared.

As in any rock art tradition, San images served different purposes in symbolic terms. The artists’ intent in communicating symbolism influenced the choice of features as well as the angles and details of their depiction – and it is here that the significance of formlings will be found. The artists’ intention was not to deceive by adding to the subject matter significant features that do not exist in their world of experience. Crucial questions therefore include the following: what is the subject matter of formlings? Which features were chosen for depiction and from which perspectives? As Christopher Chippindale pointed out, the relationship between the shape of the real subject and the shape of the depiction is a complex one. Even the way a painting is oriented may make it look odd, particularly to viewers who are not familiar with picturing manners in a specific cultural and artistic tradition. I approach formlings with this caution in mind and explore possible avenues for perceiving these images.

As the epigraph states, a central methodological problem in interpreting formlings concerns, firstly, their origin (what these ancient images depict), and secondly, their symbolic meaning(s). Formlings are intricate in so far as their interpretation involves these two levels of analysis, but this intricacy is not entirely unique in rock art research. Writers have approached this complication in two different ways. On the one hand, formlings have been interpreted as decorative patterns or simply as abstract designs. This aesthetic view is inconsistent with our understanding of San painting manners, the range of formling contexts and the corroborative San ethnography. The second approach sees formlings as depictions of natural and cultural phenomena; in other words, they have material references. In many early studies this latter approach ended with the identification of somewhat varied and incongruous subject matter that formlings were said to portray. As noted in earlier chapters, these suggested phenomena fell short of the range and complexity of formlings.

Once upon a time, in the remote elemental past of southern Africa, myths concerning San cosmology have it that a trickster deity called Pishiboro first appeared in this world. He emerged from the depths of the earth's subterranean bowels by climbing upwards through a deep waterhole onto this earth. Until his arrival, the carnal world had been characterised by a state of inertia. This was the dramatic beginning of the creation of humankind, natural life forms and landscape features, according to the mythology of the G|wi, one of several San groups of the central Kalahari Desert. In another twist to this creation myth, this foundation of all creation was a culmination of Pishiboro's agonising demise from a fatal puff adder bite to his genitals. His kicking and writhing limbs gouged out the ancient dry valley beds and his decaying body became the rivers, while his black hair created the rain clouds. Today, these pans and dry river beds are called molapos. As a result of Pishiboro's emergence, the G|wi believe that the unfamiliar underworld and this present world of the living are linked ‘through certain deep waterholes’, some of which can still be seen in the arid Kalahari landscape. In other similar San creation myths, deities like Pishiboro ascended into the sky realm, where they reside to this day as sky gods. George Silberbauer writes of the G|wi divinity N!adima, who created the heavens, earth and seasons and is called upon in all matters of religious significance. N!adima is the G|wi's cosmological portrayal of the Great God while Pishiboro is almost invariably presented in their folklore as the earthbound trickster deity.

Core elements of San belief and cosmology include the notions of Great God and supernatural potency, which find strong expression in the healing dance and the daily life of the people. How these spiritual elements are expressed in the rock art is neither simple nor straightforward. Over time, researchers developed means to make the connections between these facets of San expressive culture. Yet to deal with these intricate connections, and in preparation for deciphering formlings and botanical images, we need to understand the basics of San picture making; for example, common ways in which the painters made and structured their imagery. San rock art, as with many prehistoric artistic forms, is largely representational and draws its subject matter principally from physical or natural phenomena. However, the way in which painters achieved the object-pictorial transformation is complex. I examine the manner in which aspects of San rock art are structured in order to understand how symbolism is embedded in graphic terms.

Early researchers, schooled mostly in Western art traditions, viewed San rock art with the expectation that the subject matter of images they considered ‘good’ representations would be readily recognisable and understandable. I argue that judgements of what forms a good or bad depiction are culturally constructed and based on fundamentals built in a particular cultural context and history. There are therefore no universals in the manner in which we perceive or read graphic representations. Consider what would happen if someone accustomed only to Western textual forms were asked to read hieroglyphics, Mongolian or Mandarin language characters. They would not be able to decipher these foreign scripts, let alone the conveyed meaning. Although images are somewhat different, the caution is the same. Our literary culture has encouraged a literal ‘reading’ of images without taking into account cultural rubrics and conventions that may be in sharp contrast to our own systems of representation. So much of our seeing comes from habit and the expectation of the familiar in that which we perceive.

Rightly, Siyakha Mguni, the author of this beautiful and stimulating book, feels that he has ‘uncovered certain hidden mysteries of the San spiritual universe’. Modestly, but again rightly, he adds that he has ‘likely only partially uncovered the possible layers of symbolism’ of his chosen foci – the so-called ‘formlings’ and trees, two hitherto little understood components of a fascinating southern African art.

Insights of this importance do not come suddenly and out of nowhere. Rather, they are milestones along a road with many ups and downs. Discovery, it is said, favours the prepared mind. ‘Mind preparation’ itself is a long and sometimes arduous task. Siyakha gives us glimpses of his journey, which began in 1978 in the Matopo Hills of Zimbabwe, a beautiful region of southern Africa that has been marked by terror and violent clashes as well as delicate images from a bygone age. He found that the ‘place and its tranquil ambience evoke deep time’.

In such situations it is easy to surrender oneself to the contemplation of beauty and also to the puzzles that the more enigmatic images imply. For some, it is almost sacrilege to probe for and expose ‘hidden mysteries’. Are we trespassing on sacred ground, intruding into the innermost thoughts of long gone people? Should we not simply allow the mystery to endure?

Siyakha's personal journey has enabled him to bridge what some people see as a dichotomy. He can, and we feel it on page after page, marvel at the subtlety of thought and beauty of line that we see in the paintings he has chosen for reproduction and, at the same time, lead us to an understanding of what the images meant for those who made them so long ago. Knowledge of how a flower ‘works’ botanically need not erase our sense of wonder. On the contrary, our wonder grows as we learn more and more.

In this book, Siyakha's ‘flowers’ are rock art images that are prominent in Zimbabwe but enigmatic. Some are oval patches of paint, sometimes joined in long lines; several have added details. These are the so-called formlings. Believing that the art was a direct representation of what the San saw around them, some earlier writers thought the oval forms depicted the Victoria Falls, grain bins, shields or other objects that people saw daily.

Cranmer Cooke, one of the most prolific writers on the rock paintings and archaeology in Zimbabwe between the 1950s and 1970s, despaired about the identification and meaning of formlings. I started off similarly, with a sense of trepidation at the enormous task ahead of me as I began my journey of identifying and interpreting this San rock painting theme which, for over a century, had evaded the explanatory efforts of generations of influential southern African archaeologists. They had wrestled with this image category of ancient rock art without a satisfactory explanation and in despair, Cooke had urged ‘whatever conclusion the imagination leads the observer’. After all, he had ‘discussed this form of painting with a number of African tribesmen, but none of them has given me the slightest help in identifying the objects portrayed. Therefore I leave the reader to reach his [sic] own conclusion on these very important but puzzling forms’. In other words, there was no hope of ever understanding the motivation and significance of formlings. Yet as I embarked on this study, I could see a spark of light at the end of the tunnel. Although we may not have adequate answers to all our questions on the nature of things, especially things past, we can enjoy glimpses that we unravel and marvel at as portions of a largely vanished ancient story. I begin this journey by defining, as precisely as possible, the distinctive features of formlings and then recount the methodological steps I took to reach my understanding of their essence and meaning.

One of the leading German prehistorians and ethnographic explorers in the first half of the twentieth century, Leo Frobenius visited southern Africa in his continent-wide expeditions into various parts of Africa in the early 1900s. In the late 1920s, following his wide-ranging study of several cultural aspects of the region, he said with regard to ancient rock art: ‘[O]ddities occur which are completely outside our understanding. There are large forms, shaped like galls or livers, into which human figures are painted.’

From my long voyage of curiously searching the pasts of the land of my birth, two episodes echo vividly in my memory. They both relate to my earliest encounters with the ancient San paintings in the famed Matopo Hills (hereafter Matopo). I return to these experiences shortly. Running along the southwestern margin of Zimbabwe, these hills, which include the 424 km2 Matobo National Park World Heritage Site (Map 2), are famous for their picturesqueness and serenity. Yet little is known about the meaning of ‘Matopo’, a word whose origin is now obscure. To illuminate what is known of this name, I begin with a legend concerning Mzilikazi ka Matshobane, the founder and king of the Ndebele state ca. 1820s–1868. Mzilikazi and his core Nguni group (AbeZansi or ‘People of the South’) hurriedly left Zululand in the early 1820s in the wake of conflict with his political mentor Shaka ka Senzangakhona, who founded the Zulu state in the 1820s. The military skirmishes that ensued became part of a widespread warring period known as mfecane or difaqane in southern African history. In the central plateau of South Africa, Mzilikazi settled among the Sotho, Tswana and other polities, some of which he fought for several years. Among other polities they fought were the trekboers who, establishing their dominance in the Transvaal region, eventually pushed Mzilikazi's nation northwards across the Limpopo River. In time they settled in the southwestern portion of Zimbabwe.

Following many years of their northward drift from Zululand, the amaNdebele settled in the northern fringes of Matopo in the late 1830s. They rapidly exerted political influence in the surrounding territories and exercised overlordship over the abaNyubi, amaLozwi, amaKalanga and other communities they found on the plateau. Nearly all these groups are now part of the larger Ndebele polity, but their cultural and linguistic elements are discernible in Ndebele culture and vice versa. Very little in Ndebele culture suggests their interaction with hunter-gatherers of this region. By this time the bulk of original hunter-gatherers had long gone, as is known from the archaeological studies.