Evening star., 1954-05-05
Ancient African Art
Linked to White Man
Paintings Believed Work
Of Early Troders

peOple0 branoDerg Mountains are rocks
and sheer granite faces of hills covered
by elaborate paintings in many colors
made by prehistoric Caucasians at least
5000 years ago in the earliest days of
the earliest civilizations of the Near
East.
One Of the strangest anthropological
discoveries Of generation is described
by Rev. Henri Breuil of the College de
France at Paris in the Anthropologic
Quarterly published by Catholic Uni
versity here. Father Breuil is recog-
nized as probably the foremost living
authority on the elaborate paintings
on cave walls in Southern France and
Spain, supposedly made by men of the
old Stone Age at least 10 millenniums
ago.
The fantastic rock painting of Da-
MARYLAND on the edge of the great
Kalahari Desert have been known for
about a half century. but have been
attributed to African aboriginals until
DR.. Breuil'S studies, carried out largely
through arrangements of Marshal Jan
SmutS. former South African Premier,
starting from the time the French
priest was an exile from the NaziS in
Portugal during the last war. His find
1ngS are now announced for the first
time.
Linked to Egypt.
These rock paintings, he found, are
basically those of white men and con-
tain features which connect them di-
rectly with ancient Egypt and possibly
the region Of the Euphrates. In some
cases they had been painted over by
negroid peoples who came into the
country much later.
The pictures showing the unmistak-
able white features are of hunting
scenes and apparently of extremely
weird religious or magical ceremonies.
Dominating them all are Is rocks bear
ing the pictured story of the White
Lady-presumably powerful goddess.
queen or enchantress of the ancient
people. This may well rank among the
masterpieces of primitive art.
"The paintings themselves" Father
Breuil reports. depict a number Of
events-an attack by column of emf
grants armed with triple curved bows
on a native encampment, the military
organization of these emigrants many
times represented with fiber or skin
helmets, and the return of their soldiers
with columns Of prisoners, especially
women of whom they undoubtedly had
an insufficient number. Many of the
foreigners with their reddish hair styled
in the page boy manner appear to be
European types, often Semitic. and
they are frequently portrayed with pale
faces. Their prisoners generally have
INn YNrNf7ln rf 6n 10 Oly Nv,n
seems to depict the purchase of wom-
an from two natives, obviously against
her will.
ION one rock can be seen mourners
confiding the body of one of their own.
wrapped in hide. to internal spirits.
These monsters reappear quite fire.
quently in the paintings with all sorts
of transitional stages between them
and other enthusiastically men
with pelvis and vertebrae protruding
who take possession of human cadavers
and cut them into pieces.
"White Lady" Pageant.
"Rut no scene has the fullness and
majesty of the procession of the White
Lady, who is of pronounced Mediter-
ranean type. She is armed with drawn
bow and arrow and holds sort of cup
or lotus flower. CARRIED in close-fitting
attire and with sumptuously decorated
headdress, she is preceded and fol-
lowed by figures of various races, one Of
which is naked and has onyx horns.
young men who appear to be pages
accompany her. She is followed by a
macahre figure, and by others carrying
riOl,1kc I'm oic v,boa1c\ m iy,dy,na roiy,
A group Of youthful dancers follow her
and archers bring up the rear. Many
retouchings and reStorations can be
observed, several of which are second
ary transformations of the Mediter-
ranean type into Negro profile. On each
side of the procession long lines of
antelopes, urged on by semihuman
spirits, run parallel It is undoubtedly
the exceptional sanctuary of a race
whose other rocks only picture daily
occupations or mirror the more COM
monplace aspects of their customs"
End of Trade Route.
The art type, Father Breuil says, is
quite suggestive of the earliest known
Egyptian art, but sufficiently different
so that it cannot be put in the same
category. The most plausible explana-
ton, he believes, is that these rocks
were painted by some white people
whose art forms had common ances-
try with those of Egypt.
The Damaraland mountains he be-
ieveS, may have represented the end
of trade route which extended the
entire length of the African continent
and over which some sort of contact
between north and south was kept up
for many centuries in a period when
the climate was quite different from
that Of today. Then the deserts forme~.
The southern migrants were cut or
from their homeland and eventually
absorbed or killed by the negroid popu-
lation.
Determinations of age have been
made for Father Breuil at the Univer-
sity of Chicago by means of radioactive
carbon analysis. These indicate an age
of little more than 5000 years. The
objects analyzed, however. cannot be
associated with certainty with the
painted rocks. But, he concludes, "a
date long prior to the Christian era is
not at all unlikely for the painters in
Damaraland."