Rock art in Africa
Subtitle: mythology and legend
By: Jean-Loïc Le Quellec ; translated by Paul Bahn.
Edition: English-language ed.
Publisher: Flammarion; Distributed in North America by Rizzoli International
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Paris; [New York]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 212
Subjects: Rock paintings -- Africa
Description: "Rock Art in Africa: Mythology and Legend provides a panorama of the great parietal assemblages of the whole continent. The author places the works in the context of their discovery by the great explorers, and then deciphers their hidden meanings, discarding erroneous traditional readings that have often been too easily adopted, and proposing new interpretations. He evokes tales and legends, which make it possible to achieve a partial elucidation of these prehistoric images and to reconstruct the mythology of the remote, or not so remote, past; he also analyses the myths that these works of art in their turn have aroused within Western culture."--Jacket.
Notes: Translated from the French.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 206-211).
Table of contents: title: The Sahara; title: Elias, mast of the rain and guardian of the desert; title: Lhote and the lotori; title: Levi-Strauss in the Sahara; title: A very old "story of the eye"; title: The "swimmers" of The English patient; title: Elephantine loves; title: The intertropical zone; title: In Mali: images of Dogon country; title: In Burkina Faso: weapons, reptiles, and goblin prints; title: In Nigeria: "ceremony mountains," pictograms, and lithophones; title: Cameroon, Central African republic, Congo, Gabon: circles and lines, throwing knives, and chameleons; title: Democratic republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Angola: "fetish stones," tattooed pebbles, sand images; title: Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia: ancestor cult and Nyau masquerades; title: Azania; title: Boophilia in the kingdom of coffee; title: Attempts at attribution; title: The magical drawings of the Sandawe; title: Ethnogony and images of the dead; title: Caves of spirits and rainmakers; title: Funerary signs; title: Harla, Germans, Portuguese, and other savages; title: Antecedents, new uses, meanings; title: Southern Africa; title: First approaches; title: The myth of the "white lady"; title: Corpus and statistics; title: From image to myth; title: Dates; title: The quest for meaning; title: A few doubts..."; title: Trance of therianthropes or dance of masked men?; title: Not just for the San!; title: The legend of the blue ostriches; title: Mermaids, water maidens, and aquatic dead people; title: The power of the eland; title: Shamans of mythical beings?; title: The story of the frog-girl.