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Woodhouse, B., 1990. Rhinoceros on the rocks. REF Journal 3: 24-28, figs. 1-4

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Location: Africa - Southern Africa
Subject: Culture - Countries
Species: African Rhino Species


Original text on this topic:
South Africa and Zimbabwe. The fact that the black rhinoceros was cornered and shot in the ruins of an Iron Age village is interesting, but of even greater interest is the fact that adjacent to many of these ruins were, and still are, some of the finest artistic representations of the rhinoceros ever made. When Harris was in the act of killing his ?very large' prey, he was probably close to works that would have appealed equally to the artistic side of his nature which was demonstrated in his own paintings of the animals that he took such pleasure in hunting.
The representations of the rhinoceros in the vicinity of the Iron Age ruins were engraved or incised into the surface of rocks lying flat on the gently undulating plains of the Highveld. They were what we now refer to as petroglyphs or, more informally, rock engravings. A number of examples have been removed to museums for fear of vandalism and notable collections may be viewed in the Transvaal Museum in Pretoria and an open Air museum in the Johahnesburg Zoo where the immediate environment is very much the same as that in which they were originally created.
Experiments have established that the outline of the animals had probably been made with a flake of the same rock as that on which they are inscribed. The draughtsmanship is excellent and it is clear that the prehensile upper lip of the black rhinoceros was carefully noted by the prehistoric artist. The browsing habits were also noted: one engraving includes a frond of vegetation protruding from the mouth of the rhinoceros while another includes the trunk and branches of a tree that has been stripped of its foliage.
The manner in which the black rhinoceros carries its head high is a feature of several engravings and the rather ill-tempered nature of the beast has been well communicated in spite of the comparatively simple technique.
In a particularly fine example from the Magaliesburg district, a human figure, apparently without arms, is superimposed on a galloping rhino which has a very vindictive expression. The lack of arms may indicate that the man is facing the animal and is using his arms and hands in front of him, possibly to draw a bow, but this is surt-nise and the explanation for the man's association with the rhino may be snore profound - perhaps in the realm of totemism.
In another example there is no doubt that a man has been gored by a rhino - clearly an actual event recorded as a warning to those who coveted the tasty meat of the animal which the traveller Francis Galton had compared to veal.
Unlike the ?rain-elephants' of my previous article, there are no positive examples of a rain- rhinoceros but there is one candidate where two curved outlines rise from the animal's back. These could be interpreted as being similar to the cloud lines associated with many rain- elephants - especially one at the Somerby site in Zimbabwe.
In the Klerksdorp district is a particularly fine example of a galloping rhinoceros executed with a much broader outline, possibly using the pecking technique common in that district. The technique probably involved the tise of an adze with a hard stone or metal tip. This particular petrogly ph has been declared a national monument - a status which is certainly justified by the excellence of the workmanship and the artistic insight and observation of the artist which have combined to produce a masterpiece. Another masterpiece from the Schweizer Reneke District records a rhinoceros covered with birds - presumably the red-billed oxpecker which feeds on the ticks living on the rhino's hide.
Paintings of rhinos are not as numerous as engravings, probably because the animal itself was not as numerous in the mountains valleys of the typical painting country as in the plains and foothills where the petroglyphs were made. Nevertheless, there are some notable exceptions. The most notable is a very large outline painting in red ochre which provides quite a shock when one has struggled through the surrounding underergrowth to a small shelter under a granite boulder in the Chibi area of Zimbabwe.
At least that was how it seemed to my wife and I when we photographed it in 1971. It is 1,8 m in length but its rear end has been substantially obliterated by water running down the rockface. The front horn is huge and the ears large and pointed. The head is held low and although the draughtsmanship is not as good as the petroglyphs of the black rhino in the Transvaal, I am inclined to think that this painting is modelled on a white rhinoceros. It should be borne in mind that the difference between the two species is not really their colour - they are both grey - but their size, habits, habitat and physical features such as the lips and ears.
The particularly long front horn which is also a hallmark of the white rhinoceros is shown to advantage in a painting in a dull brownisli-red monochrome silhouette at the site of Mrewa not far from the road between Harare and Mtoko. It is painted in company with an elephant, warthogs and a rain-elephant.
Nearer to Harare, in the Lake McIlwaine nature reserve, two rhinos are painted with an elephant and a kudu and in the Concession district, a black rliino in silhouette is painted with a crocodile in red outline.
Perhaps the most typical painting of a white rhinoceros is in a very small but well-known shelter not far from Rhodes' grave at World's View in the Matopos. It takes a while to identify the outline among other paintings of wildebeest in the same style and hunters in silhouette, but once it has been spotted the long front horn and pendulous lower lip make identification sure.
The association of at least one rhinoceros painting with a rain-elephant has been mentioned, as has the possible cloud outlines in one of the petroglyphs. Many rain-animals are of indeterminate species, having features that recall the eland one minute and the hippopotamus the next. A concept like that of an animal that lived in the clouds and sent the rain was obviously capable of many individual interpretations bv the artists who depicted it. One typical example in the Wepener district of the Orange Free State was originally recorded in the 1870s by George William Stow, but he noted it as being in the Ladybrand district so that it disappeared from view until Neil Lee and I rediscovered it in 1970, approximately one hundred years later. It has something of the appearance of a rhinoceros but its legs are too slender and both the horn on its nose and the slender horns on the top of its head may have been later additions, Looking at it now, I am reasonably convinced that it is a rain animal as is a rare rhinoceros from the Ficksburg district.
It should be mentioned that veteran rock art enthusiast Ginger Townley Johnson recorded a rhinoceros family scene, mother and baby near Clanwilliam in the Cape; that Professor Murray Schoonraad recorded a white rhinoceros painted in orange outline near Nuanetsi in Zimbabwe. Mike English on the staff of the National Parks Board of South Africa recorded the somewhat fragmentary remains of a rhino painted in yellow along with enigmatic circles which may represent honeycombs.

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