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Southern African Humanities

Vol. 19

Pages 83–101

Pietermaritzburg

December, 2007

|Kaggen’s code: paintings of moths in southern African hunter-gatherer rock art Jeremy C. Hollmann Natal Museum, P. Bag 9070, Pietermaritzburg, 3200 South Africa & University of KwaZulu-Natal, School of Anthropology, Gender & Historical Studies, P. Bag X01, Scottsville, 3209 South Africa; [email protected] ABSTRACT This paper explores the possible meanings of uncommon hunter-gatherer rock paintings at Eland Cave in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and at Raiders 1 in Raiders Gorge, Brandberg/Daureb, Erongo Region, Omaruru District, Namibia, that have been identified as moths. The paintings are interpreted in terms of |Xam Bushman beliefs in which the appearance of a moth at the family fire heralds the killing of an animal on the hunting ground. These beliefs are part of a more general ‘code’ of hunting practices aimed to ensure successful kills of game animals ‘owned’ and protected by |Kaggen, the |Xam Bushman trickster deity. Central to this interpretation is the hypothesis that hunter-gatherer rock paintings may have been perceived as supernaturally potent images. According to this scenario, the painters modelled the moth paintings on aspects of the appearance and behaviour of certain moths and positioned these on the rock face in certain ways in an attempt to create an ambience in which the balance, usually loaded in the hunted animal’s favour, is in the direction of the hunters instead. KEY WORDS: hunter-gatherer rock art, moths, Eland Cave, Drakensberg, Brandberg, Daureb.

Much has been written about the supernatural potency of southern African huntergatherer imagery and its relation to the work of healing and rain-making (e.g. Dowson 1998; Lewis-Williams 1981, 1982; Lewis-Williams & Pearce 2004), yet the possible role of rock art images in the manipulation of the environment, especially the creation of ‘luck’ in hunting, is under-researched. Although hunting scenes that depict humans stalking or killing prey are rare (Lewis-Williams 1981; Pager 1971; Vinnicombe 1976), paintings of game animals such as eland, as well as figures with hunting equipment, abound in southern African rock art. It has been argued (correctly I believe) that some hunting scenes depict the hunting of supernatural potency (Eastwood & Eastwood 2006: 165) or even the ‘regeneration of life forces’ (Dowson 2007: 56). I suggest that notions of game control are more subtle, at least in those rock art regions (South Africa’s southeastern mountains and parts of Namibia) with which I am familiar. Paintings of human– antelope combinations, for example, may be entities with the power to control the movements of game (Challis 2005; Hollmann 2003: 31–7). Tilman Lenssen-Erz (1994, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2004) has suggested that paintings of springbok (Antidorcas marsupialis) in the Brandberg/Daureb1 may have been attempts to manipulate the ecological balance for hunters in the region. Certainly, anthropologists and rock art researchers have long recognised that ‘hunting’ is a religious matter (Biesele 1993: 90–2; Douglas 1957: 51; Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978; Ridington 1978; Turner 1967: 293–4). Mary Douglas goes so far as to say that the significance of hunting in cosmological terms ‘far surpasses its primary object— the supply of meat’ (Douglas 1957: 51). ‘Hunting,’ says Megan Biesele (1997: 483) of 1

I use this name after Lenssen-Erz (2007). ‘Brandberg’ is the colonial name for this inselberg. Daureb is the masculine form of the Damara word meaning ‘the burning one’.

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SOUTHERN AFRICAN HUMANITIES, VOL. 19, 2007

Fig. 1. Paintings of moths occur at two southern African sites: Eland Cave, in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg (South Africa), and Raiders 1 in the Brandberg/Daureb (Namibia). Ethnography from Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd’s |Xam teachers is used to explore the meanings of the moth paintings. Khwe and G|wi beliefs about a deity that owns and controls game animals are essentially similar to those of the |Xam and suggest that such principles were widespread.

the Ju|’hoansi, ‘is an activity for which special power must be cultivated through supernatural disciplines’. Hunters do not simply go out and shoot an animal—they find and kill animals because supernatural forces permit it (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 271–85; Hewitt 1986: 195–6; Hollmann 2002: 567; Lewis-Williams 1981: 55–67, 2000: 249–52; Vinnicombe 1975: 388–91, 1976: 178, 180). In this paper I explore the possibility that some rock art images may have played a part in creating favourable circumstances for hunting. I use nineteenth-century |Xam ethnography about ‘moths of the game’ to propose interpretations for hunter-gatherer rock paintings of moths at Eland Cave in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park, KwaZuluNatal, South Africa (Hollmann 2002; Pager 1971) (Figs 1–6), and at Raiders 1, a rock art shelter in Namibia’s Brandberg/Daureb in the Erongo Region, Omaruru District (Pager 2000) (Figs 1, 7–11). My argument is therefore based on ethnographic analogy with its associated strengths and weaknesses. One cannot understand artefacts from the past without recourse to analogy (see Wylie’s 2002 discussion of analogy and archaeology). In the case of southern African rock art studies, one can draw (amongst many other sources) on the Bleek and Lloyd manuscripts, an exceptional resource (Bleek


HOLLMANN: |KAGGEN’S CODE

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Fig. 2. Eland Cave, the largest painted site in the area, is located in the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg Park. (Photograph courtesy of Rock Art Research Institute, University of the Witwatersrand.)

1924; Bleek & Lloyd 1911, 2005; Deacon & Dowson 1996; Hewitt 1986; Hollmann 2004; James 2001; Lewis-Williams 2000; Skotnes 1996, 1999, 2007). On the other hand, an analogy is a process of reasoning from apparently parallel cases and therein lies its weakness—the judgement of just how similar the cases may be. For instance, the |Xam material that I use here is situated in a time, place, and social context that is removed from both the rock art sites discussed here (Fig. 1), nor do we know whether the artists at these two disparate sites (who were not |Xam) held similar beliefs about moths. The argument is therefore vulnerable to dismissal as monolithic and ahistorical, mere ‘guesswork’ (see Argyle’s 1990 criticism of an interpretation of rock paintings of crabs) or ethnographic ‘snap’. Admittedly, there is great variety in the form and content of Bushman beliefs (e.g. Guenther 1999: 226–47), but there are also commonalities in Bushman beliefs and practices regarding hunting, healing, and cosmology that extend widely in time and space (Lewis-Williams 1981; Lewis-Williams & Biesele 1978). Whether the two painting communities had beliefs about moths of the game is a moot point, but I think it plausible to suppose that the communities involved in making the moth paintings would, like the |Xam, have believed in a trickster deity who ‘owned’ the animals and guarded them from hunters (see Guenther 1999: 62–3; Köhler 1973: 251; Silberbauer 1965: 95 for similar beliefs amongst the G|wi and Khwe). As was the case with |Xam ‘respect’ and ‘avoidance’ conduct, the disposition of this deity may have been offset in these communities by codes of behaviour and practices to secure and safeguard an animal kill. And so, although the arguments I develop are exploratory, my use of |Xam ethnography to develop ideas about the moth paintings at Eland Cave and Raiders 1 is still, I believe, a worthwhile exercise.


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Fig. 3. The moth at Eland Cave is approximately 50 mm in length and 100 mm wide and is painted in white. (Photograph by J. C. Hollmann.)

Fig. 4. Comparison of moths with the Eland Cave moth painting: (a) an example of a feather or plume moth (family: Pterophoridae): it has too few plumes to match the painting of the moth at Eland Cave (after Skaife 1987: fig. 253); (b) tracing of the moth image at Eland Cave; (c) the wings of alucitid moths are divided into many plumes and strongly resemble those of the moth painting at Eland Cave (drawing after Common 1990: fig. 106.1).



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Fig. 5. The moth painting at Eland Cave was made underneath a ledge of rock and can only be seen if the viewer approaches the rock face and looks upwards underneath the ledge. This positioning suggests that the painters intended the image to be concealed from casual observation. (Photograph by J. C. Hollmann.)

Fig. 6. This image was also painted under the rock ledge, about 300 mm from the Eland Cave moth painting. It has been variously identified as a map and an underground bee’s nest, but its significance is not known. (Photograph by J. Simpson.)


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I begin by describing the paintings at both sites. I then discuss |Xam Bushman beliefs about moths of the game and locate these within the broader context of |Xam hunting practices and beliefs about hunting. Finally, I consider how the artists may have used the images and the rock face upon which they were placed, as a means of influencing the supernatural forces believed to govern success in hunting. THE IMAGE AT ELAND CAVE

The painting at Eland Cave is of an ellipsoid form in white paint, with two roughly equal-sized painted projections at one end, and with long painted lines on either side. The image is about 50 mm long and 100 mm wide (Fig. 3). The way in which these features are combined suggests strongly that the image represents an insect. More specifically, the overall shape of the image points to the Lepidoptera, the insect order to which moths and butterflies belong (D. Kroon pers. comm. 2000; Skaife 1987: 171, 189). The ellipsoid shape represents the creature’s head, thorax, and abdomen; the projections at the one end are the insect’s antennae, and the long, painted lines on either side of the body are the wings. This identification is not unprecedented—over thirty years ago Harald Pager, who traced many of the images at Eland Cave, described the image as a ‘feather moth’, but did not specify to which moth family he thought it belonged (Pager 1971: fig. 10). By virtue of the plume-like divisions depicted in the painting, it is possible be more precise: there are only two known groups of moths in southern Africa that possess plume-like wings, the Pterophoridae and the Alucitidae (Skaife 1987: 189) (Fig. 4). Some moth species of the Pterophoridae are known popularly as ‘feather’ or ‘plume’ moths (Skaife 1987: 178), but these have fewer plumes than depicted in the Eland Cave painting. Alucitid moths, on the other hand, have about twice the number of plumes as pterophorid moths, and resemble the Eland Cave painting much more closely (Common 1990: 325; D. Kroon pers. comm. 2000; Skaife 1987: 189). This suggests strongly that the image at Eland Cave was modelled on an alucitid moth. Although I do not suggest that the artists simply painted whatever they saw, alucitid moths may well have occurred—and probably still do—at Eland Cave (D. Kroon pers. comm. 2000; see Common 1990: 327 for a summary of alucitid moth biology). They commonly rest with their wings outspread and closely appressed to any convenient, flat surfaces (Common 1990: 327). Intriguingly too, the moth image is located out of direct sight under a ledge of rock about 1 800 mm high and 500 mm deep (Fig. 5). It is close to images that are themselves obscure: about 300 mm to the right of the moth is a painting interpreted by York Mason as a map (1933: 134) and by Pager (1971) as an underground bee’s nest (Fig. 6). Approximately 200 mm to the left of the moth is a reclining antelope next to a triangular shape that may represent a hunting bag. My focus here is on the moth painting. THE PAINTINGS AT RAIDERS 1

Raiders 1 is an isolated site prominently located on the eastern edge of Raiders Gorge (Pager 2000) (Fig. 7). In contrast to the single moth image at Eland Cave, at Raiders 1 there are two sets of moth-like paintings. One set consists of four similar bilaterally symmetrical forms with an inverted V-shape at one end while the other end is rounded (Figs 8, 9). No additional details are visible. The angle of the wings, together with the rounded shape at the other end, suggests that the forms depict moths and not butterflies (Pager 2000: 77).



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The second set of moth-like motifs is about 2 m to the right of the first (Figs 10, 11). These paintings are clearer and more detailed. In addition to robust outspread wings, three of the images have ellipsoid shapes that resemble a combined head, thorax, and abdomen. One can therefore confidently identify them as moths. Lenssen-Erz notes that the wings of the uppermost moth may show a pattern in two shades of red (Pager 2000). In addition, there is a single small white dot on the wings of three of the four moth paintings.2 These details may be identifying features. Thus at Raiders 1 there seem to be depictions of two different kinds of moth. The features of the moth painting at Eland Cave are unmistakable and a layperson could probably identify its affiliation from a field guide. At Raiders 1 the artists clearly differentiated between the two groups of moth, but it may not be possible to assign either of the moth groupings to a contemporary taxon. Lepidopterist Martin Krüger (pers. comm. 13 August 2007) suggests that the paintings are ‘stylized’ and do not depict a species. Lack of a definitive scientific identification is not crucial to my argument, however; it is nonetheless clear that the paintings at Raiders 1 depict two kinds of moths. |XAM BUSHMAN BELIEFS ABOUT ‘MOTHS OF THE GAME’3

Diä!kwain relates how, as they sat around the household fire at night (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 16: 5247–53, original parentheses): Our mothers . . . told us about it, they exclaimed ‘Behold ye! Why is it that the moth does not a little come (?) to our fire tonight? Father will (?) shoot game, for, the moth comes (?) to our fire tonight . . . a gemsbok is (?) the one which will be wounded, for, ye are those who see, it is a gemsbok’s moth. Things which live with the game, they are those which are wont to come to our fire, at the time when we think we will kill a gemsbok . . . they come to tell us about it, that, we shall put the flesh of the game to roast at the fire . . . if we are a person who knows, we know, that, game will (?) die, if the moth comes to our fire.’

Thus, the appearance of a moth coming to a fire at night foretells the successful hunting of an animal. Diä!kwain continues his narrative with another example (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 16: 5253–5, round brackets indicate original parentheses): ‘When our fathers will kill a quagga [zebra], a black moth they [sic] come to our fire.’ And our mothers said, when they saw that black [moths] were those that came to our fire, our mothers said: ‘Look ye! Why is it (that) black [moths], they come to (?) our fire, tonight? A quagga is the one which will be wounded, for quagga’s [moths] are those which come to (?) the fire tonight.’

Finally, there is a third instance in which a moth is a harbinger of death of a game animal (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 16: 5255–5257, round brackets indicate original parentheses): Our mothers did thus at another time, about black moths, which resemble the ostrich, our mothers exclaimed (?), they said: ‘An ostrich is the one which will be wounded, for, ye are those who see these ostrich’s moths which come to (?) the fire, they are.’

Diä!kwain had more to say about ostrich moths in a later recording session (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 18: 5390–405) entitled ‘A Bushman belief about a moth 2

3

The photograph by Erz reproduced in Figure 10 shows a small white dot on the left wing of image 0144 (the lowest lefthand moth), but Pager’s (2000) tracing does not include this detail. Instead, he has a dot on the right-hand moth at bottom right (image 0145); this feature is not visible in Erz’s photograph. The |Xam material recorded in the Bleek and Lloyd manuscripts seems to be the only Bushman ethnography about game moths—research among a G|wi community in Botswana (Nonaka 1996: 33–5, 38–9) mentions moths only as sources of food and as playthings.


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Fig. 7. Raiders 1, the rock art site in the Brandberg/Daureb that hosts two sets of moth-like paintings. (Photograph by Marie-Theres Erz. Copyright: Heinrich Barth Institute.)

called /goro, the coming of which to the fire at night foretells the slaying of an ostrich by one of the men (or the finding of ostrich eggs)’. Lloyd included a note that this ostrich moth was identified as Celoena renisigma Walker,4 but does not state who made the identification of the specimen as an ‘ostrich’s moth’ nor where the specimen was found. The specimen of Celoena renisigma may have been housed at the South African Museum (now Iziko) in Cape Town, as it is known that Bleek and Lloyd’s Bushman teachers visited this institution and identified various plants and animals. In this extract, Diä!kwain mentions two additional details regarding moths of the game (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 18: 5396–7): it would come and burn itself in our fire, if it knew that meat were coming yonder to our hut. It does this, before we know that we shall kill anything. 4

This name is now considered to be a junior, subjective synoym for Tycomarptes inferior (Guenée, 1852) (Noctuidae: Noctuinae: Hadenini). Martin Krüger (pers. comm. 6 August 2007) describes this moth as ‘a rather common and widespread little moth’.



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Fig. 8. The first set of four similar bilaterally symmetrical forms from Raiders 1. Each comprises an inverted V-shape at one end while the other end is rounded. These forms are characteristic enough to interpret them as moths. (Photograph by Marie-Theres Erz. Copyright: Heinrich Barth Institute.)

Later he observes that (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 18: 5402) the moth does not come to our fire at the time when the moth knows that father shoots the ostrich but goes quite away leaving our fire to which it came.

Diä!kwain seems to be saying that by the time the shooting has taken place, the moth has already left the fire. This mention of the moth leaving the fire is intriguing—did Diä!kwain mean that the moth appeared at the fire to ‘tell’ the people and then left, alive, having delivered its message? If so, did it first fly into the fire and then emerge (magically) unscathed? The manuscripts are silent on this point. According to Diä!kwain then, there are at least three instances of a moth–game animal relationship: gemsbok, quagga and ostrich. There is a fourth moth, a ‘springbok’s moth’ mentioned in Dorothea Bleek’s Bushman Dictionary (1956: 282) but I have not been able to establish where in the notebooks this insect is mentioned. While one can easily distinguish between the four kinds of game animal, as indeed the |Xam did too, can one assume that there were four correspondingly different kinds of moth, one type for each animal? Logically, the predictive value of the concept of moths of the game depends on such fixity of identity—how else would one know if it were a gemsbok, quagga, ostrich or springbok that was about to die? On the other hand, it may be that the requirements of ‘logic’ and ‘consistency’ were not important. Perhaps it was the idea of moths of the game that was of consequence, rather than the notion of a specific ‘type’ of moth—people arbitrarily identified any moth in the vicinity of the fire as a game moth, identifying the type of moth (i.e. gemsbok, quagga, etc.) according to the particular context and situation. In this scenario, it did not really matter what kind


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Fig. 9. This copy by Harald Pager (2000) shows the details of the first set of moth-like images, anthropomorphs with ostrich brood colours on their shins and carrying ostrich necks and heads, and a pair of gemsbok. (Tracing courtesy of the Heinrich Barth Institute.)

of moth it was—the presence of a moth at the fire when a man was out hunting was the important thing. Of course, the criteria used by the |Xam to differentiate the moths are not those used by contemporary entomologists. Folk classifications rest on rather different bases—for example, it is not clear how the |Xam distinguished between ants (Hymenoptera) and termites (Isoptera) or whether they distinguished between swifts (Apodidae) and swallows (Hirundinidae) (Hollmann 2005a). Amongst the G|wi, people split what biologists regard as a single species of harvester termite (Hodotermes mossambicus) into two groups because of differences in size and habitat between two populations (Nonaka 1996: 31). Folk understandings of biological processes also differ in the way that they view the life cycles of insects. For example, Nonaka (1996: 33) reports that hawk moth caterpillars of the species Herse convolvuli (known by the G|wi as ‘eland caterpillars’ because of their good taste and fatness) are believed to change into scorpions, not moths. My reasons for suggesting that the |Xam teachers were referring to four types of moth, each uniquely associated with a different animal, are based on details in the Bleek and Lloyd manuscripts. Lloyd seems to have translated the word /goro as meaning specifically ‘Celoena renisigma’, the specimen identified by one of the |Xam teachers



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Fig. 10. The second set of moth-like images at Raiders 1 differs in form from the first and are more clearly visible. (Photograph by Marie-Theres Erz. Copyright: Heinrich Barth Institute.)

Fig. 11. This copy by Pager (2000) shows details of the second set of moth-like images at Raiders 1. (Courtesy of the Heinrich Barth Institute.)


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TABLE 1 The four kinds of game moths described by the |Xam. Type of moth Gemsbok’s moth Quagga’s moth Ostrich’s moth Springbok’s moth

|Xam phrase tssadiken a /goro /goro e koaka /goro a /koaka /goro e ka //ka //ka

Reference L. V. 16: 5247 rev. & 5248 L. V. 16: 5253 L. V. 16: 5256 Bleek 1956: 282

Translation small moth black moth black moth unknown

as an ostrich’s moth (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 18: 5390), but her translation may be too particular. The word /goro probably means ‘moth’, not a specific kind of moth. Diä!kwain qualifies /goro each time with an attribute—for example, ‘a moth that is black’ (Table 1). Although the details he supplies to distinguish the moths from each other may appear to be vague (e.g. both the quagga and ostrich’s moths are described only as ‘black’), Diä!kwain was not attempting to provide a list of key identifying features for the benefit of taxonomists—these identifications would in a real-life situation have rested on unstated prior and detailed knowledge made by people well-versed in the local insect fauna, as Diä!kwain puts it, by people ‘that know’ (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 16: 5253). Moreover, there is a biological basis for Diä!kwain’s statement that certain moths ‘live with the game’: the ‘cattle eye moths’ (genus Arcyophora, family Noctuidae) drink the eye secretions of large mammals by perching at the bottom of the eyeball and inserting their proboscii into the animal’s conjunctiva (Scholtz & Holm 1985: 390; Skaife 1987: 189). Hunter-gatherers might have interpreted this behaviour as an indication of the close relationship between moth and mammal. Then, in an additional step of reasoning, they may have linked this observation to the behaviour of moths around fires, resulting in the belief that the arrival of the moth at the campfire heralded the roasting of the animal with which the moth was paired. Interestingly, Celoena renisigma5 is also a noctuid moth, although it is not known whether, like the Arcyophora moths, it is lachrymophagous. THE ‘OTHER SIDE’ OF |KAGGEN

The association of moths with game animals may have been part of a larger set of hunting practices that involved |Kaggen, the |Xam trickster-deity who created many game species, beginning with the eland (Taurotragus oryx), his first creation (Bleek 1924: 12). Hunting was a chancy and protracted enterprise (Lewis-Williams 1981: 55–6; Marshall 1999: 143; Vinnicombe 1975: 394) and the |Xam had an intricate web of observances concerned with hunting, known as !nanna-sse, ‘hunting observances showing respect’ (Bleek 1956: 473; see also Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 271–85; LewisWilliams 1981: 55–67; Vinnicombe 1975: 388–91, 1976: 178, 180). This code of behaviour was derived ultimately from |Kaggen himself, and its observance governed people’s chances of success in hunting large game animals, especially eland (Hollmann 2004: 68–77). The odds were against the hunters—usually |Kaggen tried to break the link between the hunted antelope and the hunter (see Lewis-Williams 1981: 121–2 for 5

Martin Krüger (pers. comm. 6 August 2007) reports that ‘although not black the adults are certainly dark greyish brown’.



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a discussion) because of his great love for the game. So close was the association between |Kaggen and the eland, that according to the Maluti Bushman informant Qing, he ‘was in [the elands’] . . . bones’ (Orpen 1874: 5). Asked where |Kaggen could be found, Qing’s much-quoted reply was (Orpen 1874: 3): We don’t know, but the elands do. Have you not hunted and heard his cry, when the elands suddenly start and run to his call? Where he is, elands are in droves like cattle.

|Kaggen’s presence and protection was thus believed to be an integral part of the eland’s being. |Kaggen was also closely identified with the hartebeest (Alcelaphus buselaphus) (Bleek 1924: 12); in fact, his head was said to resemble that of the hartebeest (Bleek 1924: 10). This intimate relationship extended to his possessions: |Kaggen’s bag, kaross and shoes were made from hartebeest skin. He addressed these as ‘Hartebeest’s Children’ and could teleport them to wherever he was (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 29). The killing of one of his creatures was believed to be a direct affront to |Kaggen. A |Xam informant stated this succinctly: ‘Mantis does not love us, if we kill an Eland’ (Bleek 1924: 12). Sometimes, to save the life of one of his tshweng, the |Xam word for ‘things’ or ‘game’ (Bleek 1956: 238), |Kaggen would transform himself into an insect to trick people into destroying him, thereby breaking the link between hunter and hunted. In his guise as a praying mantis, he hoped that a |Xam householder would see him and throw him out (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 17: 5266–70; Lewis-Williams 2000: 229). In the form of a louse, he was believed to bite a sleeping hunter to tempt the hunter to squash him (Hollmann 2004: 71). Should he be disturbed or killed, |Kaggen would go to the hunting ground and command the wounded animal to get up and eat because ‘people have not respected you’ (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 17: 5270). Bleek (1924: 10–12) records further examples of |Kaggen’s ruses to cheat hunters out of their prey. Diä!kwain does not himself link game moths to |Kaggen, but I suggest that moths of the game were an important aspect of his complex of hunting observances. The existence of game moths may imply that there was another side to |Kaggen (Lewis-Williams (1981: 121–2) and Hewitt (1986: esp. 137–40) discuss aspects of |Kaggen’s nature). The corollary to |Kaggen’s attempts to fault people for not showing respect, is that he would deliver up an animal if people were wily enough to avoid his attempts to trick them into breaking his !nanna-sse code of respectful behaviour. The arrival of a game moth at the fire was an explicit sign that |Kaggen had consented to the successful hunting and killing of one of his ‘things’. Perhaps, in the same way that he intervened personally between hunter and hunted in the form of a mantis or louse, the game moth was an incarnation of |Kaggen himself. |KAGGEN’S CODE

I use Diä!kwain’s account of the game moths and |Kaggen’s ‘code’ of !nanna-sse behaviours as an interpretive context for the moth paintings at Eland Cave and Raiders 1. Although Diä!kwain makes no mention of an ‘eland’s moth’, if the Eland Cave artists had similar beliefs about moths of the game then an important (arguably the most important) game animal like the eland would also have been paired with a moth. How may these codes of behaviour and beliefs about moths of the game articulate with the moth paintings? Two interrelated aspects of the moth images seem important


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Fig. 12. Bristled images are an artistic convention at sites in the uKkhahlamba-Drakensberg: (a) moth from Eland Cave, colours inverted to facilitate comparison (copy by J. C. Hollmann); (b) fighting ‘bristle bulls’ (after Pager 1971: fig. 188); human–antelope combination (after Pager 1975: 62). All images from the Bergville District, KwaZulu-Natal. Key to colours: (a) black = white paint; (b, c) black = red paint; clear areas surrounded by a line = white paint; stippling = lighter shade of red. Scales vary.

to understanding their significance: the incorporation of certain moth characteristics, and the location and arrangement of the moth images on the rock face. For instance, the Eland Cave artists may have intended a visual and conceptual correspondence between the plumed wings of the moth painting and the bristling hairs associated with certain paintings in the Drakensberg and environs (Hollmann 2002) (Fig. 12). Bristling, or pilo-erection, is an autonomic response controlled by the sympathetic nervous system. Although it probably evolved as a short-term means of regulating heat gain in mammals, pilo-erection is also a ritualised preparatory response to action (Bradbury & Vehrencamp 1998; Hinde 1966; Lewis & Gower 1980; Manning 1979; Prosser 1973; Willmer et al. 2000; Young 1957). Bristling occurs in three specific behavioural contexts that seem to have been important to hunter-gatherer artists in the Drakensberg: • An eland shot with a poisoned arrow sweats and bristles in its death throes (LewisWilliams 1981; Metzger 1950). • Bushman healers entering an altered state of consciousness known as ‘death’ (Katz 1982) may sweat and experience pilo-erection as they ‘die’ (Lewis-Williams 1981). • As a prelude to fighting, aroused, or ‘angry’ animals may raise their bristles to increase their apparent size, to intimidate their rivals and enemies (Bradbury & Vehrencamp 1998; Hinde 1966; Lewis & Gower 1980; Manning 1979; Young 1957). Bristling in the art is therefore associated with death and fighting. In Bushman cosmology death and fighting are also linked to supernatural potency (Lewis-Williams 1981, 1983) and I have argued elsewhere that pilo-erection in southern African hunter-gatherer rock art is the natural model for bristled images of dying antelope, human-antelope conflations (therianthropes), felines, ‘trance buck’, rain animals, serpents, and ‘angry’ animals (Hollmann 2002). These are all potent entities that dwell in the spirit realm (Hollmann 2002: 564). In painting this kind of bristled moth, the painters may therefore have chosen to include another bristled entity in this category—a game moth. Hunter-gatherer artists over much of southern Africa also incorporated natural features of the rock face into their work (Eastwood & Eastwood 2006; Ego 2001; Hollmann 2005b; Kinahan 1999; Lewis-Williams 1995, 1998; Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1990; Woodhouse 1990). There are many unequivocal instances: some images emerge from



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or enter cracks in the rock, others are arranged in alcoves, while paintings of bags ‘hang’ from rock protrusions. These obvious instances are probably ‘tip-of-the-iceberg’ cases. Positioning images on the rock surface is not likely to have been arbitrary and without significance, but in most cases it is invisible to uniformed observers. Nor was this placement only a whimsical penchant: the rock surface may have been a supernaturally charged ‘veil’ or ‘screen’ that revealed aspects of the spirit world behind the rock (Lewis-Williams & Dowson 1990). The position of the Eland Cave moth under a ledge of rock is therefore suggestive (Fig. 5). Alucitid moths do in fact rest with their wings outspread and closely appressed to the surface (Common 1990: 327) and the underside of a rock ledge is a likely resting place. Why depict this behaviour? Whatever other meanings this positioning may have had, a degree of concealment was probably amongst them, although knowledge of the presence of the paintings under the ledge may not have been secret. Such ‘concealment’ may, paradoxically, have been a way of drawing attention to the image. A possible clue for its notional secrecy may be found in Diä!kwain’s comments about how people behave when in |Kaggen’s presence and the life of an already wounded game animal hangs in the balance (Bleek & Lloyd 2005: notebook L. V. 17: 5272–3): He does this when he sees that we respect the game, he sees that (though) he had thought to deceive us, that we might do something bad to him, he sees that we have understanding. For we do this, although we see him, we act as if we did not see him. For we appear to take care of him.

People pretend not to see |Kaggen even though aware of his presence, and in this way respect his code. Significantly, there are many other circumstances in which |Xam Bushman people avoided doing and saying certain things, for fear of breaking |Kaggen’s !nanna-sse code. A hunter who had shot an eland with a poisoned arrow walked home ‘quietly’, not looking around, so that the eland would do the same and die quietly (Hollmann 2004: 69). He did not announce the event (Hollmann 2004: 69), and avoided speaking (Hollmann 2004: 74). At this critical time, people would avoid the regular word for eland and use an alternative, ‘respect’ word instead (Lewis-Williams 1981: 63). Similarly, a man who had shot game did not look at the moon, otherwise ‘beasts of prey’ would eat the animal; or the ‘moon’s water’ would cool the arrow’s poison, thus curing the animal; or the wounded animal, like the moon, would be far away by daybreak (Bleek & Lloyd 1911: 67–9). There may be parallels between these behaviours and attitudes towards rock paintings, which were potent entities in themselves. Although it is likely that all images were ‘respected’, the moth painting at Eland Cave may have been a special instance of a ‘thing’ that must be respected because of its associations with successful hunting of particularly important species. Recall that the presence of a game moth signifies an imminent kill, a time during which the observance of |Kaggen’s ‘code’ is critical. The reason for the moth’s concealment may then have been to accord a similar ‘respect’ that the |Xam showed to |Kaggen—its presence was known, but not referred to directly. To show ‘respect’ by not looking was the way to ‘take care of’ |Kaggen and, perhaps, of game moths. Perhaps by painting the moth image out of sight underneath the ledge the artists were taking care of it and so were helping to ensure successful kills. At Raiders 1 the artists may have used similar principles, but with rather different results. Instead of placing the moth images underneath a ledge like the single moth at Eland Cave, the two groups of moths are exposed on the same plane of the rock face as


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all the other images at the site. This arrangement of the moth paintings into groupings could be based on behaviour exhibited by specific moths: during aestivation or hibernation certain moths will cluster in sheltered places such as rock overhangs (M. Krüger pers. comm. 13 August 2007). This behaviour was noticed and portrayed, possibly to suggest the attraction of game moths to the supernaturally potent rock face. This attractive force may have been amplified by the surrounding images. Unfortunately, the meaning of the paintings around the Eland Cave moth is obscure and at Raiders 1 the second set of moths is not in close proximity to any other images. The first set of moths at Raiders 1, however, is rich in associations (Figs 8, 9) that may complement those implicated in |Xam beliefs about game moths—success in hunting as determined by supernatural forces. Three painted anthropomorphs with bows and arrows hold disembodied ostrich necks and heads. Two of the figures have red markings on their shins. These markings could depict the bright red coloration of male ostrich in brood (Hollmann 2003: 87, 89; Lenssen-Erz & Erz 2000: 57). I have argued elsewhere that these anthropomorphs could be powerful spirit beings that combine the features of humans and ostriches (Hollmann 2003: 89). As such, they may have been credited with the ability to control the behaviour of game animals. Immediately to the left of the moth paintings is an image of a right-facing anthropomorph painted mostly in white but with one leg rendered in red. The white leg is slightly bent at the knee and the figure bends forward from the waist, a posture that recalls the bending-forward position so common in rock paintings throughout southern Africa, where it has been identified as depicting the process of entering trance (Eastwood & Eastwood 2006; Garlake 1995; Lewis-Williams 1981; Yates et al. 1985). The anthropomorph holds the remnants of a bow and arrows. This posture and the figure’s colour scheme, which may reflect ritual body painting, could depict either a shaman in the spirit realm (perhaps a shaman of the game as described by the nineteenth-century |Xam) or a spirit entity. Some 80 mm to the right of the moths is a pair of gemsbok (also known as oryx, Oryx gazella) depicted in pink and white paint—the long straight horns and the bulk of the images are diagnostic. These two paintings are arranged so that they face each other. This configuration may depict a medial-horn threat display (Estes 1999: 28; Walther 1984: figs 62, 98)—behaviour that indicates the animals may be on the brink of a fight. The depiction of gemsbok about to fight may signify an intense amount of supernatural potency, sometimes referred to by the Ju|’hoansi as a ‘fight’ (Hollmann 2002: 564, 2003: 115; Lewis-Williams 1983: 47). The painters at Raiders 1 modelled this behaviour and created an arrangement that allowed the moth images to ‘interact’ with, amongst others, the motifs of the gemsbok and the anthropomorphic hunting figures. These two sets of moths may depict two kinds of game moths, one of which may be ‘gemsbok’ moths. Perhaps by fixing images of game moths on the same surface as game animals and anthropomorphic hunting figures (game shamans?) the painters created a positive ambience for Bushman hunters in which |Kaggen allowed his ‘things’ to be taken. CONCLUSION

In this paper I have constructed interpretations of the moth paintings at Eland Cave and Raiders 1 based on the moths of the game described by Diä!kwain. I have argued that



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the significance of game moths must be appreciated in terms of codes of appropriate hunting behaviour similar to those of the |Xam. The aim of this code was to get |Kaggen to give up one of his animals to die—game moths were a sign that |Kaggen had consented to an animal’s death. The painters at both sites discussed here may have used the moth images (which were powerful numinous entities) as a means of influencing the behaviour of game animals. They manipulated the images on the rock face in different ways. At Raiders 1, the moth images are placed amongst images to generate a potent dynamic through interaction with the surrounding paintings, while at Eland Cave, the moth image resonates by being ‘concealed’, possibly as a sign of ‘respect’. In different ways therefore, the moth paintings at Eland Cave and Raiders 1 may have been interventions on the part of the painters to tip the balance, usually loaded by |Kaggen in the hunted animal’s favour, in the direction of the hunters instead. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

David Lewis-Williams provided me with an introduction to the Bleek and Lloyd manuscripts, which were the inspiration for this paper. Douglas Kroon identified the painting as an alucitid moth and shared his expertise with me. Martin Krüger, Senior Curator, Department of Invertebrates, Northern Flagship Institution, Gauteng, Mikhail Mostovski, Chief Curator: Arthropoda and Greg Davies, Curator: Arthropoda at the Natal Museum gave useful comments on the moth paintings. Tilman Lenssen-Erz referred me to the moth paintings of the Brandberg/Daureb. Marie-Theres Erz provided me with photographs of some of the Raiders 1 images; I thank the Heinrich Barth Institute for permission to use these. Nicola Ellis helped to create the figures. Erstwhile colleagues at the Rock Art Research Institute were sounding boards for the ideas expressed here, while comments by Siyakha Mguni and Ed Eastwood substantially improved the paper. REFERENCES ARGYLE, J. 1990. Review of Images of Power by Lewis-Williams & Dowson (1989). South African Archaeological Bulletin 45: 64–5. BIESELE, M. 1993. Women like meat: the folklore and foraging ideology of the Kalahari Ju/’hoan. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. ––––––1997. An ideal of unassisted birth: hunting, healing and transformation among the Kalahari Ju|’hoansi. In: Davis-Floyd, R. E. & Sargent, C. F., eds, Childbirth and authoritative knowledge: crosscultural perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press, pp. 474–92. BLEEK, D. F. 1924. The Mantis and his friends. Bushman folklore. Cape Town: T. Maskew Miller. ––––––1956. Bushman Dictionary. American Oriental Series 41. New Haven, Connecticut: American Oriental Society. BLEEK, W. H. I. & LLOYD, L. C. 1911. Specimens of Bushman folklore. London: George Allen & Company. ––––––2005. Lloyd and Bleek Collection. Retrieved May 2006. http://www.lloydbleekcollection.uct.ac.za. BRADBURY, J. W. & VEHRENCAMP, S. L. 1998. Principles of animal communication. Sunderland, Massachusetts: Sinauer Associates, Inc. CHALLIS, W. 2005. ‘The men with rhebok’s heads; they tame elands and snakes’: incorporating the rhebok antelope in the understanding of southern African rock art. South African Archaeological Society Goodwin Series 9: 11–20. COMMON, I. F. B. 1990. Moths of Australia. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. DEACON, J. & DOWSON, T. A. 1996. Voices from the past. /Xam Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. DOUGLAS, M. 1957. Animals in Lele religious symbolism. Africa 27: 46–57. DOWSON, T. A. 1998. Rain in Bushman belief, politics and history: the rock art of rain-making in the southeastern mountains, southern Africa. In: Chippindale, C. & Taçon, P. S. T., eds, The archaeology of rock art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 73–89.


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