Kenya - Tanzania - Uganda - Geometric rock art in Lake Victoria Region

Rock art, whether painted or engraved, serves as windows into the past, offering us insights into the lives of people who lived within specific landscapes. Research over many decades has taught us that these paintings and engravings were not simply for decorative purposes. Rather, these images were representations of spiritually important experiences (Lewis-Williams 1981; Smith 1997; Namono 2010; Ndlovu 2013). Such findings were a significant move from the days when interpretations of rock art were highly simplistic – anchored on the belief that authors of paintings and engravings were not human enough. The African continent is characterized by various kind of rock art, dotted throughout the continent. These vary at many levels and beyond simple stylistic analyses. For instance, the southern African region is well known for the many fine-line paintings made largely along the coastal areas. As a result, there are several rock art landscapes that have been inscribed as World Heritage Sites. Among these are the (i) Maloti Drakensberg Park, a transboundary site covering Lesotho and South Africa, (ii) Matopo Hills in Zimbabwe, (iii) Tsodilo Hills in Botswana, and Twyfelfontein in Namibia. The dominance of rock art among the inscribed sites of southern Africa is not replicated in East Africa. Kondoa rock art landscape stands tall as the only one that has been inscribed into the list of World Heritage Sites (Bwasiri 2016).