Bamboo Mountain Painting Comparison Essay

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To the far left a single figure maybe a rainmaker, leads an animal the San considered effective in rainmaking rituals, toward the encampment. The textbook states, that around this time, the increasing growth and gentrification of colonial ranches and the settlements of African agriculturists had adverse effects on the lifestyle and movement patterns of hunters and gatherers. These settlements nearly always displaced them from their ancestral lands. Also stated, is that due to the increasing settlements the San tribes began to raid local ranches for livestock and horses as another food source. The Bamboo Mountain rock painting is believed to depict one of a series of stock raids carried out between about 1838 and 1848. As a result of these raids, …show more content…

The human figure leading an animal suggests this may signify a ritual leader in a meditative state. The leader calls on rain, brought by the intervention of the sacred animal, to foil the attempts of the government soldiers and police to locate and track down the San raiders. The close resemblance between the painting’s imagery and the raids of 1838–1848 adds to the likelihood San painters created this work to record contemporary events as well as to facilitate rainmaking. The weather in this region was frequently very rainy and drew fog. So capturing the people who had lived in the region for many generations and knew its terrain proved almost impossible for authorities. For my last subject of this paper, I’d like to touch on the native peoples of the Americas. Specifically the Inka, and their breathtaking architectural achievement Machu Picchu. Although they also worked with adobe, the Inka were very skilled in the practice of shaping and fitting stone. As a military minded people, they selected magnificent, naturally fortified sites and made them even more impenetrable by building various defensive structures surrounding the area. Inka city planning shows that these people have a clear

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