Heritage sites, Archaeological discoveries, History of Archaeology

uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park

Location

KwaZulu-Natal

Country

South Africa

Year of Research

2000

Culture

The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park has outstanding natural beauty in its soaring basaltic buttresses, incisive dramatic cutbacks, and golden sandstone ramparts.
Rolling high altitude grasslands, the pristine steep-sided river valleys and rocky gorges also add to the beauty of the site.
The site’s diversity is a of habitats protects a high level of endemic and globally threatened species, particularly birds and plants.
This impressive natural site also contains many caves and rock-shelters with the largest and most concentrated group of paintings in Africa south of the Sahara, made by the San people over an age of 4,000 years.
The rock paintings are exceptional in quality and diversity of subject and in their depiction of animals and human beings.
They represent the religious life of the now extinct San people.