This week, we have…

• A fun fact inspired by a recent Globle answer

• Trivia!

• Answers to last week's games

• Reader survey

Zimbabwe rocks! A look at ancient rock art

One of the coolest relics of early human life is rock art, which can take many forms such as drawings or paintings (pictographs), carvings (petroglyphs), and patterned rock arrangements.   Zimbabwe (Globle’s October 15th answer) claims the highest concentration of rock art paintings in southern Africa. In Matobo Hills National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, you can find over 300,000 paintings, dating back up to 20,000 years. Most paintings were drawn by the San, or Bushmen. The paintings include dramatic Stone Age hunts, and wildlife such as antelope, giraffe, and elephants. Males were depicted more frequently than females, often carrying bows, arrows or other objects. Materials used for painting included plant extracts, egg shells, and blood. These paintings used a wide range of colours, including reds, purples, oranges, browns and yellows, applied with brushes made from feathers, porcupine quills, or using fingers. The paintings in Matobo Hills are usually found in rock shelters and associated with archaeological remains, showing human occupation of the area since the Early Stone Age.

The animals, tools, and activities depicted in rock art can shed light on our ancestors’ daily life, though the images depicted are often symbolic rather than representative. Some artists even incorporated granite cracks into their scenes, which were seen as a portal for animals and people to enter a spiritual dimension. For the Mwari religion, the Matobo rocks are seen as the seat of ancestral spirits, and sacred shrines in the hills are places where contact can be made with the spiritual world. Rock art has played a significant role in making the landscape a sacred space, contributing to the spirituality of hunter-gatherers that made it, and speaking to their relationship with the land they lived on.

Learn more

https://africanrockart.britishmuseum.org/country/zimbabwe/matobo/

https://www.gadventures.com/blog/where-see-some-worlds-most-remarkable-rock-art-zimbabwe/

https://www.britannica.com/art/rock-art

Trivia!

Answers to last week's games

Monday, October 14 to Sunday, October 20.

Linxicon

The following are the shortest paths from last week:

• #245 psychological -> communication -> mail -> address

• #246 virtue -> optimism -> optimistic -> probable -> likely

• #247 motor -> driver -> interpreter -> interpret -> interpretation

• #248 yield -> farm -> farmhouse -> resident

• #249 ethics -> organs -> belly -> round

• #250 surely -> surefire -> fire -> electricity -> battery

• #251 pink -> color -> sight -> reach

• #252 Play now!

Forgeous

Play Forgeous for Oct 21