Ouzman & Pan-San community

Paintings at rose cottage cave

• Traditionally identified as dolphins or whales

Ouzman (1996) interpretation

• Paintings represent mormyrid freshwater fish functioning as religious and social metaphors within San shamanism

• Their presence outside mormyrids' natural range is evidence of extensive San social networks and shamanic travel.

Mormyrids as symbols of potency

• Mormyrids are uniquely electrogenic — generating and receiving electrical impulses.

• San shamans describe supernatural potency (n/um) travelling up the spine as a tingling sensation.

• Mormyrids may have been identified as natural repositories of potency

Fishing Scenes

• Shamanistic metaphors for acquiring potency, not subsistence records.

• The Tsoelike River scene shows a large red figure standing among fish in conditions requiring boats — indicating a shaman immersed in his potency source, not a literal fisherman

Evidence of extensive San Networks

• Cowrie shells 200 km inland, marine shells, OES beads, and a distinctive tanged arrowhead all point to extensive San exchange networks.

• The 'Thin Red Line confirms a shared regional belief system spanning vast distances.

How does Ouzman’s paper push back agasint Jolly?

• Jolly argues pan-San art reflects Nguni/Sotho influence.

• Ouzman demonstrates a highly specific and consistent symbolic system across southern Africa

• When imagery seems anomalous, the answer may lie in internal San religious dynamics and social networks, not external cultural borrowing.