The Giraffe …Going, going… Can we save the Maasai giraffes of Maanzoni from ‘Gone’

By Rupi Mangat

Published: Daily Nation Kenya 27 January 2019

Above: Maasai giraffe browsing in Maanzoni

In Ancient Egypt’s royal tomb of the famous  pharaoh, Tutankhamun are images of giraffes  nibbling leaves while he sits in state some 3000 years ago.  Giraffes and elephants including the rare okapi lived in the midst of the Egyptians until the forests were plundered to build boats and pyramids for the pharaohs, which heralded in the Saharan Sands.

Giraffes have globe trotted the earth since the Miocene era 23 million years ago when their range included Europe and Asia.

Engraving of giraffe in Afgaba gorge northern Kenya made around a thousand years ago by hunter gatherers who might have been Batwa.. Copyright David Coulson of Trust for African Rock Art TARA (800x527)
Engraving of giraffe in Afgaba gorge northern Kenya made around a thousand years ago by hunter gatherers who might have been Batwa.. Copyright David Coulson of Trust for African Rock Art TARA

“Giraffes appear more frequently than most other animals on rock art,” states David Coulson of the Trust for Africa Rock Art (TARA) that is a digital repository of Africa’s most important prehistoric rock art. “It is the earliest  artistic expressions of humankind, a window on how our ancestors related and interacted with nature and the natural world,” continues Coulson.

A Tuareg man by a 6,000 year life size engraving of giraffes in Niger. Copyright David Coulson of Trust for African Rock Art TARA (538x800)
A Tuareg man by a 6,000 year life size engraving of giraffes in Niger. Copyright David Coulson of Trust for African Rock Art TARA

Continue reading “The Giraffe …Going, going… Can we save the Maasai giraffes of Maanzoni from ‘Gone’”

Mapping the Rock Art of Northern Kenya: Dating thousands of years ago, it’s an insight into a world that once was through art chiselled on rock by our human ancestors

Above: African Rock Art with giraffe illuminated against the night sky, north Kenya. Copyright: Paolo Torchio

Published: The East African Nation Media 28 September to 4 October 2019, abrdiged version

“It’s the night sky, the same night sky seen thousands of years ago by another person,” explains Paolo Torchio. “It’s what l wanted to capture.”

The image is taken in Turkana in Kenya’s northern desert lands, the bedrock of human evolution from several million years ago. The rock illuminated by a galaxy of stars shines on a giraffe chiselled on it by our human ancestors. It’s dated between 10,000 and two thousand years ago.

“The sky is the same thousands of years later,” comments Torchio, “but the landscape is not.”

Continue reading “Mapping the Rock Art of Northern Kenya: Dating thousands of years ago, it’s an insight into a world that once was through art chiselled on rock by our human ancestors”