It’s the Botswana‘s most important archaeological site, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2001, bears witness to a history that began 100,000 years ago on the desolate plains of what is now the Kalahari Desert.
The Tsodilo Hills site, in the north-western part of the country bordering Namibia, consists of a group of four hills that hold evidence of human settlement dating back up to 100,000 years, making it one of the oldest archaeological sites in the world. The Bushmen refer to the largest of the hills as ”Male”, the second as ”Female”, the third as ”Son” and the last has no name. Beliefs have it that the spirits of the ancestors rest in the caves of the female rock, while the main sacred site is located near the top of the male rock, where the deity is believed to have prayed after creating the world. More than 4,500 examples of rock art and 13,000 artefacts have earned it the nickname the ‘Louvre of the Desert‘. Its paintings, dating from 20,000 years to a few centuries, concentrated in just 10 square kilometres, depict wild and domestic animals, human silhouettes and geometric figures.