Lesotho - South Africa - Maloti-Drakensberg Park

The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park is renowned for its spectacular natural landscape, importance as a haven for many threatened and endemic species, and for its wealth of rock paintings made by the San people over a period of 4000 years. The Park, located in the Drakensberg Mountains, covers an area of 242,813 ha making it the largest protected area along the Great Escarpment of southern Africa. With its pristine steep-sided river valleys and rocky gorges, the property has numerous caves and rock shelters containing an estimated 600 rock art sites, and the number of individual images in those sites probably exceeds 35,000. The images depict animals and human beings, and represent the spiritual life of this people, now no longer living in their original homeland. This art represents an exceptionally coherent tradition that embodies the beliefs and cosmology of the San people over several millennia. There are also paintings done during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attributable to Bantu speaking people.

Date of Inscription: 2000
Extension: 2013
further Informations: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/985