Qualla: Mwela Rock Paintings https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:26 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Mwela Rock Paintings https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings Mwela Rock Paintings: Introduction https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings/ A human figure, its body oversized and its limbs reduced to thin lines, dances across a granite overhang five kilometers east of Kasama. An animal beside it seems to run. The painter lifted red pigment to the stone somewhere between about two thousand and several thousand years ago, and the image has waited ever since for eyes to see it. More than a thousand such paintings survive in this one stretch of Zambian bush, the densest concentration of rock art anywhere in Africa. Archaeologists call the makers hunter-gatherers of the Later Stone Age. The Bemba people who live here today call them ancestors.

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/n/j/mwela-rock-paintings-wp/kwnj-mwela-rock-paintings-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Mwela Rock Paintings: The Painters https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings/ The people who made the Mwela paintings lived by hunting and gathering across the plateau country of what is now northern Zambia. Their descendants are, in the main, the Batwa or Twa, a community sometimes described by other groups as forest people. The word 'hunter-gatherer' sou...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/n/j/mwela-rock-paintings-wp/kwnj-mwela-rock-paintings-the-painters.mp3 0:06 2 full Mwela Rock Paintings: Where the Paintings Live https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings/ The rock art is not in one place but scattered across an area of more than 100 square kilometers of bush north of the Kasama-Isoka road. The outcrops have names: Mwankole, Sumina, Mulundu, Fwambo, Changa Mwibwe, Lwimbo. Each outcrop holds some of the works. A signpost marks 'Mwel...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/n/j/mwela-rock-paintings-wp/kwnj-mwela-rock-paintings-where-the-paintings-live.mp3 0:06 3 full Mwela Rock Paintings: Recognition, Late and Partial https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings/ The paintings were first officially recorded in 1945, though local people had known about them for generations. Zambia declared the site a National Monument in 1964, the year of independence, under Government Notice No. 255. The National Heritage Conservation Commission Act prote...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/n/j/mwela-rock-paintings-wp/kwnj-mwela-rock-paintings-recognition-late-and-partial.mp3 0:06 4 full Mwela Rock Paintings: The Company They Keep https://qualla.com/mwela-rock-paintings/ Southern Africa is rich in ancestral rock art. The painters of what is now Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Namibia left works whose artistic refinement is widely considered even greater than Mwela's. But Mwela is denser. More than a thousand paintings in one hundred square kilometers...

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]]> Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/k/w/n/j/mwela-rock-paintings-wp/kwnj-mwela-rock-paintings-the-company-they-keep.mp3 0:06 5 full