“Until recent years, we placed little value on the rock arts of Lega-Oda. That was for obvious reasons, we were not told the fact that these drawings are a great asset to us, our country, Ethiopia, and of the humanity’s as a whole,” said Ahmed Ibrahim, 25, who was brought up at a neighborhood in rural environs of Dire Dawa.
People had little awareness about the importance of the place, to put it another way, they had long considered it as a kind of playground for children who kept cattle around the site.
“Nowadays, residents have proven that they can earn a living by protecting the site. Most people generate additional income through offering services to visitors,” Ibrahim explained.
Later this month, a crew of journalists from the Ethiopian Press Agency set their feet on the soils of Dire Dawa- a commercial and industrial city lying in east-central Ethiopia, around 348 km. from Addis Ababa. The city’s rural environs are notable for pre-historic cave arts. Sites such as Lega- Oda, Porc-Epic and Goda-Ajawa are very important to researchers and art admirers alike.
Lega-Oda cave, one of the sites, around 38 Kms., southwest of the city, was introduced by and large to the research community in 1933 by researchers Pere Azais and Oncieu de Champardon, according to Dagnachew Leta (2018.)
The upper and lower shelter of the cave displays over 600 written accounts and paintings. Also, the rock wall contains other written records, documents show.
The crew was escorted by the City’s Culture and Tourism Bureau, Tourists Officer Dereje Tadesse. Ahmed also got onboard a vehicle along with the crew. The young man seemed to be enthused for meeting the crew.
His keen cooperation was later translated into guiding the crew and ushered them in one of the shelters that contain, maybe, a letter drawn repeatedly at the cave. The character resembles a small letter “n”— all its parts sketched in straight lines. Ahmed attempted to explain about the characters but his explanation did not last even a minute. He was interrupted by the Officer.
The Officer seemed a little bit offended as Ahmed got very closer to the paintings with a pen in his right hand. The Officer soon announced the ground rules to the visitors and individuals who escorted them— “either getting very close to or touching the paintings is strictly forbidden.”
Researchers have dated the pre-historic site to 7,000 years CE. It is one of the rarest places that exhibit the earliest human communication. Lega-Oda cave arts, as many scholars would agree gives clue to the early development of art and humanity’s use of signs and symbols for communication.
Despite tough to conclude, as to what the society recorded in writing (the letters), the paintings attested that the people were hunters and gatherers. They painted both domestic and wild animals on the walls such as longhorn bulls, camel, hyena, and the likes.
The illustration of the animals, however, may suggest the kind of animals that had existed in the area.
Besides, the arts speak for themselves that the people were believed to be at a certain stage of human’s brain development, had learned paint production. They used mainly red and black paints for their artworks.
Such works also give hint to the use and development of hand tools. The ever-development of technology supports studies on ancient sites. Better preservation of the artworks and conservation of the sites, therefore, guarantees the unearthing of more and more facts about humanity. The facts, in turn, help to find the missing link between the ancient and the modern human being.
Ancient sites like Lege Odda could, therefore, unlock several mysterious doors to a better understanding of humanity.
“Recent collaborations at the frontier of archaeology, anthropology, and cognitive science are culminating in speculative but increasingly sophisticated efforts to unravel how modern human cognition came about. Such relics also help to understand cognitive abilities, belief structures, or levels of cooperation,” says Gabora, L. (2007). In Handbook of Theories and Methods in Archaeology.
Early hominid’s thinking capacity was limited. It did encoded episodes and organized responses. But unless environmental clues provoked, early hominid was not able to retrieve the encoded information. For instance, as the area’s experts say, it sought shelter at times of heavy downpours. But it was not able to prepare itself, by predicting the weather from cloud….The dropping of the rain was an important factor, thus, to retrieve the encoded episode and respond accordingly.
Researchers including Mithen (1996) refers to some stage of human cognition, Upper Paleolithic, 60,000 and 30,000 [years ago], as the ‘big bang’ of human culture. At this stage, they say, more innovation was recorded, than the preceding six million years of human evolution. “In Europe, many forms of art appeared, including naturalistic cave paintings of animals.”
But the Lege Odda cave art gives a better hint about modern human as they are believed to age some 7000 years.
But, unless properly preserved, they are likely to be damaged. When it is damaged, all the pieces of information will be buried for good, God forbid this! Some portion of the huge limestone rock cave has already collapsed.
Dire Dawa City Culture and Tourism Bureau in cooperation with the Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH) have installed a roof structure to prevent leakage to the site during the rainy season. The site looks like, however, in dire need of more conservation and preservation. Man-made and natural dangers ought to be prevented to the extent possible.
The site is linked to an all-weather road that passes through rural villages, inhibited by the agro-pastoral community. The people mainly grow coffee and Khat as well as fruit using small-scale irrigation. The major rainy season, despite receiving a low level of perception, helps them grow sorghum.
The entire journey to the rock shelter situated in the “escarpment that separates the lowlands of the Afar rift from high plateau grasslands of Hararghe” could be summed as an awe-inspiring experience. The farms at the sides of the roads, the spectacular hills and the terraces that the farming and pastoral community have built are extra wonders to visitors.
The Ethiopian Herald August 2/2019
BY WORKU BELACHEW
