- There's the cliff base, wow!
(dramatic orchestral music)
Dude, look at this, there's cave paintings!
We are literally sitting at the foot of history right now.
(dynamic jungle music)
The Tuinskloof Game Reserve is a breathtaking expanse
of South African wilderness,
an adventure lover's playground,
that is laced with a network
of intricate, yet rugged dirt roads.
The Reserve stretches across 13 hectares
and is nestled amongst the rocky mountainsides
of the Eastern Cape.
Today we are heading out
on a true Indiana Jones themed mission.
According to LB Williams,
founder of the Reserve Protection Agency,
there are a series of ancient cave paintings
hidden deep within the belly of Tuinskloof.
Of course, LB has seen these paintings before,
as he has personally scoured every inch of this wild place,
however he has challenged us
to see if we can find what he calls
a true needle in the haystack of history on our own.
- [Mark] Alright, Coyote, we're about to set off
on the adventure, what are we doing?
- Well, just before us is a road that looks off road,
despite the fact that it's been bulldozed,
but wait until you see how far we get
into the back country of South Africa
and what we're searching for is a series of lost caves
and by lost caves, what I mean are caves
that have not been explored in hundreds of years.
Supposedly there's some ancient cave paintings in there,
we're gonna try to find 'em and get em on camera,
I have a feeling that this is gonna be one epic adventure.
- [Mark] Let's go.
- [Coyote] South Africa is an ancient land
and it is believed that humans
have inhabited this area for over 100,000 years.
The paintings we seek are certainly not that ancient,
but they are believed to be several hundred years old,
which definitely makes them worth the search.
- Nothing like getting lost in the back country of Africa,
wouldn't you say, Coyote?
- Oh yeah, we're gonna find these lost caves eventually,
this is why they are lost,
they're hidden from pretty much everyone,
so it's gonna take a little bit of searching,
but I'm confident that LB's gonna get us there.
We traveled up and over the steep mountainsides,
down into the valleys
and across several flowing stream systems,
before we finally got to a place where the road ran out.
Woo!
That was a bumpy ride. - Yep.
- And that is as far as the road is going to take us.
Now over your shoulder here, Mark
is a massive cliff face and I was told
that if we follow this line into the canyon,
eventually we will find dark stains up on the rocks,
we find those stains,
it means that we are close to the cave paintings,
so let's head in that direction and see what we can find.
The underbrush was incredibly dense
and moving through it with packs and camera gear
was nearly impossible.
Eventually we made our way down to a stream system,
which we could follow more easily,
than fighting the tangles of branches.
Look at this.
Look at those dark marks on the rocks.
- [Mark] Where?
Oh, yeah, is that what we're looking for?
- [Coyote] Awesome, we'll cross the stream then.
Look at that!
Do you see 'em? - Yeah.
- I'm gonna have to bust out the main camera
to get shots of that,
I don't know if you can see that with the GoPro,
there are distinct dark marks right there on the rocks,
they definitely stand out
more than anything else we've seen so far.
- [Mark] Let's get a little bit more in,
I'll get a better view. - Okay, yeah.
Keep coming up this hillside.
It felt like we were getting close
and despite the inclement weather,
we decided to press forward across another stream
and up a steep embankment,
when right before our very eyes,
the flat rock face that LB described
as being unmistakable was towering above us.
(light suspenseful music)
Watch out for that short stick right there.
I mean, I haven't seen anything
that's more distinct than those black marks.
Alright, well this might be the black stains on the rock,
that we're looking for,
let's hunker down underneath these trees,
stay out of the rain and get the main camera set up.
I think we're close, guys.
- Okay? - Yeah, I'll get it.
- Mark has gotten the main camera out of his pack,
it's still raining though. - Yes.
- We're gonna get these shots,
I think we're right on it, guys.
- I'm rolling. - Okay,
so right up through here,
it looks like we have a little cave type area,
definitely have distinct black markings
on the side of the rocks and hopefully
this is where the cave paintings are located.
Alright, we're gonna go up through all these spiky plants
and hopefully that's where they're at.
Alright, here we go, ready?
Wow!
Dude, look at this! - Whoa.
- These cave paintings. - Is that them?
- This has gotta be them, look at this,
you've got like little human-like figures here,
there and there, look at this one.
That one's definitely a male.
- [Mark] How can you tell?
- Notice the male part
and then over here, you've got what looks like a teepee,
here's some sort of shape there.
What have you got down there, Mario?
- You know, this is probably where they would gather
and like make a fire and cook their food and stuff
and hang out, then for fun,
they probably would kind of draw.
- Right, and by they, we're talking about Indigenous peoples
- Yeah. - and these cave drawings,
I guess, we keep calling them a cave drawing,
but it's more of an overhang, than it is a cave,
hundreds, maybe even thousands of years old,
we are literally sitting at the foot of history right now.
- Yeah, it's pretty cool. - This is crazy.
Let's look around at the walls
and see what other etchings we can find.
- [Mark] Are all the red spots paintings technically?
I mean, like if you come over here, you can see like,
there's like a shape in there,
see that? - Oh, yeah,
that definitely is a shape, look at that right there.
- [Mark] See, that's not natural,
that's like-- - Looks like that
would have been the head of a human,
here's an arm, that comes down and its body.
It's interesting how it's at an angle like that.
- It is. - What you find there?
- [Mario] That's definitely a little human, right?
- Oh here, let me see. - Oh, it looks like,
look at that.
- [Coyote] It definitely looks humanoid to me.
- [Mario] Tiny.
- But why all the way down there?
I mean, I wonder how deep this would have originally gone,
I mean, how much sediment has fallen down in this area,
think of what could be buried down beneath all of this soil.
Look at this.
- [Mark] So you can definitely see like this whole area,
the redness on the rock, - Yeah.
- [Mark] is distinct to this area,
if you look like over here, for example,
there is no red, - Right.
- [Mark] it's only in this area,
so it kind of makes you wonder, were these parts
at some time part of a larger painting?
- [Coyote] Right and it just sort of dissolved
and disintegrated over time.
- [Mark] Like even if you look right here,
you can see there's a clear line.
- Hm-mm. - See that?
There's a clear line there, - That's crazy.
- [Mark] I wonder if that was like a horse
or an elephant, maybe that was an elephant,
the tail of an elephant maybe. - Maybe.
Oh, it does, it looks like either a tail
or perhaps a trunk - Hm-mm.
- and maybe a leg like that right there.
This is super cool and you may be wondering to yourselves,
"Well, Coyote, how would somebody draw on a rock wall
"and have it last for this long?"
And my guess would be that, here,
point your camera down here,
all of this red rock was likely broken apart
and then they would use something like sap
or animal fat to draw on the walls
and it's just lasted for all that time,
it has completely stained the rock.
- [Mark] Look at that one,
it's like two people right next to each other, you know,
this is the first time this art has ever been filmed.
- First people ever, these are the first cameras
to ever film and what we're gonna do now
is photograph these to document them,
what we're gonna do is use my hand for scale,
Mark, why don't you get out the high quality camera,
give this camera to Mario
and we'll get some photographs of 'em
and take 'em back to the research team, is that good?
- Yeah, let's do it. - Alright.
- Alright, let me get out the DSLR,
so we can take some great photographs
of this Indigenous artwork
and share 'em with our friends back in town.
What's really cool is this is actually
really important for the culture in this region
to document these rare artifacts,
it definitely will help add to the cultural history
of this region of South Africa, pretty cool, huh?
- [Coyote] Hm, I got to know.
- [Mark] Yeah, I think it is too.
You can clearly see that there's a leg
and then there's either a trunk or a tail.
- [Coyote] Hm-mm.
- [Mark] You can't really tell what happened back here.
I mean, there's so many years, could be hundreds,
if not thousands of years of erosion,
that's been hammering the artwork, that's here,
so we're really actually fortunate
to be able to see what we can.
- You can see some that have disappeared
almost completely at this point,
- Yeah.
- Now this looks like a little man,
that's running on the hillside.
Did you get this one?
This clearly looks like an arm with a hand and legs.
- [Mark] I think it's holding something.
- Holding something. - Maybe it's fish.
They're clearly manmade,
but there is a little interpretation required
to identify what these are.
It'll be interesting to see,
once we take the photographs back,
if someone back in town can help us more clearly identify
not only what we're looking at,
but the time period in which they were made.
- [Coyote] Right.
- I've got it,
alright, are you ready for the long trek back?
- I sure am, it took us two hours to get here,
that means it's gonna take at least two hours to get back,
but this certainly was epic,
coming across Indigenous paintings
out here in the back country of South Africa.
I'm Coyote Peterson, be brave,
stay wild, we'll see you on the next location.
(clicking camera shutter)
- Hm.
- [Coyote] Getting to explore the wild and ancient mountains
of the Tuinskloof Game Reserve
was an adventure I will always remember.
As a team, our goal usually centers around
finding and presenting animals, so to search for relics
such as cave paintings was a nice change of pace.
These feint images represent a history to this land,
that dates back hundreds of years
and to have seen them with my own two eyes
was a sight I will never forget.
If you enjoyed exploring for cave paintings,
make sure to go back and watch the episode,
where the Brave Wilderness team and I
kayak to a deserted island and found ourselves lost
in the abandoned Fort Gorges
and don't forget, subscribe,
so you can join me and the crew on our next location.
(light jungle music)