The Bushmen, or San as they are also known, were an indigenous yellowish-brown race that flourished in the Southers parts of Africa before the white settlers came. They had a distinctive and unique language that was totally unrelated to any of the languages spoken in Africa, and it was characterized by tongue-clicks. They lived in a wide range of habitats, but later they were driven to desert areas because the black as well as the white settlers saw them as vermin that had to be exterminated, and they were hunted extensively. They learned to cope with the desert climate and learned to subsist on the sparse food that could be wrested from the arid dunelands. They could see where to dig holes to find a few drops of water, which they stored in empty ostrich shells. They learnt to mix potent poisons, in which they dipped their arrowheads, to kill animals which they never could have killed with their small arrows alone. Among themselves they co-operated in everything, and were very fond of their children. They never beat their children, and the only way they disciplined them was to ignore them for a short while.
They also learned to mix durable paints from clay, soot, the sap of plants and even blood, with which they painted on the walls of the caves where they slept. They depicted the buck which they hunted, the lions that they were happy to escape from, they painted themselves dancing, playing one-stringed musical instrumenst, running, hunting. They painted mythical 'rain animals' and signs of spells with which they wanted to ensure good hunts.
As the last of the Bushmen are dying out, or being assimilated by the Western civilization, these paintings are the only remnants of their culture that is left.
These reproductions of genuine Bushman paintings are painted on stones which are found in the places where they used to roam.