Sterling Silver Pendant

Size:

Height: 1 inch (1½ inches including clasp)
Width: ¾ inch
Weight: 3.2 grams

This pendant is made out of sterling silver with San art cut outs. This art is typically seen inside caves. The giraffe, antelope and hunters have been painstakingly cut out by hand.

About Rock Art.

The Europeans who first saw the Rock Art were fascinated but dismissive of their importance. Now days the true value and meaning of their art is being deciphered and appreciated., their art not only shows actual events that happened but are messages full of intricate and complex nuances in the symbols, metaphors and religious meaning.

About the Bushmen.

When 4000 years ago nomads came into contact with the much longer established hunter-gatherers of Southern Africa, they called them San meaning food gatherers. In the 17th century the Dutch colonized the Cape of Good Hope and called the hunter-gatherers of the plains “Boschjemannen” which translates to Bushmen. Bushmen are the longest surviving tribe of Southern Africa they are descendents of the Stone Age people.

About the Giraffe.

Early written records described the giraffe as "magnificent in appearance, bizarre in form, unique in gait, colossal in height and inoffensive in character." Ancient cultures in Africa revered the giraffe, as some modern cultures do today, and commonly depicted it in prehistoric rock and cave paintings. Unknown outside of Africa, this animal so excited man's curiosity that it was sometimes sent as a diplomatic gift to other countries; one of the earliest records tells of a giraffe going from Kenya to China in 1415. The animal was thought to be a cross between a camel and a leopard, a mistake immortalized in the giraffe's scientific name of Giraffa camelopardalis.

The giraffe is the tallest living animal, uniquely adapted to reach vegetation inaccessible to other herbivores. Giraffes have a distinctive walking gait, moving both right legs forward, then both left. At a gallop, however, the giraffe simultaneously swings the hind legs ahead of and outside the front legs, reaching speeds of 35 miles an hour. It has unusually elastic blood vessels with a series of valves that help offset the sudden buildup of blood (and to prevent fainting) when the head is raised, lowered or swung quickly. Giraffe "horns" are actually knobs covered with skin and hair above the eyes that protect the head from injury.

The chain is not for sale with the friendship rings, sold separately. .