3000 BC to 1820

San painters and Sotho farmers

For thousands of years San hunter gatherers live in these mountains, leaving paintings of eland, hunters and rituals in rock shelters across the Maloti and Drakensberg. From around the fifteenth century Sotho speaking farmers and cattle herders spread across the highveld and the Caledon valley, living in small chiefdoms. Some San are absorbed, others pushed into the high mountains.