Karin Heegan

Karin Heegan ( Somali for "Vigilance Pass") is a granite hill in northern Somalia that contains rock art .

The hill is in the Sanaag region about 70 km east of Boosaaso and 30 km south of the Gulf of Aden , more than 100 meters above the Guban coastal plain immediately north of a pass that leads further up into the forested Al Mado mountains. Geologically, it is a gate made of thousands of remaining granite chunks, between which the spaces form numerous abrises . In 1947 a geologist discovered paintings on the north side of the hill, but it was not until 1982 that Karin Heegan was examined in detail and systematically.

About 5 m above the foot of the hill a rocky "path" leads to the entrance of the painted abyss. A narrow space between two granite blocks leads to an irregularly shaped cave, which is a maximum of 10 m wide, 7 m long and 5 m high and contains over a hundred rock art. Today it is used as a shelter for goats and sheep. An excavation in the floor of the cave revealed traces of people about 1 m deep, including small amounts of microliths of flint and quartz from the Late Stone Age , a few fragments of millstones, a ceramic shard, bowls from the sea and some remains that were not more precisely determinable bones. Two mid-range charcoal samples have been dated to 1600 and 2100 Before Present .

The paintings can be assigned to the Arab-Ethiopian style, as well as other rock paintings in northeast Africa and the paintings by Laas Geel and Dhambalin discovered in 2003 and 2007 . The vast majority of the pictures depict cattle with long horns and without humps. There are also depictions of cattle with short horns, three goats, two camels and three people. Three pictures may represent a dog, a sheep or a bow and arrow, but the meaning of some cannot be recognized. Most of them are rust-red, some are plain cream or brown or multicolored with different shades of these three colors. During the test excavation, ocher and hematite were found, suggesting that, among other things, these minerals were used as dyes. Parts of the painted wall must obviously have been reached with the help of ladders and other aids.

literature

• Steven A. Brandt, Nanny Carder: Pastoral Rock Art in the Horn of Africa. Making Sense of Udder Chaos . In: World Archeology , Vol. 19, No. 2, Rock Art (Oct. 1987), pp. 194-213.
• Steven A. Brandt, George A. Brook: Archaeological and Paleoenvironmental Research in Northern Somalia . In: Current Anthropology , Vol. 25 (1984), No. 1, pp. 119-121.

Coordinates: 11 ° 3 '  N , 48 ° 38'  E