Phillips cave
| Phillips cave | |||
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National monument in Namibia 
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| Monument type | Archeology : rock art | ||
| location | Erongo Mountains | ||
| Geographic coordinates : | 21 ° 47 '59.7 " S , 15 ° 38' 24.6" E | ||
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| Emergence | between 3400 and 3300 BC Chr. | ||
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Recognized by the National Heritage Council |
February 1, 1951 | ||
| Deprivation | |||
| Sponsorship | Private | ||
| Website | NHC Namibia | ||
The Phillips Cave ( English Phillips Cave ) is a cave on the Ameib farm in the Erongo Mountains in northwestern Namibia . Due to the numerous cave paintings inside, it is a listed building. The cave was named after the former owner of the Ameib farm, Emil Phillip.
The most famous illustration shows a white elephant. A red antelope is also shown in the center of the figure, which the researchers believe was added later. The point in time is still controversial today. The French researcher Henri Breuil described the drawings in the second volume of his six-volume treatise on rock paintings in southern Africa. Breuil first published a radiocarbon date (carbon 14 method) on the age of the prehistoric finds from the Phillips Cave in 1957 and proves the origin to be 3368 BC. Chr. ± 200 years.
The path from the farm to Phillips Cave is marked and takes around 60 minutes. It is a 30-minute walk from the signposted parking lot. The last part to the cave requires some surefootedness.
Elephant in Phillips Cave
Notice board from the Ameib farm
Bull's party
Worth seeing
In the immediate vicinity of the cave, there are also huge round granite balls on the grounds of the Ameib Farm, the so-called Bull's Party . These rock formations were created by the weathering of granite blocks, which progressed inward along fissures and led to the formation of blocks with rounded edges (the wool sack weathering ).
literature
- Henri Breuil : Philipp Cave (= Rock Paintings of southern Africa 2). Trianon Press, London 1957.
- Peter Breunig: Archaeological Travel Guide Namibia . Africa Magna Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2014, ISBN 978-3-937248-39-4 .
- Paula Hardy, Matthew D. Firestone: Namibia & Botswana. MairDumont, Ostfildern 2007, ISBN 978-3-8297-1584-3 .