Ancient Shaman ‘Rainmaking’ Center Discovered in South Africa

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

A towering “rain control” site, where shamans would have asked the gods to open up the skies centuries ago, has been discovered in South Africa.
Located in a semiarid area of the country, near Botswana and Zimbabwe, the site of Ratho Kroonkop (RKK) sits atop a 1,000-foot-tall (300 meters) hill and contains two naturally formed “rock tanks.” These tanks are depressions in the rock created when water weakens the underlying sandstone. When the scientists excavated one of them, they found over 30,000 animal specimens, including the remains of rhinoceros, zebra and even giraffe.
“What makes RKK special is that every piece of faunal material found at RKK can in some way be linked to rain control,” researcher Simone Brunton, a doctoral candidate at the University of Cape Town, wrote in an email to LiveScience.
The shamans, or religious leaders, would have ascended to the top of Ratho Kroonkop through natural tunnels (fissures) in the rock. When they reached the top of the hill, they would have lit a fire to burn the animal remains as part of their rainmaking rituals.
The people who conducted these rituals were from the San, an indigenous group in southern Africa who lived as hunter-gatherers. “They were San rain controllers who were employed by the farmers to control the rain,” Brunton explained. The farmers, in turn, depended on their chief to make sure this arrangement went smoothly and that they did, in fact, get rain.
Access to the rain-control site would have been strictly controlled.
“The shaman or ritual specialist was usually the only one directly involved with the actual doing of the rituals. It would have been strictly forbidden for normal folks to go near the site,” Brunton wrote in her email. The site “was placed away from society because it was seen as very dangerous or ‘hot,’ and any interference would cause the gods to be angry.”
The team’s findings were reported in Issue one of the 2013 volume of the journal Azania.


Rising 1,000 feet (300 meters) above the ground the hilltop site of Ratho Kroonkop, in South Africa, was used by shamans to perform rainmaking rituals centuries ago.
CREDIT: Photo courtesy Simone Brunton