Scientists discover who has been painting on rocks in Kenya for 9,000 years
Scientists have been able to reconstruct who left the rock paintings in Kenya's Kakapel Refuge and when. This is important because such monuments are usually very difficult to accurately link to specific people and eras.
This time, researchers were able to trace the history of the drawings back almost 9,000 years.
Details
Kakapel is in western Kenya and has long been considered an important rock art monument. But only now scientists have made the first millimetre-accurate record of all the drawings on the main panel and were able to divide them into four layers, applied at different times.
In parallel, archaeologists have studied the layers of human habitation in the same place. The excavations revealed that the shelter was used by several different communities: first by fishermen and gatherers of the Kansyore tradition some 9000-3900 years ago, then by early Iron Age farmers, and later by pastoralist and agricultural groups associated with the West Nile peoples.
The oldest layer of drawings consists of geometric figures - circles, concentric patterns and other red and white symbols. Researchers attribute it to very early hunter-gatherer groups; an additional clue was provided by ancient DNA data showing the genetic similarity of one of the early Kakapela people to modern Mbuti of Central Africa.
A later layer includes images of long-horned cattle. Based on a combination of archaeological and genetic evidence, scientists believe that these drawings are probably not associated with the first agriculturalists, but with later pastoralist communities. Another late layer consists of thin white geometric marks that were probably left by later West Nile groups.
It was a combination of several methods - drawing analysis, excavation, and ancient DNA - that made it possible not just to describe the images, but to link them more confidently to specific waves of populations. The authors call Kakapel one of the most well-studied rock art sites in all of East Africa.
Why it's important
Usually rock art is difficult to date and even harder to figure out exactly who created it. In the case of Kakapela, researchers have had the rare opportunity to see how the same site has been used by very different groups of people over millennia.
This helps to better understand the history of East Africa: how the region's population, lifestyle, economy and symbolic culture changed. The work also emphasises that such monuments need to be protected because they are threatened by logging, mining and development.
Background
Kakapel was first described back in the 1970s. Back then, researchers had only seen a fraction of the drawings and could not confidently identify their age or authors. The new work has made a marked difference: the site now has one of the clearest rock art chronologies in the region.
Source
The study is published in the journal Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa in 2026. The authors combined rock art, excavation and ancient DNA data from the Kakapel Refuge in Kenya.