Matobo Hills

Criterion (iii) : The Matobo Hills has one of the highest concentrations of rock art in Southern Africa. The rich evidence from archaeology and from the rock paintings at Matobo provide a very full picture of the lives of foraging societies in the Stone Age and the way agricultural societies came to replace them. Criterion (v) : The interaction between communities and the landscape, manifest in the rock art and also in the long standing religious traditions still associated with the rocks, are community responses to a landscape. Criterion (vi) : The Mwari religion, centred on Matoba, which may date back to the Iron Age, is the most powerful oracular tradition in southern Africa.