Deep in the sandstone overhangs of the uKhahlamba-Drakensberg, San shaman-artists painted the eland again and again — not as a hunting trophy but as the most potent creature in their spiritual cosmology, the animal richest in the supernatural potency they called n/om. Working in hematite and ochre iron oxides, they built the antelope's flank from delicate red-to-brown tonal gradation rather than flat outline, a shading technique centuries ahead of its documented "invention" in European art. The paintings survive on their own rock: aged, smoke-patinated sandstone the color of old leather, never a clean or bright ground. The fugitive white clay used for figure highlights has mostly flaked away, leaving many eland without heads or legs — fragments of potency rather than illustrations, still charged with the weight of the wall they were born on.