Southern African Creatures

Southern African traditions engage Kalahari, highveld, forest, and coastal environments with long standing rock art and song cycles. Oral histories track movement of cattle, rain clouds, and hunters, and they frame rites of passage and healing. Ritual specialists mediate with place spirits at hills, pools, and caves, while crafts and beadwork mark status and kin ties. Names and stories appear in multiple Bantu and Khoisan languages with spellings affected by mission records. Motifs include rainmaking, tracking, ancestral guardianship, and night journeys across open ground. Browse by habitat and function, then open cards for sources, variant names, and iconography.