Twyfelfontein
The number of Wikipedia languages with an article is our measure of how widely known a site is. Counts of visitors and wishes will appear once enough people use the app.
Seals, want-to-go and the year you stood here are recorded in the iPhone app.
How it came to be
Twyfelfontein, in the Kunene Region of northwestern Namibia, is a site of rock engravings whose Damara and Nama name, ǀUi-ǁAis, means jumping waterhole. People have lived here for about 6,000 years, first hunter-gatherers and later Khoikhoi herders. It holds one of the largest concentrations of petroglyphs in Africa: rhinoceros, elephants, ostriches, giraffes and the tracks of people and animals.
The surveyor Reinhard Maack reported engravings in the area in 1921. David Levin came in 1947 to see whether the land could be farmed, bought it and in 1948 named his farm Twyfelfontein, uncertain spring. From 1950 Ernst Rudolph Scherz studied the site and recorded more than 2,500 engravings on 212 sandstone slabs.
Some images, such as the Lion Man, a lion with human toes, seem to show people turning into animals. The site was declared a national monument on 15 August 1952 and in 2007 became Namibia's first World Heritage site.
Data: Wikidata (CC0). Photos: Wikimedia Commons, under each photo’s license. Prototype; may contain errors. We measure usage anonymously to improve the app (PostHog, EU).