We're looking for meaning. Meaning is, you know, that's what art for me is about, it's about making

meaning. It's about trying to kind of give some fragile foothold in the moment in the kind

of chaos of life. Hello, I'm Neil McGregor, and in this series of podcasts, I'm looking at

objects to see how shared beliefs have helped shape societies. Now we're

focusing on images. In this episode, we're looking at how we interpret images. This is the BBC.

The green man at the traffic lights, the uniform of a policeman, the logo of a fast food chain or the cross on a church steeple, walking along the street in any city and the world, we're expected to decode and to understand dozens, if not hundreds, of signs and signifiers, and we readily do so.

We've learnt what they mean, but that meaning depends overwhelmingly on shared conventions.

Without those conventions, we'll miss critically important information.

It's the same with gestures.

In some countries of the Middle East, a nod of the head means no, while in others,

shaking your head means yes. You just need to know. Somebody has to tell you. We need to learn

visual languages, just as we learn spoken ones. And in this program, I want to look at images

created in societies where, for me,

as a Western observer, I don't understand the visual language. For many years, it was a matter

of gaze and guess. You gaze at it, and if you gaze long enough, your guess is going to

be right as to what it's all about.

And I'm afraid that's not the case.

David Lewis Williams, Professor Emeritus at the University of Vitwatersrand in Johannesburg,

is an authority on San Rock Art.

Across southern Africa, you find this art painted on the rock in thousands of caves and shelters ranging over many centuries.

It was created by the San, the people misleadingly and pejoratively, described by Europeans as Bushmen.

The San were hunter-gatherers, and when you first encounter one of their rock art paintings, it can be difficult to know what you're looking at.

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