George William Stow (1822–1882) occupies an important place in the history of southern African research and the San. Although best known as a geologist and self-taught historian, he was also among the first to recognise the importance of preserving a record of San life and culture at a time when many San communities were disappearing from the colonial frontier.
During the nineteenth century, Stow travelled extensively through the interior of southern Africa, particularly in the Cape Colony, the Orange Free State and parts of present-day Lesotho and the Eastern Cape. As he moved through these regions, he encountered numerous examples of San rock art and became increasingly concerned that both the paintings and the people who had created them were being lost. His response was to document what he saw as carefully as possible.
One of Stow’s most enduring contributions was his collection of copies of San rock paintings. Using watercolours and sketches, he recorded hundreds of images from shelters and rock faces across southern Africa. These copies have proved invaluable because many of the original paintings have since faded, been damaged, or disappeared altogether. In some cases, Stow’s drawings remain the only surviving record of particular artworks.
Stow also sought to understand the history of the San and their place in southern Africa. His major work, The Native Races of South Africa, was published after his death in 1905. In it, he argued that the San were among the earliest inhabitants of the region and attempted to reconstruct their history before the arrival of later pastoralist and farming communities. While some of his conclusions reflected the attitudes and assumptions of the Victorian era, his work preserved a wealth of information that might otherwise have been lost.
An important aspect of Stow’s legacy lies in the connection between his copies of rock art and the work of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. In the 1870s, several of Stow’s paintings were shown to |Xam San informants, including Dia!kwain, who provided explanations of the images. These discussions offered some of the earliest recorded Indigenous interpretations of southern African rock art and later became a valuable source for researchers seeking to understand the spiritual and symbolic meanings behind the paintings.
For students of Drakensberg rock art, Stow remains a significant figure. His copies preserve details that are no longer visible at some sites and provide an important link between the nineteenth-century San world and modern archaeological research. Although later scholars such as Patricia Vinnicombe, David Lewis-Williams, Sam Challis and Ghilraen Laue have expanded and refined our understanding of San belief systems and rock art, many of their investigations continue to draw upon the material that Stow painstakingly recorded more than 140 years ago.
Today, George William Stow is remembered not only as a geologist and historian but also as one of the earliest individuals to appreciate the cultural significance of San rock art and the importance of preserving a record of a people whose heritage has become one of southern Africa’s greatest cultural treasures.