[1] Some 300-290 million years ago, during Dwyka times, what is now Southern Africa was, as a result of plate tectonics, near the South Pole and large ice sheets or glaciers covered high-lying areas.

As the ice shaped the landscape, the continent of Gondwanaland continued to drift slowly northwards, ultimately bringing this area into warmer latitudes.

At one time – when the diamondiferous pipes penetrated to the surface between 120 and 90 million years ago – it is estimated that about 1 km of Karoo sediment overlay the Kimberley-Barkly West area.

One argument suggests that whereas sites such as the nearby Wildebeest Kuil, with its profusion of engravings of animals and some human figures, is quintessentially San/hunter-gatherer in character, sites such as Nooitgedacht and Driekops Eiland, where geometric engravings occur in great numbers, may belong to a different tradition of rock art, a separate Khoekhoe herder rock art tradition.

[citation needed] Research at Driekops Eiland suggests that sites such as this, and the ‘geometric’ engravings, bags and aprons present, may have been produced as part of girls’ coming-of-age rites, potentially across the spectrum of both San and Khoekhoe contexts, given the similarities in beliefs and ritual practices.

Nooitgedacht featured early on, when the Presidents of the Free State and Transvaal Republics met here with the Griqua Chief Nicolaas Waterboer and his agent David Arnot, on 18 August 1870.

But this was not the end of the story, the dispute being settled eventually by the Keate Award (in favour of Waterboer, who placed himself under British protection), and the proclamation of the Crown Colony of Griqualand West on 27 October 1871.