Credited to Angola. The Chokwe also live in DR Congo and Zambia, where the same drawing tradition occurs; UNESCO inscribed the element for Angola in 2023.
How it began
Sona are drawings and geometric figures traced in sand by the Lunda-Cokwe (Chokwe) and neighboring peoples of eastern Angola. The practice is older than the colonial records that describe it, and no date of origin is known. It is passed on during the initiation rites of young people preparing to take on social roles. The meaning and execution of the harder figures were known only to specialists called akwa kuta sona, 'those who know how to draw'.
How it works
The drawer smooths a patch of damp sand and marks a grid of reference dots with the tips of the index finger and little finger. A line is then traced around and between the dots, in the classic figures as one continuous closed curve. Each figure goes with a story, proverb or lesson, told while the drawing is made, so the picture works as a memory aid.
The figures follow rules. Many are symmetric, and whether a given grid can be completed in a single line depends on its dimensions. Mathematicians have shown that these patterns can be built up and analyzed systematically.
What lasted
Sona became a standard example in ethnomathematics, the study of mathematical ideas in cultural practices. The Mozambican mathematician Paulus Gerdes published extensive analyses of the figures and used them to illustrate mathematical principles, and later authors have studied their symmetry and compared them with sand drawings in Oceania. For the communities themselves, UNESCO describes sona as a way of transmitting stories, knowledge and collective memory, and of reinforcing a sense of belonging.
Where it stands today
UNESCO inscribed sona on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2023, for Angola. The listing names rural to urban migration as a threat to the practice. It also records that in recent decades schools and other educational institutes have begun using sona to teach mathematics, ethnomathematics and anthropology, and that this use, together with work by artists, has helped the drawings spread and be reinvented.
