San bushmen rain dance. Artwork of rock art showing San bushmen in southern Africa performing a rain dance with a hippopotamus. The dance induces a trance which is thought to give the dancers supernatural powers enabling them to capture rain dance animals such as a hippopotamus. In the trance they kill the animal and its blood becomes the rain. The lines joining the rain animal to the dancers have been interpreted as lines of power. An alternative interpretation is that the dancers may be leading a captive animal to attract rain. The plants they are holding could be aromatic or even hallucinogenic.