My word! You guys in Knysna and Plett have really been through the wringer with storms and floods. Here’s hoping things return to normal fast.
Meanwhile up here on the warm, sunny Limpopo River we’ve been learning about the intriguing history of Mapungubwe. Most people know about Mapungubwe’s golden rhino, but perhaps not so much about the 400-year-old civilization it came from. The little rhino, made of thin gold moulded around a wooden rhino carving, was found in a grave of one of the royals who ruled over the Kingdom of Mapungubwe, a flourishing civilization that existed from about 900 AD to 1300 AD. A small golden bowl and sceptre were found with the rhino. We saw only replicas at Mapungubwe National Park’s museum as the originals are housed at the University of Pretoria. Archaeologists know that before the rise of the Mapungubwe Kingdom, San hunter-gathers lived in the region for about 100,000 years, and that humans have lived there continuously from about 2.5 million years ago. Around 900 AD Iron Age farmers migrated from the north and settled at Mapungubwe, attracted by the fertile Limpopo River valley. They were the Zhizo people, ancestors of today’s Shona, Venda and Kalanga people. From these farmers grew an entire civilization, where people not only farmed, but mined iron, copper and gold, becoming a “powerful southern African trade hub”. They transported these metals plus ivory, rhino horn and leopard skins to the east coast where they traded with Arab and Indian merchants for silk, cotton, Chinese porcelain and beautiful glass beads. The kings, queens and ruling elites accumulated these luxury goods, plus huge numbers of cattle, which made them increasingly powerful. In about 1150 AD this powerful elite moved from the valley to the top of Mapungubwe Hill, while the commoners continued to live in the valley. This “solidified the development of a fully class-based society” with an enormous disparity between rich and poor. Smaller communities had to pay tribute to the kings in the form of crops, cattle and other goods, and Mapungubwe rulers also taxed any gold that passed through their region. SANParks writes that Mapungubwe is considered to be the first known kingdom in southern Africa that established this type of social hierarchy, where a single leader ruled over a centralized state. No one knows how many successive kings and queens there were during Mapungubwe’s 400 years of existence, but archaeological excavations have uncovered 23 royal graves “indicating a succession of kings and queens”. Like most civilizations, this one declined, eventually ending around 1300 AD. Academics suggest that a shift to drier conditions led to the collapse of the food supply, and the region could no longer support a population of 10,000. “As agricultural resources failed, the trade routes that fueled the elite’s wealth shifted north, probably to the emerging centre of Great Zimbabwe.” When we look out over Mapungubwe to the Limpopo now, all we see is bushveld, wildlife and birds. All that is left of this powerful, thriving civilization are local oral histories and relics in museums. And perhaps there are some secrets still hidden in the bushveld soil.
