JEROLD RICHERT - author of The Flamingo Room
AND OTHER NOVELS OF AFRICA
Articles
Zimbabwe Ruins
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Aerial view of the enclosure, Zimbabwe
View of the massive wall structure at Zimbabwe
Walling and steps at Zimbabwe
The stone tower at Zimbabwe
Megalithic type of building in juxtaposition with a tower, as still to be found in Arabia
The remains of a round tower of the period of Hammurabi
A round tower, showing patternwork in the masonry reminiscent of Zimbabwe. This stone round tower is situated in the fortified village of Bajil in the Tahama, near the red sea, Yemen.
A coin of Byblos showing the round tower analogous to that of Zimbabwe
Notes from The Origin of the Zimbabwean Civilisation By R Gayre of Gayre.
"The archaeological misconception of the century"
That is how R Gayre of Gayre, an eminent archaeologist and ethnologist described the current explanation for the origin of the Great Zimbabwe Ruins in Central Africa. A World Heritage Site, it has been a thorn in the side of enlightened historians for more than a century, yet still today, it festers away silently, untreated, misconstrued, and its truths generally ignored by all the major encyclopaedias, including Wikipedia and Britannica.
The first discoverers of the prehistoric civilisation of Zimbabwe, attributed to the work of Phoenicians, and even associated it with Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. In general the view that Zimbabwe was ancient and owed its existence to the gold extraction carried out by such advanced peoples was upheld by all the earlier scientific investigators, including R.N.Hall and Theodore Bent.
A reaction took place with Randall Maciver's and Miss Caton Thompson's work, and so there grew up what might be called the Bantu school of thought, which claims that the ruins are recent in origin and are to be called "African", thereby inferring that they are due to the work of the Bantu. This view, through constant repetition, and because it coincides with political pressures to attribute the civilisation to the Bantu, is now to be found in most accounts of these ruins and those associated with them at Khami, Dhlo-Dhlo, and other places.
Very little of the Bantu theory is sustained by actual scientific fact, Gayre reports, yet it is this one that has taken the stage, and whose views are repeated from textbook to textbook and in every popularising account of the proto-historic megalithic civilisation of Zimbabwe, and it is this myth which must be exploded once and for all if a gross distortion of racial history is not to be perpetuated.
The mass of evidence drawn from archaeology, aided by the latest techniques, ethnology, social anthropology, considerations of religions and ancient maritime communications together with historical evidence, and the views of other highly qualified scientists such as Professors Keane and Bent through to Professors Murdock, Dart, and Gayre, conclude that the Bantu theory is pure myth. Add to this the stories and legends of the Bantu themselves, and particularly the Zulu, who, apart from the Bushmen, spearheaded the migrations south. The Zulu historian and author Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa, in his book Indaba My Children - Johannesburg: Crane Book Shops 1965 and Africa is My Witness 1966 categorically states that Bantu tradition is clear that they did not build it, but it was built by white men who arrived before the Arabs. These 'white men' he calls 'the long-haired ones' some of whom had red hair, and were more than likely the early Phoenician explorers. A horse-head prow (which is typically Phoenician) of an ancient wooden ship was found at Sofala, where they must have landed before sailing up the Sabi River (River Saba, in ancient times) searching for gold, which was plentiful in the river, washed down from Zimbabwe, which is the source of the Sabi River. The Arabs were almost certainly from Saba (Yemen), hence the name.
In 1552, the Portuguese, de Barros, published an account of Zimbabwe.
"In the midst of the plains in the kingdom of Batua, in the country of Toroe, nearest the oldest gold mines, stands a fortress, square, admirably built, inside and out, of hard stone. The blocks of which the walls consist are put together without mortar and are of marvellous size. The walls are twenty five spans in thickness: their height is not so considerable compared with their breadth. Over the gate of the building is an inscription which neither the Moorish traders (the Arabs of the coast) who were there, nor others learned in inscriptions could read. Nor does anyone know in what character it is written. On the heights around the edifice stand others in like manner built of masonry without mortar: among them a tower of more than twelve bracas (yards) in height. All these buildings are called by the natives Zimbahe - that is, the royal residence or court, as are all royal dwellings in Monomatapa. Their guardian, a man of noble birth, has here the chief command, and is called Symbacao: under his care are some of the wives of Monomotapa, who constantly reside here. When and by whom these buildings were erected is unknown to the natives, who have no written characters. They merely say they are the work of the Devil (supernatural), because they are beyond their powers to execute. Besides these, there is to be found no other mason work, ancient or modern, in that region, seeing that all the dwellings of the barbarians are of wood and rushes." (Bent, the ruined cities...quoting de Barros, De Asia, Lisbon 1552) Karl Mauch questioned Bantu near the acropolis about the ruins, and they replied that these had been built by white men when the stones were soft a long time ago.
Archaeology is only, at best, a substitute for history, which attempts to supply gaps where the written evidence does not exist. It is not some 'mystique' which nullifies and takes pre-eminence over history. To set it up, as the pro-Bantu theory archaeologists do, as though it can pronounce dogmatic obiter dicta, to the exclusion of historical data, is a clear misuse of archaeological method, and a very great disservice to that science. For if it is evident that archaeology can be so blatantly misused where there is historical evidence to the contrary to check it, it can never be trusted to interpret the facts where there is no historical evidence available. The role of archaeology is to supplement, and not to displace, historical accounts.
In the face of the Portuguese historical statements, supplemented by those of the nineteenth century explorers, and with the accumulated evidence from numerous disciplines and sciences, we can say that the statement that Great Zimbabwe reached its "Golden Age" about 1700AD under Bantu chiefs is much more than a myth. It is the misconception of the twentieth century. By the foisting of ancient monuments on the world as modern Bantu, prehistoric archaeology has suffered two severe blows from which its credibility will take a long time to recover. Randall Maciver and Miss Caton-Thomson, through sheer lack of knowledge of African ethnology and general background information, fell into serious error. Where Mr. Roger Summers stands (who should know more of the broader basis of the anthropological and historical material than either Randall Maciver or Caton-Thompson) we leave it to the reader to judge. We do not say he deliberately "cooked" the evidence, we do not associate ourselves with any such allegations, but we do believe that his pre-occupation with his own unproven, indeed, illogical theory, has caused him, perhaps subconsciously, to ignore the facts, even though this theory is destroyed every time it is tested at the bar of other sciences or of history.
The damage which has been done to archaeology and paleo-ethnology in Southern Africa by the activities of professional archaeologist who have behaved like amateurs with theories to justify, has been incalculable. The typology of artefacts such as pottery, which elsewhere is one of the sheet anchors of investigation in prehistory, has been confused by having been labelled as of a Bantu-period types belonging to horizons centuries before the arrival of the Negroid stocks in this part of Africa. Skeletons have been recklessly called Bantu on the flimsiest evidence. When we come to study the human remains found in the ancient mines we do not find typical Negroid Bantu skeletons at all, and this Mr. Roger Summers readily admits. The skeletons are basically those of Bushmen. To get over this difficulty, Mr. Summers postulates that the ruling Bantu made slave-miners of the Bushmen. Why should the Bantu (who have never been technicians anywhere or at any time in history) perform the role of mine developers exploiting a Bushmen population? Surely the obvious explanation is that the mining operations were carried on by Bushmen from the early Iron Age (any time from 200AD until 1100AD) under the direction of technically advanced people, whose terms for the very implements they used the Bushmen adopted, and transmitted later into the racial amalgam of Bush-Hottentot-Negroid, which now constitutes the Bantu people. Mr. Summers admits that the older "open stope" method of gold mining is believed "to have been learned from the Arabs or Indians." This admission in itself destroys the whole concept of a Bantu origin. For if the mining community used methods adopted from civilised peoples ringing the Indian Ocean, then it is inconceivable that they were not indebted to the same source for their building and engineering techniques. In that case, why suppose that the direction throughout was other than that of former "colonialists", whether Arabs, Abyssinians, or Indians? In any case, how did the Arabs and Indians come to teach the Bantu their methods? There is no evidence that in those days there were concepts of helping under-developed countries. Surely not even Mr. Summers, and those that think like him, can believe that the Bantu built ships and sent people to India or Arabia. If the Bantu learnt anything from these sources, it was as slaves. The fact is that when left to themselves they never did anything about mine sinking or significant mining operations of their own volition.
The whole sequence of events will have to be re-studied and, where necessary, re-classified, so that it is consistent with the actual facts of prehistoric and proto-historic ethnology. It will be necessary to see that it is divorced from the distortions created by this mythology which has twisted everything in an attempt to prove, if that were possible, an obviously untrue and indeed, ridiculous interpretation of events. The Bantu theory is contrary to all we know of the facts of archaeology and ethnology elsewhere, and deliberately contrary to the express evidence of unimpeachable historians and chroniclers.
A new generation of objective pre-historians must come forward. They must make new excavations, establish accurate typological sequences dated by carbon-14 tests, and then according to the horizon, make an interpretation of skeletal evidence of an accurate ethnological kind, consistent with what we know of racial distributions, at each level. In this way they will give us the means, where necessary, of re-interpreting the evidence.
Meanwhile, what is urgently needed is that the myth of the Bantu building of the megalithic civilisation of Zimbabwe, and its "Golden Age" in the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries AD, should disappear from the popularising works of archaeology and ethnology and from the encyclopaedias as soon as possible. We suspect that as more information becomes evident, that is what will happen.
Zimbabwe has suffered from being an undeveloped region for archaeological and ethnological research, invaded in brief forays by distinguished archaeologists who, for all that, were more ignorant than learned in this entirely new field. These were followed by local amateurish archaeologists who in some cases have made themselves pundits. They followed, in the first place with awe, the colossal errors of the foragers from abroad, and then have gone on to justify the misinterpretation of evidence which these outsiders had made. To this extent the monstrous distortion of facts of the Bantu-Zimbabwe myth can be understood, if not condoned.
The obsession to prove a theory can become so great that, unconsciously, all evidence is twisted to justify the thesis. Therefore, although we characterise this myth as the misconception of the twentieth century we are quite prepared to believe that it was perpetrated by "hoaxers" unconscious of the false history they were perpetrating. But, for all that, the Bantu-Zimbabwe theory will rank as the greatest error of misinterpretation of our times. It will require much accurate scientific work before archaeology will recover from the harm that has been done.
The Origin of the Zimbabwean Civilisation: R Gayre of Gayre: Galaxy Press Salisbury (Harare)1972
Sadly, this "hands on" type of investigation is not ever likely to happen. At best, some of the truth may surface through further examination of historical data outside of Zimbabwe, through Portuguese, Arab, Indian or some other country that had some association with the east coast of Africa. Maybe even the Phoenicians themselves. It is on record that Lt. Col. A. L. da Costa found in a Southern African ruin a quantity of Egyptian papyri. There is now no trace of the papyri, but the discovery is recorded. The loss of these writings is not the only one which is to be deplored. The marble rosette cylinder which might provide evidence of a link with Phoenicia, through a small rosette cylinder found at Zimbabwe, has also disappeared (so we are informed) from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where Theodore Bent first saw the cylinder, which was stated to have come from Paphos.
Even if historical data is found which proves unequivocally that the Bantu theory is out by almost a thousand years, it will make little difference. Political expediency, political correctness, racial repercussions, and simple apathy for so esoteric a subject amongst the general population, will ensure its continued mythical status, and ongoing aggravation in the side of the enlightened historians. One good thing has come of it though. It gave me the subject, plot and theme for two of my Africa novels, The Flamingo Room and The Pilot,which, in their own small way, try to address the unfortunate misinterpretation of a World Heritage site:
Jerold Richert 2009
A more detailed article, complete with notes, bibliography and useful links can be found at :
http://www.DLMcN.com/anczimb.html
ANCIENT ZIMBABWEAN CIVILIZATION
by David McNaughton
Adapted and published as 'The African Connection' in Horizons magazine (Khaleej Times, Dubai, UAE), 6th February 1987
A summary appears at http://www.dlmcn.com/zimsciam2.html - based on an unsuccessful letter to Scientific AmericanView Blog to read how the campaign is progressing to establish an opposing theory to the 'so called' Bantu Theory that has been entrenched for so many years in the encyclpaedias
Soapstone bird stele, at Zimbabwe, showing sun disc and chevron patterns, and crocodile on the left.
A statue of the sacred falcon of Horus at a temple built at Edfu by the ptolemaic Kings.
A stele of Djer, third king of the First Dynasty, also known as King Serpent, found ar Abydos.
Hieroglyphics from the pylon of thutmose 1 at Karnak. Note the bird and chevron symbols.
An enlargement of a portion of a wall painting found in the Chamavara Cave near Fort Victoria (Masvingo) with a slight outlining done on the spot, of the principal figure. This shows a woman in Arabic or Indian dress, with upturned boots, trousers and choli (or breast jacket) exposing the midriff.
