PREHISTORIC RHODESIA.*
A raw years ago Professor David Maciver published a work on Mediaeval Rhodesia in which he expounded a new theory of the Mashonaland ruins, which had hitherto been considered to be the work of some prehistoric Asiatic colonists. He main- tained that the ruins were roughly of one date and type, and that they were the work of the Bantu themselves, somewhere about the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. His arguments were partly archaeological, partly historical. He held that there was no evidence to connect the ancient world, and in especial the Arabs of the pre-Koranic period, with South-East Africa; he declared that the type of civilisation and the relics found were purely African in character ; and in particular he found pieces of Nankin china deeper than the oldest founda- tions of the Zimbabwe temple, which he claimed as final dating material. Professor Maciver. stated his case with great bold- ness and clearness, and prima facie it seemed conclusive. For ourselves, we have no a priori preference between the two theories. If it is interesting to believe that Rhodesia has a long history, linked up with the Phoenicians and the Arabs of Sabara, it is no less interesting to believe that the Bantu race were possessed within historical times of a culture far higher than anything which had been hitherto credited to them. The latter theory is perhaps the more attractive, as it is • Pre-LEistoric Rhodeitia. By R. Knell. With Illustrations and Nape. London : T. Fisher Bustin. [12s. ed. net.j politically the more hopeful. When we reviewed Professor Maciver's book we admitted that his argument seemed con- clusive. Mr. R. N. Hall in the work before us replies to this argument. He is the chief South African expert on the ruins, and has already written of them in two delightful volumes. With immense knowledge and care he re-examines all the evidence, and his conclusions are in favour of the older view. As we gave our qualified adherence three 'years ago to Professor Maeiver's side, we are bound to state Mr. Hall's arguments and to give them full consideration. The book has its faults as a piece of dialectic. It is packed with information, and contains some most valuable additional matter, such as the "Gazetteer of Mediaeval Rhodesia." But from the point of view of controversy it is a little overloaded with collateral evidence, and some minor aspects are treated at unnecessary length. Mr. 1=fall has a tendency to the fault of enumerating rather than weighing arguments. But when all has been said, on the main points at issue he seems to us to prove his case. The true origin of the Mashonaland ruins still remains a speculation, but it is practically certain that they had not the origin which Professor Maciver attributes to them.
In an argument so long and so full of detail we can only select the main features. In the first place, Professor Maciver denies that there was any foreign occupation of Rhodesia earlier than that of the Arabs of Magadoxo in the eleventh
century. From this it follows that the ancient rock gold-mines must either be Kaffir in origin or subsequent to the eleventh century. According to the evidence of mining experts, a prodigious quantity of gold—not less than 275,000,000 worth— has been taken from these rock-mines. Now it is perfectly clear from Portuguese records that they were not being worked during their period, roughly 1505 to 1760. They had great difficulty in getting gold at all, and the little they got was in the form of dust. The native population, the Ma-Karanga, were not miners, and the yield of the rock- mines was banket, "which, not showing a speck of visible gold, would not have afforded without assay and determina- tion any possible clue as to its value." We know from Arab authorities that from the tenth century onwards no gold ornaments were worn by the natives ; therefore the profusion of gold ornaments found at Zimbabwe must have belonged to a much earlier period. The Portuguese tried to get gold and failed, and we have their verdict on the country in their historian's phrase : "0 illusoro Potosi de Chicova ! 0 fabuloso El Dovardo de Quiteve ! " But the con- temporary Portuguese writers—ie., De Conto and De Barms —knew of the old rock-mines, and considered that they were the source of the Queen of Sheba's gold. If the Portuguese were not miners, neither were the Ma-Karanga. They have never in their history shown the slightest mining skill, and bankct-mining requires the highest skill and its practice over a long period of years. They are a conservative people, tenacious of tradition, but there is no tradition among them of any mining. The conclusion suggests itself that in the tenth century these mines were already very ancient and their art quite forgotten, and that that art must have been the possession of a non-Bantu people who bad great mining experience. The shape of their ingots we know to have been of the astragali pattern, the same as the tin ingots mined by the Phoenicians in Cornwall. Mr. Hall thinks that the rock-mines were much more ancient than the ruins, and that the Zimbabwe temple was built by the miners at some time long after they had founded the gold ir- du s try .
Mr. Hall then passes to the question of native tradition. He shows from the history of other Bantu tribes the enduring quality of tradition, especially among a conservative people like the Ma-Karanga, who have been living in their present country for about a thousand years. To them the ruins are "hoar ancient." They were built "when stones were soft and days were misty," and were the work of devils. We know from Portuguese sources that before the sixteenth century the Ma-Karanga had the same story. This ethnological evidence makes it very difficult to believe that the natives had any share in the building of them in historic times. If the whole wonderful Zimbabwe structure, with its evidence of curious ceremonial, were the outcome of the natural evolution of the Bantu mind, which speedily forgot all about them, it must have taken place within a century or two, and must have included a science of rock-mining which has no parallel outside
modern times. It seems an ethnological miracle too wonderful to credit.
Mr. Hall then proceeds to prove that the Inyangs, remains, so far from being, as Professor Maciver thought, the oldest in the country, are much later than Zimbabwe, and represent a late imitation and not the prototype. We think that he makes good his general point that instead of evolution in culture within historic times the process has been one of rapid decadence in culture. Passing over the evidence for the Elliptical Temple and the Conical Tower at Zimbabwe, with their numerous Asiatic parallels, as well as the finds of phalli and ceremonial utensils, which have a strong Asiatic suggestion, we come to the "Nankin china" argument, which is really the founda- tion of Professor Ma.civer's case. If mediaeval china was found below the oldest foundations, then these foundations were mediaeval. Mr. Hall's answer is that the china was not found below the foundations of the main walls, but below the level of the foundations of the walls in the enclosure. But all this enclosure has been repeatedly trenched by gold prospectorsand curio-hunters, and every kind of odds and ends turns up. A Birmingham umbrella-frame and a brandy- bottle have been found in the same enclosure at a greater depth than that at which Professor Maciver found the china. Nankin china was imported into the country in quantities by the Portuguese, and it is found so generally throughout the country that the natives use bits of it as razors. With the climate of Rhodesia, the dry winter and the heavy summer rains, such sharp articles work their way down to a. great depth in a very short time. It would therefore appear that the Nankin china find is not dating evidence of any kind.
Those who have seen the Zimbabwe ruins must always have felt a little doubtful about Professor Maciver's dictum that the Elliptical Temple is only "a translation into stone of the principles of a Kaffir hut." Its elaborate drainage system and its massive and finished architecture, as well as its curious exotic decoration, remove it far from the ken of the rough- and-ready house-building of the country, which we know to have existed substantially in its present form for half -a-dozen centuries. Mr. Hall seems to us to disprove the mediaeval theory of origin, and to make out a good primd-facie case for the older explanation. This explanation presupposes the advent in Africa at some indefinite time prior to the Moslem era of an Asiatic people, who were responsible for the ancient rock-mines. There was a large export of gold from the country, and in the mining the colonists may have been assisted by labourers from Western India. At some date subsequent to the opening of the mines the Zimbabwe temples were built, and a form of worship was practised after the type of the cults of Arabia and Western India. The workmen engaged in the building may have been negroes under the direction of Arab overseers, and the mingled Asiatic and negroid medium through which the foreign culture was manifested would account for the blurring of the original significance ol orientation and emblem. The colonists mixed their blood with the negro, and a hybrid race grew up which in time mingled with the Ma-Karanga, and left its trace in the Semitic features and practices for which that tribe are still remarkable. There is some evidence that the Zimbabwe temples were suddenly abandoned, probably because of an irruption of barbarians from the North, who drove out the half-Arab, half-negro dwellers. All this is, of course, only hypothesis, but it is an hypothesis which seems to fit in better with ascertained facts than any other which has been put forward.
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