Mapungubwe - Secrets of a Sacred Hill (Ancient African Kingdom Documentary) | Timeline

[Music] once upon a time Africa's history told of the rise and fall of kings and kingdoms of great battles and brave warriors of great triumphs and ancient traditions these records so proudly passed down from generation to generation were fragile by nature and fell victim to European expansion today these records have all but disappeared yet many clues to Africa's history remain buried under the ground or are still alive in surviving cultures and traditions of Africa these clues bear testimony to civilize that innovative societies in Africa long before European sets ale to explore the world this story is a quest to uncover a great era in South Africa's history one that is a thousand years old but is known only to very few a thousand years ago in southern Africa at the confluence of the shashi and improper rivers flourished a great African kingdom its power extended far beyond the natural boundaries of these rivers and its people occupied the hundreds of sandstone hills that rise from this ancient floodplain tucked away in this valley on a well concealed hill lie the ruins of Southern Africa's very first city [Music] Maupin Warren [Music] Maupin go where may well not be the name its inhabitants used a thousand years ago in sissu to mapo-gu women's place of the jackal and in Savannah it means place of stone today the remains of this ancient city lie on the farm crius world named by the first white settlers who came to the area before the turn of the century in 1933 a group of desperate farmers discovered the riches that had been buried there almost a thousand years before since then mofongo where Hill has been dug studied dated tested and retested by the end of the 20th century mapo-gu where had come to share the farm with the South African Defence Force today this building houses South Africa's most valuable cultural artifacts collected at Mapo Norway these artifacts unknown to the public have been stored here for more than 60 years [Music] at Mapo movie 800 years ago the people buried their last King his body lay in a hut for nine months while a new leader was elected here for the first time in the history of southern Africa a king or sacred leader ruled over his subjects and in turn was venerated by them for centuries after these royal graves arrested peacefully on top of the hill their graves were up here and it's not common in the archaeological world that you can actually pinpoint and say this is the place where society transformed from one quite different kind of organization to another and that's one of the things that makes this place absolutely unique in this area gold was perfect many years before we had gold mined in Johannesburg long before the whites came but Africa blacks had involved in mining mapo-gu Quay is just one small monument but a very important factor in this cycle of questions on the heritage and ancestry and history of humanity Homo sapiens at Matunga where people carried over 10,000 tons of sand up difficult paths to level the hilltop for the Kings residence these are called spindle whirls these are clay disks with a hole now what they would have done is to put him on to a stick would have gone onto the end of it and then there would have been a hook or something anyway that goes into the bowl of cotton and by twirling this it can be done by rolling it on your thigh like that or you can do it like that with the weight on it and that spinning motion helps pull the cotton out that's why it's called a spindle whorl it's the first sight the oldest sight in the country that is produced these things and so presumably the Limpopo Valley is the first place where cotton was actually cultivated within southern Africa by about 200 AD people began migrating south from the Great Lakes region some settled in the Limpopo Valley but the proximity to the river and its flood plains the rainfall patterns and the soil conditions all provided a favorable environment for raising cattle and harvesting crops to sustain an expanding community towards the end of the first millennium changes occurred that were ultimately responsible for the emergence of a new society at schroeder and for the eventual rise of Maupin war with Islamic seafarers were attracted by trade opportunities along East Africa's coast since before the birth of Christ they had expanded their trade southward as far as safale on the Mozambique coast by 900 AD dows laden with beads cloth and glazed pottery would leave Arabian Persian and Indian ports during their winter months catching the monsoon winds which swept them Southwest towards the African coast once Goods have been bartered and exchanged the Dow's now laden with gold ivory and animal skins could make their return trip when the monsoon winds changed direction this trade on the East Coast was the main ingredient that contributed to the rise of mofongo where in the 1200s anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 people lived here this guy controlled an area of roughly the same size as the zulu kingdom that would have been about thirty thousand square kilometres this is the largest known settlement anywhere in Southern Africa at the time and for the very first time a chief lived up on top of the hill and the ordinary guys live down below by the 10th century the Arab Swahili traders had exhausted the natural resources available in the vicinity of safale and were forced to look to the interior for new trade opportunities here at Road it began as a smaller site and with the trade became larger and large and spread out from close to the side of the hill Kia out towards the river covering at its maximum about 15 hectares and an estimated 500 to 700 people were living here yeah at the first cattle based settlement in the valley began the process of the Society's transformation that would culminate at mapo-gu win Shroeder named after the farm on which it stands is situated a few kilometers northeast of mapo-gu where and like mapo-gu where overlooks the Limpopo River today many people still measure wealth and status in terms of ownership of cattle and as his tradition bright price or low Bala is fixed on cattle for centuries past celebrations rituals and trade took place in the cattle kraal the cattle kraal was the center of the community and the burial place for high-ranking members of society but then at Shradha beads were introduced adding a new currency with which to barter and trade these beads came in as a result of the local people starting to trade artifacts and other goods with the people that were coming in from the east coast the Arab Islamic traders schroeder became a significant source of ivory for the Swahili merchants who had to satisfy the great demand for it in India and China today schroeder status is verified by the fact that more glass beads have been found there then at all the other Iron Age sites in southern Africa put together the next phase in the evolution of the manga where culture began at a site called k2 in about the year 1000 AD when a new group of people attracted by trade and other opportunities moved in and conquered the area they sent the people of Schroder fleeing to the west blocking them off from the east coast trade the new conquerors settled at k2 just 1 kilometers southwest of mapo-gu with boom they cut off the trade to all these other people they start manufacturing their own glass beads there's a little thing called a garden roller it's made up of something like 30 other little beads have been crushed melted into a mold and made into a bigger thing now those things were made at k2 the molds are there the blanks are there so to speak there's no doubt that they made now maybe they were worried about the value of the beads that so many beads were coming in they wanted to make sure that it maintained their value they were able to store up wealth themselves and it's that generation of wealth like that that gave the impetus to the development of class distinction because you see what you want to do is not let everybody have it it's the it's the unequal distribution right it's the Royals who want to keep this stuff and so they make their bride price so high that only other Royals can afford it no commoners can afford it and so they're keeping the wealth all locked up into the upper upper class at k2 a more powerful ruling class emerged trade activities increased dramatically and gold gained to play a more important role in the economy attracting more people to the area with this new source of prosperity cattle were no longer the determining factor for wealth and were physically and symbolically moved to the periphery of society the cattle crowds were to make way for the new law and trade courts but with the commoners and the new elite living side by side the situation in this small valley became less than ideal society's intrinsic patent had evolved requiring a complete separation between the leader and his subjects so the Royal elite at k2 made a conscious decision to move tomorrow where Hill which was better suited to their needs [Music] you separated from his people and he was that way because of a special relationship he was supposed to have to his ancestors and that his ancestors had to God I'm standing here on the edge of the commoners court now this is where ordinary people would come to resolve disputes now this court was owned by the King might even been called his his court but he didn't run it because he's aloof remember he lives up on the hill secluded from everybody he has a brother and that brother was probably living over here there's some prestige stonewalling a couple of Hut platforms some terraces and stuff this almost certainly is where that guy should live on the basis of the wave in de and Shona used to do it Royals should surround the hill they perform a protective circle around the leader and that's what we're seeing here so we got Royals on the slopes of the hill Royals on that and then the commoners out here in between even in vinda and Shona today they use a phrase expressing this whole thing to climb the mountain you must go zigzag he is seen as the mountain to climb the mountain is a phrase for to approach the chief and then zigzag means you go to somebody else first because you can never approach one of these important guys directly here behind me is this passage that you would have to take to get to the chief I mean this is really a struggle you can't treat him like a rock star you can only get to him in ones and twos it's really a difficult thing here on the hill the King was isolated and protected and lived with his wives his guards his advisers at his healers daily many people would climb this difficult path to bring supplies and provisions to the Kings residence or to pay tribute the hilltop some 300 meters long than 50 meters wide in places was laid out symbolically with each person having their rightful place if we use an East African parallel there's a special prazer and as the king would walk they'll go he's moving left he's moving left he's moving right he's moving right he sneezed oh god he's thieves he sneeze and according even to the Portuguese documents the King sneezes on the hill within a few minutes everybody throughout the town knows the King has sneezed this is a great ritualization of leadership that you just don't find among other people's [Music] during the years of mapo-gu where the demand for gold grew the King became wealthier than anyone before him by the time we get to math and good we because we have gold beads that are here we've got the gold ride-on stuff I can't then it's obviously changed and it's taken on an internal value and it's become wealth not just a means to wealth not a way of getting glass beads but it is wealth itself for the miners at ma Pongo we're extracting the gold was very hard work only one person at a time could descend through the narrow shafts once underground the miners would follow the seam of gold and we'd use iron Pike's to break out the gold bearing rock which was then lifted to the surface in baskets the people of mapo-gu where were already highly skilled in the smelting of hard metals like iron so the smelting of gold was easier this area here it's been excavated you can see bare rock and you can see a big hole over there this was the royal cemetery now we know it was royal because first of all it's up on this hilltop and secondly we know it's royal because there were gold burials here there was something like 23 burials in all and three of them had gold they had gold beads gold bangles and these famous gold objects the golden rhino a bowl these are all made out of gold sheeting tacked on to wooden cores and then there's what's called the scepter one of them in the sitting position had the scepter something like across its his arms this was the man the bold was behind him and there was at least one golden rhino now the golden rhino also is quite important in this this rhino was almost certainly a black rhino not a white rhino in the shona world a black rhino is seen as something really quite special it has two names one that's sort of this means black but the other one is a word like pin bara Kimbella now that's the name for a dance the Chiefs are supposed to do on the graves of their ancestors at least once a year it's a sort of mock fight they jump up in the air they've got a spear in one hand and a shield and the other they're stabbing and feigning off imaginary blows the rhinoceros was constructed out of several pieces of fine gold foil which were attached to an inner wooden core using pure gold nails the rhinoceros symbolizes stubbornness and power and must have been made in honor of a great king at mapo-gu where the crafting of gold and other objects became the trademark of a remarkable civilization once all paths in the region led to this great capital leaders stationed at distant outposts controlled entry to this land and administered the law in this valley over a period of four hundred years from the start of schroeder to the decline of mapo-gu we evolved the first highly organized and civilized society in southern Africa yet this great Kingdom came to an abrupt end at the turn of the 13th century the capital is deserted and the hilltop itself would never be occupied again the past 500 years have seen waves of colonizers invading Africa straws to claim their piece of her natural wealth and in the process destroy the fragile yet valuable records of her past but the royal skeletons at mapo-gu where rested peacefully on the hill protected by the fact that ancestral graves were sacrosanct and not to be disturbed [Music] in South Africa another 600 years would pass before the next city of gold was born Johannesburg continues rumors of gold motivated European prospectors in the late 1800s to set out for the so called savage interior of South Africa to find the source of the gold that Africans had been mining for centuries the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886 would propel southern Africa into an era of rapid change in this period of industrialization and political upheaval the rights of the black man completely and systematically wiped out [Music] while Johannesburg this modern city of gold began to flourish the remnants of another place of gold were being discovered one day while out walking a man stumbled on a pot of gold a treasure or so this legend goes according to this legend this man lottery upon arriving in the Limpopo Valley was so struck by its beauty that he left the Great Trek on which he had been part to live a solitary life as a hermit near mapo-gu Bay Hill rumors circulated that he found a pot and some exposed gold which he later buried in a secret place another version told that he gave a pot to a local man about the gold he healed of gold and pots of girl that had been discovered here and they related it to King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba also came in some way for decades the rumor of a hill of gold persisted and when a severe drought and depression hit the region white settlers mostly Afrikaner farmers had the hopes of survival fueled by this legend one day in 1932 out of desperation the fan Kranz and Thunder vault went to see when they believed he knew where the fortunes were buried for locals the hill was a place of fear and they believed that to climate meant certain death when I refused to help them saying that if they went up they would never return alive but they managed to persuade marinas younger brother to show them the way Morna with his back to the hill and his eyes averted pointed out the route up Maupin go where he'll win a shout as the you and the secret path but refused to accompany us we looked around a bit on the you but found only broken pots lying around and very little then my father told us to get down on our hands and knees at first we only found odd iron tube in some pieces of copper suddenly I found a pretty piece of gold the fun Kranz had discovered the first royal burial site and the first wrought iron objects in South Africa they recovered about 75 ounces of gold which they decided to divide amongst themselves and say nothing the young van tranh who'd been a student at the University of Pretoria was plagued by his conscience and sent a letter with a selection of the found metals to his professor Leo fushia the lab results are incredible gold plate 93 kumara two percent pure gold and the bangles 91 come to three percent my goodness yes yes similar to the zimbabwe ruins indeed certainly of great significance professor fund rates low of the University of the Witwatersrand immediately gave the site a preliminary inspection he reported that it was a site of major importance one which was practically undisturbed and still intact mr. Cochran the Union government promptly acquired the farm reefs world and entrusted the investigations which they declared a national priority to the University of Pretoria I have no doubt young Smuts had the treasures recovered and with Professor for Shearer in charge work at Matunga we began the first team spent two seasons at mobile away due to the remoteness and extreme temperatures in the valley they could only dig in the winter months of the year P W font owner an excavator and not an archaeologist volunteered to stay on through the summer months to work alone on the hilltop here he found the first fully authentic and preserved royal burial ground the dating and ethnic origins of these graves would be disputed for decades to come for this story and for the University of Pretoria in 1936 the archaeology committee put the golden rhinoceros on display at the Transvaal Museum in 1937 the results of work on the site were published in an elaborate report entitled mapping GU way ancient Bantu civilizations on the Limpopo the report concluded that the pottery showed clear links to Shona and suited to Ana cultures and that the site was obviously of African origin professor for sheer believed that mapo-gu ware was less than 200 years old that it came after Great Zimbabwe both these theories would later be dispelled for sure concluded that a dozen experts should be set to the task that lay ahead there were still many questions that remained unanswered his his invitation to other universities to collaborate with University of Pretoria to continue the exploration of mapo-gu but of course it never happened no sooner was the golden rhinoceros put on public display then it was promptly taken off it was locked in a vault at the University of Pretoria only to see the light of day on rare occasions this important piece of history was interred in a grave of silence thereafter silence also descended on the question of mapo-gu where sight of black achievement in a land ruled by whites Victoria University appointed only one man Captain Guy Gardner to this massive task he excavated from 1935 to 1940 the report on his findings was only published in 1963 23 valuable years later Gardner had an Egyptian background and when he when he was appointed a that was in the late thirties as far as I remember he had certain preconceived ideas he also found certain things were suggested to him well this wasn't purely African and sir that got him on to this theory of his Foucher book the very first one was called ancient Bantu civilizations on the Limpopo and Gardner says neither ancient it's neither bondo and it's not civilized it's Hottentot instead the fuel Negro features seen at Mukwonago Blair could have been caused by a single intrepid nigra who had entered as an alien into a foreign territory the first Negro migration could not have reached as far south as map and go way by the time of its original settlement Gardner's interpretation of this as a Hottentot settlement as part of the overall race debate were there black people in the country before white people and so on his data was used by people later to demonstrate that black people didn't get here any sooner than people at the Cape in fact they would have been crossing the Limpopo when van riebeck was landing in the Cape that kind of stuff garden I believe that the first settlers at k2 were not bantu-speaking people nor did they have the skills associated with the Iron Age and so created the term proto Hottentot and bush busca Boyd to describe them the boss cop thing was something that was invented kind of invented in this and it I saw there is really no such thing but we do all know of the question was son of Bushmen so-called Bushmen people for some people it is perhaps now permissible to imagine the outward appearance of rk2 their heads were large their massive jaws and great teeth denoted flesh-eating individuals many of their women must have presented that peculiar characteristic of the Busch race namely the fatty accumulation on the buttocks amounting to real deformity in our eyes gardener collected most of the hundred made skeletons from k2 and mapo-gu where the today a part of the collection at Pretoria University is a Mattamy department his theory that this site was not of African origin contradicted that of fouché this debate would continue for many years we have no context for it it means nothing so we want to know what the context were how was it buried what in what area of the site and so on so all that information is very important for us excavation this is destruction if you mess up with your excavation you can't go and put it back this was a gold site this is site containing graves with gold everybody else is interested in in the gold aspect and just about nothing else professor Hannes Iliff recalls a visit to Marble mu where as a young boy at the time of Captain gardeners excavations I can clearly remember people moving out of this excavated area with wheelbarrows and just throwing the the material away without sitting he would only surfed every now and again he was told to sift every three wheelbarrow loads of soil a wheelbarrow in itself is already mixing everything up Gardner worked with font owner who had been part of professor for Shias team font owner would design and build a machine that would help speed up the excavations and for several seasons he and the crew of black laborers worked alone on the hilltop control America will polarities I would super Lemire kami diay Pomona lot rock want a curricular effect is there that godness work unfortunately did a lot of damage at Maupin groovy and at k2 he literally shoveled away the archaeological deposit and tipped a lot of it over the side of mapo-gu blue or the side of k2 in order just to get rid of it at the time of gardeners excavations many people looked to Egypt to explain their findings in southern Africa in their eyes Egypt represented a true civilization at a public meeting held in South Africa in 1929 the respected archaeologist Gertrude Kate and Thompson argued convincingly that all the evidence that grade Zimbabwe showed that it had been built and occupied by the ancestors of the Shona people the famous paleontologists Raymond art also attended the meeting when Kate and Thompson showed that if there was nothing Egyptian in it at all it was all just I'm basically African in origin a dart breakdown at the meeting which was organized in 92 to announce the scale enjoy Berg he actually broke down and had to be taken out amidst his sobs he said that Kate and Thompson's announcement ruined archaeology forever had taken the Egyptian remains away the general opinion to a very large degree was that Africa had never had the opportunity to divert to develop or evolve into that type of high level of sophistication that was needed to melt gold to be able to build walls and so on people who came from Europe were unable to believe that Africans could do every stone is cut in accordance with the ancient architects plans it makers did design and construct these walls then they have lost the art for it seems inconceivable that the majority of them should live today in crude as such as things the Great Trek was immortalized in the construction of the fourth wrecker monument which honored the Afrikaners claim to the land and became the symbolic site for pilgrimage and ritual of the Afrikaner in this wave of Africana patriotism Africans voices were denied and Testaments to their heritage were buried ironically more take the architect of this monument that celebrates the Afrikaners achievements also owned a farm adjoining Chris Walt he based his design for the monument on a hill near mapo-gu way a site of African achievement [Music] it was only in 1969 that the pitar university established a Department of Archaeology Hannes Elif became its head well I can say without any doubt that if it hadn't been for my family it wouldn't have been a Department of Archaeology at Pretoria University and I wouldn't have become the head of that department over the next 25 years tutorials archaeology department organised regular student trips for practical training at mapo-gu where students are talking and laughing and be that excited then we move up here and sit next to what I refer to as the Queen's grave sorry umm this very important person who was buried there with lots of gold beads on her and she was very important person and it's less than thousand years and today we don't know anything about her we don't know what her name was we don't know how she looked anything so we ordinary people we are nothing I don't look up at the stars and just I realise how terribly insignificant we are now trying to philosophize another and then when we move back they whisper they don't laugh anymore I just want to create that atmosphere once I could imagine tall warrior looking over my shoulder into the past and agreeing with me that it must have been it is an eye sight I had that feeling and I study memory after 20 years so I'm convinced that there must be nice birthday who would like us to protect the heritage and value it it had become necessary for the apartheid government to defend itself against the rising tide of African nationalism and Afrikaner nationalists other great foe communism [Music] in 1968 while the excavation rights still vested with the University of Victoria Chris felt was appropriated by the military for the next 25 years the farm was controlled by the army today although only part of it still stand it is a symbol of the futile attempt of the white minority to cling to power against all odds Big Bertha South Africa's longest serving foreign minister visited Maupin goober on many occasions PW Buddha had the habit of taking the cabinet into retreat positions you know like Bharat this was an ideal place for a boss Bharat we would receive instruction and briefings from a host of security people the psychiatric services of the South African Defence Force also based themselves after asfalt dr. Aubrey Levine a graduate of Pretoria University headed the rehabilitation program his methods often involved the shock treatment of gays and drug abusers many of the buildings in this remote setting were erected by their labour permission to visit the archaeological site on cliffs fault had to be granted by the South African Defence Force for many years it became impossible for outsiders to visit upon go away it was said that this place was not opened to the public so I made no effort of comment come here because I think is in the past certain places where men for they know Blancas white people throughout the 70s the 80s and into the 90s Pretoria University continued the excavations at mapo-gu with and from all accounts of staff and students the department had an excellent relationship with the army this Hut standing in the shadow of the hill became another storage facility for the mass of artifacts excavated through the decades many of the ceramic bone and metal artifacts stored here were excavated in the 1930s animal droppings litter the place the roof has been stolen the boxes and labels are damaged from the damp all evidence of years of neglect not long ago I mean I did history at school wouldn't even be easily but rather we took those topics that had some relevance and white historians but very little African history was taught to us Afghan history was primitive it was not worth studying we only studied that only when it affected white interest I look back at that brochure on mapping Group A from the Pretoria University but if you if you look carefully you'll see the references to the ideology of those days almost every second page it is stress that there is no relationship between the contemporary African cultures and the ones living at mapo-gu Bay the state's ideology conveniently created some black hole in the history of South Africa between the arrival and settlement of the contemporary African speaking people and archaeological leftovers of the previous people just as a matter of interest that took this South African yearbook but then if you start reading in between the lines you realize that it fits in beautifully with the spirit of the day and you look for instance at the section on the national monuments then all of sudden becomes clear why with our university acted the way they were acting there's a whole list of national monuments and it was exactly three that refer to the African task if the politicians who made the laws could have been just adapted it to the extent that the history could have been included earlier then we wouldn't have had this this problem they're talking about of denying air attached to people it was unfortunate perhaps not so much in terms of archaeology in general but they were archeologists who were told to toe the line they were working at a government institution and had to be very very careful about what they said and I was not really very involved with those politics I was I was digging away into the past and that was all I thought about for many years until I met my wife and so probably with mopping up ways but all the chances they've missed everything they have not done with it and then the picture of innocence is slowly fading away then all of a sudden you feel you sense although you can't pinpoint it directly the ideological evil behind it you know we don't understand in this country are valuable verses you see there's money for a lot of thing in this country but this is one of the most precious historical sites in South Africa this one and look at this is where they melted gold and I am did the people who lived here must already have developed a very high technology maybe Queen Sheba got some of her riches from you who knows some Bob we the ruins are not far from you by the end of the thirteenth century the majority of the population of mapo-gu Bay began to disperse some moved East to join a people that would eventually constitute a vender nation others moved north Great Zimbabwe which began in about 1275 adopted and refined most of my boob in social political and economic patents only on a larger scale but by 1450 this great Kingdom had also fallen the dispersal of people after the reign of Zimbabwe would reverberate across the subcontinent and gave rise to other great states like the mana Motaba in the north and Comi to the east and Makkah Hana and to lamella to the south the first Portuguese caravels rounded the tip of Africa in 1498 at safale the Portuguese heard of the vast riches of a kingdom in the interior but no one would divulge the route or the location of the gold mines the Portuguese implemented the divide and rule policy and destroyed the age-old system of trade between the interior of Africa and the East the colonial era had begun white settlers carved up and laid claim to land inhabited by indigenous people but only discovered the great mineral wealth of the interior in the late 19th century the greatest impact of colonialism was Christianity the missionaries set about the task of converting Africans uncivilized heathens in their eyes the missionaries held a deep conviction of the righteousness of their task and almost succeeded in erasing all remnants of the people's culture and history yet despite these incursions fragments of the past survived into the present the structures of Maupin go where were handed down through the generations and traces can be found in different parts of vendor today one such place is McComb Bonnie of the Chivas a clan where vestiges of sacred leadership still exist [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] vasya record it was a cow I saw change how also can animals cut the democracy [Music] today the Makaha a clan of the lavender people who live in the northeast of South Africa celebrate their ties to the past and pay homage to their ancestry to lamella situated in the Kruger National Park dates back to 1550 and was occupied by ancestors of the Mecca hiney people who had moved there following the downfall of Great Zimbabwe in 1450 ad but in the early 1900's they were forced off the land by white colonialists and missionaries and it was only in 1980s that the site was rediscovered today there is a new approach to archaeology one which is more inclusive and allows other interested and affected communities to participate in the retelling of African history at two lamella using oral research the Makaha Nez were recognized as descendants of the site and appointed to officiate at the reburial of their ancestors the skeletons of Maupin go where remain nameless the graves the bones the artifacts are the only physical reminders of this past civilization will we ever know how and why this kingdom ended some suggest that the natural resources of ivory and gold were depleted perhaps the kingdom fell in battle against another people or did the Arab traders find more lucrative trading partners further north that great zimbabwe cutting off the trade to mangu boy and the weight of the evidence is that it was climatic the Little Ice Age has spread from Europe and its biggest impact starts around 1300 ad and it made things cold and dry and that would have been men it was impossible to grow anything here now maybe for a few years they're bringing stuff in as tribute from better areas but after a while they just can't do that they can't maintain it and they have to leave and some of the people go well they're obviously going to go where there's water where it's raining as time has passed invaluable information about mopping away has disappeared had the first archaeologists done proper oral research perhaps we would know more about the people of mapo-gu way but with a Western culture obsessed with the written word oral histories of Africa's past have been too easily dismissed from all the puppies wags there is no evidence that historians anthropologists went to local people to find the history of the particular place and it is obviously amongst the vendor's speakers and so two speakers his data which is relevant to that kind of exploration this curious photograph appears near the front of professor for Shea's report of 1936 it is of a petty chief named Shawanna during the first season of excavations professor Lestrade an ethnographer investigated the ethnic origin of people in the region he interrogated Juwanna kidnap Daniel Elena mu Harvey Allen wasn't a penny more Kurama hoodoo voodoo Papa Kane irrelevant charm wata Ramapo GUI she wanna claimed that he was a descendant of the last chief of mapo-gu way luckily lucky village the oral history that she wanted provided told of a woman mewho be the daughter of the last chief at mapo-gu who had married a suitor speaking man they had settled on the southwest slope of the hill the following season the team dug a test-fit at the site and sure enough they found evidence of soot occupation substantiating Chauhan has claimed but she wanna as a source of historical information was never mentioned or heard of again but is very well said that even archaeologists who in established that those winds were built by the Banda speaking people did not try to move around and do a thorough research in fact I think that we've done by Liz the historians simply mute South Africans have had little opportunity to claim celebrate or share in this history in 1984 Maupin go where Hill was recognized as a National Monument and in 1998 more than 60 years after the initial discovery some of the golden artifacts including the rhinoceros scepter and Bowl were declared national treasures the massive task of identifying and cataloging the artifacts from the University store amad mapo-gu wear has begun for now the treasures remain in the custody of the university stored on the 17th floor of this inaccessible building perhaps one day soon they will be displayed for all to see and appreciate this seemingly desolate Valley still holds some of the most important clues to Southern Africa's past through the decades academics have explored excavated studied and dissected bubble Norway but still some of the answers elude them the burden to explain and search for the answers falls on a small community of archaeologists [Music] in spite of all that has happened Maupin always legacy will live on in southern Africa many kingdoms have come and gone mofongo where new days of splendor abandonment and rediscovery it was a place of kings of the golden rhinoceros and a place of stone you [Music] you

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Length: 50min 45sec (3045 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 30 2017