Kingdom of Mapungubwe

Kingdom of Mapungubwe Mapungubwe
Kingdom
1075–1220 →
Mapungubwe Hill
Capital	Mapungubwe
Religion	Cult of Mwari
Political structure	Kingdom
President	Unknown (first)
	Unknown (last)
History
- K2 culture moves to Mapungubwe Hill	1075
- Mapungubwe Hill abandoned and travels to different places	1220

Historical states in present-day South Africa
before 1600 Mapungubwe (1050–1270)
1600-1700 Cape Colony (1652–1910)
1700-1800 Swellendam (1795) Graaff Reinet (1795–1796)
1800-1850 Waterboer's Land (1813–1871) Zulu Kingdom (1818–1897) Adam Kok's Land (1825–1861) Winburg (1836–1844) Potchefstroom (1837–1848) Natalia Republic (1839–1843)
1850-1875 Orange Free State (1854–1902) Republic of Utrecht (1854–1858) Lydenburg Republic (1856–1860) South African Republic (1857–1902) Griqualand East (1861–1879) Griqualand West (1870)
1875-1900 Stellaland (1882–1885) Goshen (1882–1883) Nieuw Republiek (1884–1888) Klein Vrystaat (1886–1891)
1900-present Cape Colony (1652–1910) Union of South Africa (1910–1961) Transkei (1976–1994) Bophuthatswana (1977–1994) Venda (1979–1994) Ciskei (1981–1994) Republic of South Africa (1961–present)
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The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial state in Southern Africa located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers (22°2′S 29°36′E), south of Great Zimbabwe. The kingdom was the first stage in a development that would culminate in the creation of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe in the 13th century, and with gold trading links to Rhapta and Kilwa Kisiwani on the African east coast.

Origin

The largest settlement from what has been dubbed the Leopard’s Kopje culture is known as K2 culture and was the immediate predecessor to the settlement of Mapungubwe. The people from K2 culture, probably derived from the ancestral eastern Bantu or Urewe culture, were attracted to the Shashi-Limpopo area, likely because it provided mixed agricultural possibilities. The area was also prime elephant country, providing access to valuable ivory. The control of the gold and ivory trade greatly increased the political power of the K2 culture. By 1075, the population of K2 had outgrown the area and relocated to Mapungubwe Hill.

Stone masonry

Spatial organization in the kingdom of Mapungubwe involved the use of stone walls to demarcate important areas for the first time. There was a stone-walled residence likely occupied by the principal councilor. Stone and wood were used together. There would have also been a wooden palisade surrounding Mapungubwe Hill. Most of the capital’s population would have lived inside the western wall.

Origins of the name

The capital of the kingdom was called Mapungubwe, which is where the kingdom gets its name. The site of the city is now a World Heritage Site, national park, and archaeological site. There is a bit of controversy regarding the origin and meaning of the name, Mapungubwe. Conventional wisdom has it that Mapungubwe means "place of Jackals, or alternatively, place where Jackals eat or according to Fouche’, one of the earliest excavators of Mapungubwe, “ hill of the jackals” (Fouche', 1937 p.1).

This origin is supposedly derived from the Venda word for jackal (i.e. Phunguhwe) or alternatively, the Tsonga word for the same animal (i.e. Phukubje). Others on the other hand suggest the name means “hill or place of stones/boulders/rocks”. This version appears a lot more closer to the actual meaning of the word since Mapungubwe actually mean "place of boiling or simmering stones/rocks/boulders". The word is derived from the root morpheme "Pungu" (Venda) for boiling or simmering, and the suffix morpheme bwe" (Venda word for rocks/stones/boulders). Other Venda morphimes denoting rocks/boulders/stones are "he and gwe" e.g. Dzingahe (place of black boulders/rocks/stones), Mahematshena (place of white boulders/stones/rocks) and Mavhiligwe. Interestingly, the morphemes denoting rocks are common among Bantu language words such as “we” (Kiswahili),”bye” (tsonga), “tye” (Zulu/Xhosa). Indeed, the famous Zimbabwean Monuments are called Great Zimbabwe which comes from Zimba za mabwe which means houses of stones.

Incidentally, Mapungubwe is also referred to as “Tshavhadzimu” which means “place of the gods” or a “revered place”. This probably explains (as will be seen later) why the natives residing around the area were reluctant to disclose or share with strangers, anything related to its whereabouts. Indeed, such reverence largely explains why Mapungubwe hill remained untouched, especially by the natives throughout all those centuries after its abandonment.

Culture and society

Mapungubwean society was "the most complex in southern Africa". It is thought by archaeologists to be the first class-based social system in southern Africa; that is, its leaders were separated from and higher in rank than its inhabitants. Mapungubwe’s architecture and spatial arrangement also provide "the earliest evidence for sacred leadership in southern Africa".

Life in Mapungubwe was centered around family and farming. Special sites were created for initiation ceremonies, household activities, and other social functions. Cattle lived in kraals located close to the residents' houses, signifying their value.

Most speculation about society continues to be based upon the remains of buildings, since the Mapungubweans left no written or oral record.

The kingdom was likely divided into a three-tiered hierarchy with the commoners inhabiting low-lying sites, district leaders occupying small hilltops and the capital at Mapungubwe hill as the supreme authority. Elites within the kingdom were buried in hills. Royal wives lived in their own area away from the king. Important men maintained prestigious homes on the outskirts of the capital. This type of spatial division occurred first at Mapungubwe but would be replicated in later Butua and Rozwistates. The growth in population at Mapungubwe may have led to full-time specialists in ceramics, specifically pottery. Gold objects were uncovered in elite burials on the royal hill.

Re-discovery

Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape *
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Country	South Africa
Type	Cultural
Criteria	ii, iii, iv, v
Reference	1099
Region **	Africa
Inscription history
Inscription	2003 (27th Session)
* Name as inscribed on World Heritage List ** Region as classified by UNESCO

After Mapungubwe's fall, it was forgotten until 1932 (but not to the descendents of the original occupiers of the hill, the Vhangona who are the aboriginal Vhavenda), the Vhatwanamba and Vhaleya clans among the present day Venda people as well as residents of present day Zimbabwe and Botswana). On New Year's Eve 1932, E. S. J. van Graan, a local farmer and prospector and his son, a former student of the University of Pretoria, set out to follow up on a legend he had heard from a very old native about a strange story of a white man gone mad. The mad white man was a well known character called Lottering who in the last decades of the nineteenth century had established himself about half a mile from Mapungubwe. This Lottering had apparently climbed the sacred Mapungubwe hill and found items because he presented to van Graan's informant, a big earthenware pot, beautifully made and unlike anything the natives had at that time. Following the story, van Graan made inquiries until at last he located the general area where the Mapungubwe hill was supposed to be located. On 31 December 1932, he set out with his son to investigate. Father and son were joined on the way by three other adventurers and had to be very secretive about their search since the land on which the hill is situated was private property, whose owner was unknown, nor had he given permission for exploration on his property.

An old Mungona native called Tshiwana had promised to point out the hill to van Graan but when a party of five whites arrived, he developed cold feet and refused point blank to point out the way and told them that they would never find the place, nor the secret way up and if they do, they would never come back alive! Eventually, the five men persuaded Tshiwana's son to show them the hill which turned out to be a great mass of sandstone, about 31 meters high and 320 meters long with sheer cliff sides, and apparently un-scalable except with the help of ladders and ropes. At this point, Tshiwana's son, who was literarily shivering with fright and had to be forcibly detained, at last pointed the secret stairway to the top. Such was his fright that he had to point it out facing the other way to avoid directly looking at the hill. Such was the reverence of the Mapungubwe hill that it was believed that untold misery would be visited upon anyone who not only ascends the hill, but so much as look at it directly! On reaching the top, the five men found breastworks of stone and great boulders balanced on smaller stones, ready to be pushed on intruders. Scattered all over the top were great quantities of potsherds.

A search on the surface which proved to be loose sandy soil brought to light, rusted remains of iron tools and some bits of copper wire and glass beads. Soon, an exposed yellow metal plate was discovered which the senior van Graan pronounced to be gold. An excited search followed and the five men were soon finding gold beads, bangles, broken bits of thin gold plating and human remains adorned with quantities of gold and beads. The next day (1 January 1933), yielded even larger pieces of gold including the remains of the now famous Mapungubwe Rhinoceros. The five men had realised a schoolboy's dream! They had found hidden treasure! In the end, the spoils were divided equally between the five men who went their separate ways. Fortunately, the van Graans were men of education and the junior van Graan, who as fate would have it, was an archeology student, sent some specimens from his share to his old professor, Leo Fouche’.

To cut a long story short, the five men were finally persuaded (upon compensation and subtle threat from the law) to turn over their loot to the government and the absentee owner of the farm (Greefswald) was located and persuaded to sell his farm to the then Union (of South Africa) government. The site was turned over to the University of Pretoria for further exploration which continues to this day and it yielded more findings than what the five adventurers found. The find, when it made its way into the public domain stirred a lot of excitement with hundreds of treasure hunters streaming to the area. However, by the time the announcement was made, adequate protection from the police had been secured ensuring the preservation of what has come to be one of the most important archeological finds in present day South Africa. Although the University of Pretoria excavated the site ever since 1932 it was kept top secret^{[citation needed]}. Obviously, the find challenged and made nonsense of the conventional wisdom prevailing in South Africa at the time regarding race relations. Indeed, immediately after the find (and just like with other sites such as Great Zimbabwe), concerted attempts were made to dissociate Mapungubwe from the native people (e.g. the Vhangona, Vhatwanamba and Vhaleya clans within the Venda nation who are the direct descendents of the original occupants of Mapungubwe) and indeed, black South Africans. Just like Great Zimbabwe was associated with Arabs and everything non African (e.g. Mullan, J. The Arab builders of Zimbabwe, 1969), early writings on Mapungubwe associated it to strange and foundationless concepts such as the “Boskop culture which was supposedly not Bantu, nor black South African, etc” which were all attempts to assign and associate Mapungubwe with everything foreign. Incidentally, it is only among the Vhangona, Vhatwanamba and Vhaleya clans (of all the black people in South Africa) that oral history and folklore making references to Mapungubwe exists to this day. Moreover, when Prof. Lestrade was conducting his ethnological at the time of the fisrt excavations of Mapungubwe, he could not find a single informant from among the Western Venda Chiefs (Mphephu-Ramabulana), Eastern Venda Chiefs (Tshivhase & Mphaphuli) nor among the Vhalemba, Tsonga-Shangaan and Karanga able to recognise the name Mapungubwe or its site albeit these informamts had no problem in knowing about great Zimbabwe (Fouche, 1937). However, he had no such problems with the Ngona, Twanamba and Leya informants

According to an article published in 1985: translated from the Afrikaans text: Remains of a Rock Fort located on top of the hill, were under investigation, dated back to the 11th century. The Archeological site is closed to the public, except for suprevised visits and tours. However some of the items discovered where on display at the Department of Archeology, at the University of Pretoria. Mapungubwe Hill and K2 were declared national monuments in the 1980s. Until 2002 when the University of Pretoria was undergoing renovations that a large number of the artifacts collected where subsequently found locked away and forgotten in a storage room, the architect contracted to do the renovations at the University of Pretoria, Mr Moorrees Janse van Rensburg came across this room and had to break through the door as the keys were nowhere to be found and no one had any knowledge of what was in the room. It appeared that this was a secret that was purposely withheld from the South African public.

When Mr van Rensburg broke the door open he found a room filled with small boxes, in those boxes were priceless gold artifacts that came from the original site. It is still a mystery how these artifacts ended up at the University and when they arrived, but the fact remains that these were deliberately kept from the public eye.

The artifacts found dated from approximately 1000 AD to 1300 AD and consisted of a variety of materials such as pottery, trade glass beads, Chinese celadon ware, gold ornaments (including the famous golden rhino), ceramic figurines, organic remains, crafted ivory and bone and refined copper and iron.

Burials at Mapungubwe Hill

At least twenty four skeletons were unearthed at Mapungubwe but only eleven were available for analysis. Most of the skeletal remains were buried with few or no accessories with most adults buried with glass beads. Two adult burials (labeled numbers 10 and 14 by the ealy excavators)were associated with gold artfacts. Skeleton number 10 was buried with the golden Sceptre and was burried in the typical Bantu burrial position (sitting with legs drawn to the chest, arms folded round the front of the knees with the right hand grasping the Sceptre. It was facing west).

The second skeleton (labeled number 14) was also buried in a sitting position and was also facing west. The skelleton was buried with most of the gold artifacts that Mapungubwe is famous for.

The Mapungubwe Landscape was declared a World Heritage Site on 3 July 2003.

Panorama from the top of Mapungubwe Hill

Mapungubwe National Park

Main article: Mapungubwe National Park

The area is now part of Mapungubwe National Park, which with the Tuli Block (Botswana) and the Tuli Safari area (Zimbabwe), forms part of the Limpopo-Shashe Transfrontier Conservation Area, now officially known as Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area.

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  Entrance to Mapungubwe National Park, Limpopo Province, South Africa

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  Taken from South Africa, to the left is Botswana and Zimbabwe is on the right. The river running from left to right is the Limpopo River. The river which disappears on the horizon is the Shashe

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  Sandstone rock formations typical of Mapungubwe National Park

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  Treetop Boardwalk. All facilities at Mapungubwe National Park are wheelchair-friendly.

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  Mapungubwe Hill viewed from the north

• 

  Mapungubwe Hill.

• 

  An archaeological excavation site at Mapungubwe.

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  The Gold Rhino from a burial site on Mapungubwe hill

See also

• Butua
• Rozvi/Rozwi/Lozwi
• baKalanga
• Mapungubwe Museum
• Mapungubwe National Park
• Order of Mapungubwe
• Thuli Parks and Wildlife Land
• History of South Africa
• Kingdom of Zimbabwe
• Great Zimbabwe
• Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area

References

• Fouche', Leo (1937). Mapungubwe: Ancient Bantu Civilisation on the Limpopo. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 183 pages. 

• Hall, Martin & Rebecca Stefoff (2006). Great Zimbabwe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 48 pages. ISBN 0-19515-773-7. 

• Hrbek, Ivan; Fasi, Muhammad (1988). Africa from the Seventh to the Eleventh Century. London: Unesco. pp. 869 pages. ISBN 9-23101-709-8. 

• Hrbek, Mullan, James (1969). The Arab Builders of Zimbabwe. Mutare: Rhodesia Mission Press. pp. 173 pages. 

External links

• Mapungubwe Collection on UPSpace, the research repository of the University of Pretoria
• Mapungubwe Museum website, University of Pretoria
• Mapungubwe in Aluka and JSTOR's African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes collection
• Mapungubwe National Park
• Mapungubwe - discusses cultural aspects, as well as how to get there
• "Mapungubwe: SA's lost city of gold" - article about Mapungubwe's history
• Thulamela, Ancient Kingdom