102 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



the word 1 , ruled over the Manica and surrounding auriferous 

 districts when the Portuguese first reached Sofala early in the i6th 

 century. Apparently for political reasons 2 this Monomotapa was 

 later transformed by them from a monarch to a monarchy, the 

 vast empire of Monomotapaland, which was supposed to comprise 

 pretty well everything south of the Zambesi, but, having no 

 existence, has for the last two hundred years eluded the diligent 

 search of historical geographers. 



But ages before Portuguese or Monomotapas were heard of, 

 the Makalakas with the kindred Banyai, Basenga and others, may 

 well have been at work in the mines of this auriferous region, in 



the service of the builders of the Zimbabwe ruins 

 babwe Z R^ins. explored and described by the late Theodore Bent 3 , 



and by him rightly, I think, attributed to some 

 ancient cultured people of South Arabia. He mentions the 

 Sabseans, but there is no reason to exclude the still more ancient 

 Minaeans, both being closely allied members of the Semitic 

 Himyarite family. It is to be noticed that similar ruins occur 

 also in the Benningwa Hills and various other parts of Mata- 

 bililand, all apparently connected with long-abandoned gold- 

 mines. 



Even Barros 4 was aware that all these remains were prior 



1 From Mwana, lord, master, and tapa, to dig, both common Bantu words. 



- The point was that Portugal had made treaties with this mythical State, 

 in virtue of which she claimed in the "scramble for Africa" all the hinterlands 

 behind her possessions on the east and west coasts (Mozambique and Angola), 

 in fact all South Africa between the Orange and Zambesi rivers. Further 

 details on the "Monomotapa Question" will be found in my monograph on 

 " The Portuguese in South Africa " in Murray's South Africa, from Arab 

 Domination to British Rule, 1891, pp. ir sq. Five years later Mr G. McCall 

 Theal also discovered, no doubt independently, the mythical character of 

 Monomotapaland in his book on J^he Portuguese in South Africa, 1896. 



3 Proc. R. Geogr. Soc. May 1892, and The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland. 

 Sir H. H. Johnston, however, who in my opinion assigns the Bantu migrations 

 to a far too recent date, thinks that "those earlier settlers from Southern 

 Arabia, who mined for gold some 2000 years ago and less in South Africa, 

 were only acquainted with native inhabitants of a Bushman- Hottentot type, to 

 judge by the drawings, engravings, and models they have left, intended to 

 depict natives engaged in the chase " (British Central Africa, p. 54). 



4 Asia, First Decade, I. i. Lisbon, 1777. 



