320 ORIGIN OF ZIMDAIJWE-CULTURE. 



and engrafted cultur'^, as well as an accumulation of fu'rther 

 local evidences in support of the case for the intrusion of a 

 foreign culture. 



This new material, confirmatory of the older evidences of 

 an imported culture, many of these being dealt with in my 

 ■' l^re-Historic Rhodesia," throws some additional light on the 

 problem, and it is for the purpose of surveying the present 

 position of the argument that I have prepared this paper. 



My main guiding principle during almost sixteen years spent 

 in attempting to unravel the mystery enshrouding our rock 

 mines and buildings, has not been directed to secure a mere 

 victory for the working hypothesis I have supported, but to 

 ascertain the actual truth, even at the cost of having to throw 

 over preconceived ideas, natural predilections, and long and 

 tenaciously held theories as to the origin of the Zimbabwe-culture. 

 I am still, to-day, perfectly open-minded to conviction if suf- 

 ficient evidences pointmg to otlicr conclusions be forthcoming. 

 lUit. I must honestly 'v^nfess, so far, I altogether fail to discover 

 them, and further, that the controversy raised by Dr. Maciver 

 has shown me very clearly that my views are now fully accepted 

 by the great bulk of the scientific- world. 



Thus, I read Dr. Maciver's " Mediaeval Rhodesia," hoping 

 to discoA er some new evidences as to origin which might, were it 

 possible, prove to be more akin to actual probability than the 

 argument which my evidences, gathered at over one hundred 

 ruins, had compelled my reason to adopt. " Science," said Sir 

 John Lubbock, " is but th.e cxf vcise of an impartial common 

 sense brought to bear on visible, tangible, and indisputably 

 ascertained fact." 



But, perhaps more so than could be the case with any other 

 student of this question, whether in I^)ritain, Germany, France, 

 South Africa, or eve^i in Rhodesia, no one could sympathise 

 more with the argument for the natural and imaided evolution 

 of the local negroid as explanatoty of the Rhodesian phenomena 

 than I could. For in my early days in Rhodesia I had held 

 exactly the same theory of explanation as was elaborated twelve 

 years later in Dr. Maciver's " Mediaeval Rhodesia." 



Without any previous conference with its author I knew 

 exactly what the contents of the work necessarily must be before 

 it was even published No page m it was novel, for I was fully 

 aware of what was bound to be urged. All the successive phases 

 of my former evolutionist days were therein exactly and ideally 

 well-described. 



My co-worker and co-author, the late Mr W. G. Neal, an 

 exceedingly well-read ?ind cultuud man, whose powers of close 

 observation are triumphantly vindicated by Dr. Maciver's 

 volume, was a staunch upholder of the theory of an originally 

 imported culture. I, as staunchly, was an evolutionist pure and 

 simple, and my former evidence- and arguments in support of 

 that theory are most admirabl}- set forth, quite imconsciousl}-. 



