UKKilX OF ZljMl'..\l'.Wl':-CTl/rURE. 33I 



the Zinibabwe-culturc, in rock-mining-, building, ceremonial, 

 and relic. Ratlier, their story is one of devolutive and not of 

 evolution. 



I^'or instance, the Si-bnko, which goes to the heart of every 

 negroid and IJantu negroid ever born in Africa. Round the 

 Si-boko the life, motives, energies, thought, oral literature, 

 traditions, and m^'thology of the liantu revolve, llut what is the 

 Si-boko to-day? What has it been for the last ten centuries? 

 Nothing but a traditionary fotemism. a mere shadow of a former 

 substance, a Totemism, moreover, which is still slowl\- but surelv 

 decaying and losing its hold on the native mind. So decadent is 

 it that in Rhodesia to-day, after only twenty }'ears of partial 

 contact with white civilisation and commerce, it is fast becoming 

 but a feature of the hoary apst._ 



Again, decadence anil devolution in arts and industries are 

 ec|ually manifest, and the processes of such decay were operating 

 many centuries ago. The intrinsic native culture, sucl- as it was, 

 had commenced to die long prior to Dr. Maciver's hazarded 

 period of its evolution. To-day, commerce is giving it its final 

 coup dc grace. Cotton-weaving has gone. Iron-working has 

 gone, on the arrival of garden hoes made in Rirmingham. The 

 pottery industry has gone now that cheap hollowware, made in 

 Germany, has made its appearance. Cheap Kafir stores have 

 completed the natin-al decadence of the Rantu. in religion, arts, 

 and industries. Tn short. South African ethnography provides 

 not the slightest evidence of any evolution on the i)art of the 

 altogether unaided liantu rising to the le\'el of tlie Zimbabwe- 

 culture. 



{ c) Had there been no preceding rock-mining operatii^ns c^n 

 this area there could have been no resultant buildings, or any 

 other phase of the Zimbabwe-culture. There would have ]:)een 

 no Ziml)abwe Temple had it not been for the antecedent rock 

 mines. 



I have purjiosely left the crux of this argument until the 

 second and concluding j^art of this paper 



We need not here discuss the Zimbabwe Temple, but. old 

 and ancient as is the Temple, undoubtedly of pre-Koranic intro- 

 duction, the Temple in its turn is but a later, a far later, resultant 

 phase of the antecedent exploitation for gold from our rock 

 mines which in expert mining opinion was commenced in these 

 regions in ancient times — ancient in the very fullest sense of the 

 term. The actual date of the erection of the Temple no more — 

 and most probably still les.s — determines the date of the com- 

 mencement of the Asiatic intrusion for gold than does last year's 

 date of the erection of the Cape Town Cathedral determine the 

 advent some centuries ago of the first Europeans in Cape Colonv. 

 Any attempt, therefore, to solve the problem of the origin of 

 the Zimbabwe-culture on archseological grounds, as Dr ATaciver 

 attempted to do, must inevitably fail. 



