Africa - where the human race began.
Nearly a billion people live here.
It's a continent with an incredible diversity of communities and cultures.
Yet we know less of its history than almost anywhere else on Earth.
But that's beginning to change.
In the last few decades, researchers and archaeologists have begun to uncover a range of histories
as impressive and extraordinary as anywhere else on Earth.
It's a history that has been neglected for years and it's largely without written records.
But it is preserved for us in the gold and the statues.
In the culture, art and legends of the people.
My name is Gus Casely-Hayford.
Over many years I've studied the history and culture of Africa.
As an art historian, I'm used to drawing stories out of mute objects from the past.
I'm going to discover the history and find out what really happened to the lost kingdoms of Africa.
In 1871, a German geologist exploring southern Africa stumbled across these extraordinary ruins.
He was astonished by what he found -
a vast stone city stranded in the empty savannah.
Great Zimbabwe.
He had no idea who was responsible for this astounding feat of architecture.
But he was sure of one thing -
it was too sophisticated to have been built by Africans.
Thankfully, these assumptions have been discredited today.
But only now are we piecing together the fragments
we know about this lost civilisation and its connections to other kingdoms of pre-colonial Southern Africa.
Could Great Zimbabwe really have been an African El Dorado, a city built on gold?
In this film I'm going in search of the story
of one of the most mysterious cities and societies in Africa.
I don't think we can understand this kingdom without understanding the civilisations and kingdoms
that grew up around it.
It was part of a rich and fascinating history, largely unknown.
A history of trade, wealth, and gold.
My journey to find out about Great Zimbabwe will take me from the Swahili coast in modern-day Tanzania,
to Mozambique, South Africa and hopefully, to modern Zimbabwe itself,
where no BBC crew has been allowed to film for eight years.
My first stop is right here at the edge of the continent, where Africa meets the Indian Ocean.
This is the ancient Swahili Coast.
For centuries, people have been drawn here from as far away as China, India, and the Middle East.
And they've been drawn here by trade.
Trade in goods, but particularly trade in gold.
For many years, western scholars paid little attention to the history of this coast.
They didn't think it fitted into the wider trade patterns of the ancient world,
to Arabia in the north and India in the east.
But recent research now suggests that this coast was central to an international trade in gold,
gold which originated at Great Zimbabwe, 1,500 kilometres inland.
And I think this ancient trade route may lead to a better understanding
of what Great Zimbabwe actually represents in the untold history of this continent.
There's evidence to suggest that traders
were already coming to this coast from far afield, as long ago as the first century AD.
I've got my holiday reading.
Well, it's more than holiday reading.
It's the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,
which is a 1st-century guide to the Indian Ocean.
It talks about all sorts of wonderful places
that merchants and sailors could have travelled to in that time to ply their trade,
and it talks about this place called Rhapta,
which is supposed to the most southerly port in Africa that you could then travel to.
The Periplus is an Ancient Greek text which describes the ports and cities
which dot this coast all the way up to Arabia.
According to the Periplus, Rhapta was the place where traders from India and Arabia came
to buy ivory, fine tortoiseshell and rhinoceros horn.
In return, the people of Rhapta imported spears, daggers and glass.
But unfortunately, the Periplus is vague on the exact whereabouts of Rhapta.
And the stories of this trading city have been dismissed as legend.
Now, however, Professor Felix Chami, of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania,
thinks he might have found it.
Are you Felix? Hi!
Hi, I've heard a lot about you!
I've been reading my Periplus in preparation for this.
And I know you're the man to show me around. You're welcome!
The legendary Rhapta. If you've found it, this is quite something! I'm expecting a lot.
Felix Chami is a world-renowned archaeologist whose work has been
instrumental is piecing together the ancient history of the Swahili Coast.
If he has indeed found Rhapta, this will rank as his greatest discovery yet.
It will also prove that this region was a vibrant part of the ancient world.
Did you see a crocodile? Seriously? Yeah.
FELIX SPEAKS IN HIS LANGUAGE
It's a lizard, isn't it, a monitor lizard.
It's just amazing.
Felix and I are on the Rufiji River,
which flows to the Indian Ocean from deep within the African interior.
You managed to do it and not get any mud on your shoes.
Other side was better, I told you.
Felix believes Rhapta once stood near the banks of this river.
But Felix's idea of "near"
is a little different from mine.
I'm not really a fan of snakes, Felix.
Pythons!
'The Periplus talks of Rhapta as a great trading centre, a cosmopolitan metropolis where traders
'from all over the ancient world would meet and barter and try to make a quick buck.
'But it is difficult to imagine such a vibrant place existing here,
'in this riverside wilderness, with crocodiles and snakes.
'I'm beginning to wonder if the charming Felix Chami has made a mistake.
'Then, one hour later, in the dirt beneath our feet,
'fragments of an ancient world emerge.'
Once you get your eye in, they are everywhere, aren't they?
'Buried beneath the dirt and foliage of this isolated wilderness,
'Felix thinks he has found something remarkable.
'Shards of pottery, tantalizing evidence of an ancient settlement.'
So somewhere under here may well be the remains of Rhapta? Exactly.
Felix thinks he's found Rhapta because of the age and variety
of the pottery which lies hidden beneath the surface.
I promise you that I will show you some potsherds.
Are these imported or are they made...?
Have you found pottery that has come from beyond these shores?
It is incredibly fine and light.
'It feels like we are in the middle of nowhere.
'But the evidence from the pottery, its age, its varied provenance
'and the sheer amount of shards, suggests Felix might be right.
'That, in this empty place, a trading centre once thrived,
'playing host to merchants from as far afield as ancient Egypt and India.
'Evidence that, from the earliest times,
'this part of Africa had established trade routes with the wider world.'
Talking to Felix, he has opened up
a whole raft of possibilities about where to explore next.
More than anything, is the idea that this was the hub
of a whole network of ports that ran down this bit of the coast.
According to the Periplus, Rhapta traded in goods from
the African interior like ivory and rhinoceros horn.
But there's no sign yet of the trade in gold which I'm looking for.
But as I head back into town the next morning,
towards the markets that bustle here today, I can hear the evidence of a legacy
of trade, exchange, and contact with a world beyond this coast, in the language that people speak.
Swahili is an African language, but one which has incorporated
many words from around the world, like a linguistic melting pot.
The word Swahili itself actually comes from the Arabic word for "coast".
And there are traces of Indian and even Portuguese too.
In fact, Portuguese traders first passed through here in 1498,
and described a spectacularly wealthy city on an island just off the coast.
And that's where I'm heading next.
The Portuguese produced these absolutely
beautiful maps and illustrations of this gorgeous place and it just looks so deeply impressive.
And if the place lives up to this, it's just going to be magnificent.
The city was Kilwa Kisiwani, a city whose streets the Portuguese
describe as overflowing with gold, and filled with black moors, the old European term for Africans.
Colonial historians assumed that Kilwa was an Arab outpost because of its Muslim heritage.
But now we think that Kilwa was African, that these were black, African Muslims -
an interpretation backed up by the observations
of the famous Arab traveller Ibn Battuta,
who came to Kilwa in 1331.
He talks about Kilwa as one of the most beautiful cities.
And he talks about the local population as being
of very dark complexion,
and he describes their ethnic scarifications.
This really was an African city.
And it was also a very profitable one.
The reason I'm here is that a copper coin like this,
from 14th-century Kilwa,
has been found at Great Zimbabwe, 1,500 kilometres inland.
Evidence perhaps that Great Zimbabwe and Kilwa are two ends of what was a lucrative trade in goods.
Those early Portuguese travellers described a city of fine coral-built houses,
and the ruler's 100-room palace full of gold, silver and precious stones.
The site is still spectacular today.
Among the ruins are the houses which would have accommodated the travelling foreign traders
who regularly descended on Kilwa from across the ocean.
Local guide Athmani Abdullah has agreed to show me around.
So why particularly Kilwa? Why was it such an important post in terms of the trading network along the coast?
The direction of the prevailing wind on the Swahili Coast changes twice a year,
allowing ships to cross the Indian Ocean and return again within 12 months.
And that's why Kilwa was ideally placed to serve as East Africa's gateway
to the trading networks of the ancient world.
Hi, Stephanie, lovely to meet you. Hi. Nice to meet you.
Welcome to Kilwa. Thank you!
British archaeologist Stephanie Wynne-Jones of Bristol University
is an expert on Kilwa's history, and has studied how its fortunes have ebbed and flowed through the ages.
One of the things that has been demonstrated through the archaeology is that
there's been a settlement here since at least the ninth century AD.
They were really integrated into the Indian Ocean system
and there are a lot of imports brought to the site from the Persian Gulf, also from India,
reaching this island at that date.
So what was being traded here, exported, what sort of goods?
In general, from the Swahili Coast, the products of the African hinterland
were traded, often in the form of raw materials.
Kilwa was particularly famous for gold, and the source of Kilwa's wealth
was based on the gold trade from the south, from the Zimbabwe plateau.
This was an island state made rich by gold.
These merchants knew the international value of the precious metal and bargained hard.
And as gold flowed through Kilwa, by the 14th century the city had
become one of the most important, and richest, ports in Africa.
And if you look closely enough, some of that wealth is still visible.
Well, this is the Great Mosque of Kilwa,
the congregational mosque which would have served for the Friday prayer,
when the whole community would come together.
One of the things that's wonderful about this structure
are the domes and vaults you can see in the roof, and this is a particularly Kilwa phenomenon
to have the quantity of domes and arches you see here.
And finding this incredible material, this is coral, isn't it?
It is, and this is the defining characteristic of Swahili architecture.
We talk about stone houses, but actually there is no
particularly good natural sources of stone on the coast, and instead
this architectural style developed where they used coral, which is found in abundance here.
And the entire structures are built of coral.
The blocks like the one you're looking at were actually cut from the living coral and
because it was soft, they were able to use it for these carved features.
How would it have been finished? What would it have looked like?
Well, the entire thing would have been plastered with lime plaster which also comes from coral.
Everything is coral from start to finish.
It would have appeared totally smooth and totally white.
It would have been beautiful.
Beautiful and technically sophisticated.
Many of the great buildings of Europe were built around the same time.
The Piazza del Campo in Siena.
The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.
To my mind, this is surely a match for them.
Kilwa was clearly a busy, confident trading centre,
a city state that was intimately linked with the wider world economy.
But if Kilwa's wealth came from the gold it traded across this vast ocean, the source of this wealth,
the precious commodity which formed the basis of this trade, is not found in Kilwa.
Africa's gold comes from deep inland, from the high plateau of Zimbabwe, 1,500 kilometres away.
And now I'm going to try and trace this gold route to its source.
I'm travelling inland from the coast, heading west towards the ancient gold lands.
And somewhere out here I'm hoping to find an outpost of one of Africa's greatest kingdoms.
We know that Great Zimbabwe was at its zenith in the 13th and 14th centuries,
just when Kilwa too was at its height.
But Great Zimbabwe is still two countries, one visa application and many days' travel away.
I'm looking for outposts of this gold-trading kingdom here in Mozambique.
Tantalisingly, my guide tells me that there's a Zimbabwe-type ruin just 70km inland from here.
This site, Manyikeni, is mentioned in the history books but I can't find it on any map.
These sandy roads are a bit of a challenge, actually.
I'm more used to Acton in the rush hour than this,
but I'm loving it nevertheless.
There's a welcome waiting for me, led by local historian Vicente Vilanculos.
Hello. Welcome to Manyikeni.
And the villagers want to perform a small good luck ceremony for us.
Thank you. I particularly hate snakes!
'The chief's son offers beer to the ancestors on our behalf.'
Thank you.
With the blessings of his forebears, Vicente and I set off for the ruins of Manyikeni.
And what was its relationship to the coast and also to Great Zimbabwe?
Really? Yes.
The existence of Manyikeni was barely known to scholars until the 1970s.
But when archaeologists did come to dig it up, they were rewarded with some clues about its past.
But this is a lost history in more ways than one.
The museum which housed most of Manyikeni's treasures was destroyed by fire.
But while the artefacts have gone, the knowledge remains.
We know that gold was found in the graves of Manyikeni's elders.
And that there are some startling links to Great Zimbabwe.
So this grass, this particular grass, is only found in Manyikeni?
They brought this to feed their cattle?
Great Zimbabwe means "houses of stone".
The walls at Manyikeni appear to have been built using a similar technique.
Vincente is certain that the trading community at Manyikeni was once closely connected
to the kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.
So this is the gateway to Great Zimbabwe?
Yes.
Manyikeni seems to have been a crossing point in two senses.
It seems likely it was a place where gold was traded as a commodity,
coming in from Great Zimbabwe, then going out towards the coast, and by boat up to Kilwa.
But it also seems to be a place where the attitude to the gold itself shifted.
Grave findings at Manyikeni show that gold was not just a commodity, it was buried with the dead.
Very different from Kilwa.
It's time to move further inland, but first, a send-off from the ancestors.
Manyikeni today is far from the bustling trading centre of the past.
But it is a place where the past is remembered.
And where the ancestors who may once have formed an important cog
in a larger global economy are celebrated enthusiastically.
The evidence that this place was once a link in the gold trade
between Great Zimbabwe and the coast seems compelling.
The architecture, the grass, the oral tradition and the discoveries of gold all point that way.
But before I head for Great Zimbabwe, I want to investigate stories of an even earlier kingdom, Mapungubwe.
But to do that, I need to head for the modern city of Pretoria in South Africa.
Mapungubwe is now part of South Africa's Limpopo Province,
and fate has been kinder to it than it has been to Manyikeni.
The museum where Mapungubwe's glorious past is now stored
is still standing, home to an astonishing collection of African gold.
Curator Sian Tiley-Nel shows me the most famous piece, a little golden rhino.
Wow.
The gold is so thin, it almost glows.
Yes, the gold would have been hammered out on a stone anvil, and what they would've done is
carved a wooden rhino and then formed the gold foil over the wood
and all the little holes you see
are when minute tacks or nails would tack the gold sheeting to the wooden core.
And the wood has disintegrated over a thousand years.
It's almost 100% pure gold so it's got a lovely buttery shine to it.
They must have been a very powerful people.
Yes, they were. In fact, there's many other gold artefacts that were found.
The second, perhaps, most significant item is this gold sceptre or mace,
the largest gold object recovered from the burial, also made of gold foil.
Mapungubwe was a 12th-century kingdom,
only a short distance from the gold mines of the Zimbabwean plateau.
Its people clearly developed great skill in gold-smithing.
This work is impressive by anyone's standards.
As at Manyikeni, much of this treasure was found in the graves of the kings.
And such burials imply a culture which valued gold for more than its commercial value.
Gosh, this is a beautiful bowl, isn't it?
In fact, it's not a gold bowl,
it's a headdress. It was also found in the burials.
For 75 years it's been interpreted as a bowl as such because obviously it looks like a bowl.
So I'm in good company!
Yes. In fact it was found inverted, near the cranium of the individual, near his head.
Not as a crown - it's too small - but as a symbolic headdress of some sort.
So Sian, who might have been buried with this?
Well, the royalty buried with these gold objects
were the ruling power of the Limpopo valley at the time, or Southern Africa,
so their wealth lay in not only the gold objects, but also in cattle and trading right until the east coast.
The amount of trade in glass beads one finds together with the gold,
as well as the ivory, shows a very wealthy society.
Time to visit Mapungubwe for myself.
And for that, I need to get airborne.
Local farmer Jacques Willemse has offered to give me a ride.
From up here, things become a bit clearer.
Below me is the mighty Limpopo, which flows to the coast.
This huge river was for centuries a highway which carried people and goods from the interior to the coast.
And there is what remains of the golden kingdom of Mapungubwe.
Today, Mapungubwe is part of South Africa's National Parks system.
The heart of the old kingdom is Mapungubwe Hill.
Park ranger Cedric Setlhako has agreed to show me around.
This is the hill itself, Mapungubwe Hill, where people lived about a thousand years ago.
'Archaeologists believe Mapungubwe's reach spread across southern Africa from the 11th to the 13th centuries.
'And that after the kingdom collapsed,
'some of its people may have headed north and founded Great Zimbabwe.
'It was one of the most complex societies in southern Africa,
'with a rigid division between the king, his ministers, and his subjects.'
The king was buried here with a lot of artefacts.
If you look at the hill itself, why people would choose to live up here?
Look around it, it's just sheer rock, I mean there's no way you can be able to access this hill.
There's only one way up to the top.
'The kingdom's rulers kept the hill to themselves.
'Ordinary members of Mapungubwe society were not allowed in.
'Even in modern times, the hill still holds mystical powers to the people here.'
Most of the people long back believed you couldn't even look
at the hill itself, they were even scared to look at the hill.
I mean, the person who brought the first people to discover the site,
he had to turn his back and pointed, "There is the hill right behind me and I'm not going there."
Really? Yeah. So what might happen to you if you did look at the hill?
I mean,
some people believed you would go blind,
lose your life, die, or something like that.
It wasn't so bad, eh?
Well, this view completely makes up for any tiredness I feel about that climb, it's just glorious.
Suddenly you understand why you would want to build up here.
'Archaeologists have found remnants of the site of a grand stone enclosure here,
'with huts for servants,
'and a wooden palisade built around the summit for privacy and defence.
'It was also where Mapungubwe's rulers lived, and died, with their gold.'
This is exactly where that little golden rhino came from.
Just from around here, it's exactly where it was discovered.
So from the bush back there up to here,
this whole area was a burial site.
The people were buried in a sitting position facing west
and each one of them were wearing these golden bracelets, and clay pots,
filled with thousands and thousands of gold and glass beads.
So, Cedric, why was this site so important?
Mapungubwe is the first southern African kingdom.
Meaning that this is exactly where kingdomship started.
Of all the kingdoms that existed until today, this is exactly where it all started.
The wooden and stone structures which would have stood here have long since disappeared,
but the gold artefacts in Pretoria testify to this ancient kingdom's existence, its power, and its wealth.
But Cedric is keen to show me one aspect of Mapungubwe life that survives today.
We have a game here,
it was played by the Mapungubwe people, a thousand years ago.
This is a game called Maruba in Suthu.
I think I recognise this, but, please, tell me. Do you?
My family are from West Africa, and we have a game which looks very similar called Oware.
'Oware is an ancient game of strategy.'
Now, you see, the gloves are off.
I always thought oware was a West African tradition, but the fact that
variations of it were played here in Mapungubwe hints at connections which extend across the continent.
So maybe this wasn't an isolated kingdom.
Maybe it was connected with cultures across the continent.
The outline of Mapungubwe society may be faint today, but the kingdom's geography seems clear.
The subjects and their families lived at the bottom of the hill,
and at the top, protected by the forbidding stone enclosures, were the royal family and their retinue.
One of the things that has really struck me is how...
complex the sociology of this...
particular area is. And if you imagine the people...
came and settled here but they didn't just settle here, they created a really complex social system.
The support of all the people who lived down here, farming, trading,
bringing the water up, all of that infrastructure to support the family, the elite, that lived up there.
And this was a real departure for this bit of Africa, a settled hierarchical society
and one that seemed to, at least for the period in which it was here, to really work as well.
Mapungubwe was once the most powerful kingdom in southern Africa.
But by the 13th century, it seems to have collapsed.
We don't know why.
And there is much more we don't know about the life of the people here,
like how power was handed down or what they believed in.
But archaeologists now think that the people of Mapungubwe
may have travelled north, to found an even bigger, more impressive kingdom,
Great Zimbabwe.
Good news. We've finally been granted permission to film in Great Zimbabwe,
the greatest lost kingdom of Southern Africa.
I'm not going to pretend that it's been easy getting permission to film in Zimbabwe.
It's taken months of applications, persuasion, and at last it looks like we've got permission.
'But nothing is certain in Zimbabwe these days.
'Even with our permissions, there's still a border to cross.'
It took four hours, but eventually, I'm in.
A 16th-century Portuguese captain described Great Zimbabwe as an almost mythical city.
"Among the gold mines of the inland plains is a fortress built of stones
"of marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them."
Great Zimbabwe was Africa's El Dorado, a place of myth and mystery.
I'm meeting Zimbabwean archaeologist Edward Matenga, former curator of the entire site.
'He tells me the ruins are so important to the people here'
'that I must have the blessing of one of the site's spiritual guardians,
'Ambuya VaZarira, before I can get in.'
Thank you, it's been a beautiful welcome.
As well as curating this site, Edward Matenga has written extensively about Great Zimbabwe.
He is recognised as one of the world's foremost authorities on this mysterious place.
I feel very honoured!
I see.
THEY SING
So she is the key to the site?
So traditionally, you would have to stop here.
Ambuya is one of several people who claim to be the spiritual guardians of this site.
It's certainly an impressive performance.
This is the great gold kingdom of Great Zimbabwe.
For 200 years, the rulers of this place controlled a massive empire
between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, covering much of modern-day Zimbabwe and part of Mozambique.
This was their capital,
their palace and their bastion.
From the 13th century to the 15th, these people controlled the gold mines of the plateau.
Here in stone is their expression of that wealth and power.
Walls that soar out of the earth,
that curve and flow around the contours of the ground,
creating narrow passageways and forbidding enclosures.
This is a stunning feat of architecture.
There is nothing gluing these walls together,
just an extraordinary precision and craft.
At its height, this place was a medieval city,
home to 25,000 people, seemingly divided into social groups.
The subjects and their king seem to have lived very separate lives.
It's likely that Great Zimbabwe's immense stone walls ensured that the rich, religious, and the powerful
were kept separate from everyone else.
But for decades, the significance of this place, what it meant, and who built it, has been fiercely debated.
The British, who ran this part of the world in the late 19th century,
believed that a non-African people must have built this kingdom.
Speculation as to who that may have been has ranged from the Phoenicians, to the Queen of Sheba.
When this country was run by its white minority,
the idea that anyone but Africans built this city was actively and enthusiastically promoted.
But carbon-dating technology has ruled out ancient foreign
civilisations as being responsible for Great Zimbabwe.
There's no evidence in this architecture to suggest
that this place was built by anyone other than those who came from here.
And the evidence from earlier settlements like Mapungubwe
shows a continuity of southern African culture.
The settled view now is Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.
Archaeologists are also sure that this place was a rich trading kingdom.
A wealth of trading goods, beads, bracelets, porcelain
and glass from China and the Middle East have been found here.
Along with gold, mined only 40 kilometres away.
One artefact in particular shows the links between Great Zimbabwe and the wider world.
It's a 14th century copper coin like this one from Kilwa Kisiwani, the great trading city on the coast.
A place which derived its wealth by selling on the gold from Great Zimbabwe to the rest of the world.
Two ends of the same trading route.
There is still so much we don't know about Great Zimbabwe.
The nature of its king or kings, the full meaning of its narrow passageways
and forbidding architecture.
But we do know that this vast city was one of Africa's richest and most sophisticated kingdoms,
and the starting point of a gigantic trading network which stretched from these high plateaux,
across southern Africa, to the Swahili Coast, and across the globe to Arabia, India, and China.
And when Great Zimbabwe went into decline in the 15th century, so too did Kilwa.
Two kingdoms, connected by gold, and forgotten by historians for centuries.
Today the ruins of Great Zimbabwe have given their name to a modern African country.
They are a reminder that although ancient kingdoms can be forgotten, they are rarely truly lost.
This remarkable kingdom high in the Zimbabwe Highlands is an emblem of a continent remembering its past.
I began this journey
some distance from here, on the Swahili Coast, thinking that this was a journey
about trade, about gold.
But it's been about more than that.
It's been about recovering an African past from the ruins of lost civilizations.
There is still much we don't know about this history and these lost kingdoms.
But here in Africa their memory is still celebrated, and rightly so.
The past is still very much alive here.
It is a living, breathing part of people's lives, their culture and identity.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
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