pool and bar area, and a main meeting, greeting, and eating area, where guests gather, sitting at night around a fire under the stars, one of humanity’s oldest known pleasures. Humanity evolved on the immense card table of the African savannah, wrote South African anthropologist Robert Ardrey, and there is evidence that our hominid ancestors lived in the Pafuri region around 1.5 million years ago, an early stone tool culture that lasted until about 250 000 years ago before it advanced into the Middle Stone Age.
Then it advanced again into Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers some 30 000 years ago. From 400 AD, Iron Age Bantu pastoralists moved into the area, settling among the local San hunter-gatherers and it was a critical frontier. From around 650 AD, a trading system emerged, linking Pafuri to Chibuene, a site close to modern Vilanculos on the Mozambican coast. From 900 AD, this trading system stimulated the emergence of modern states–most famously at Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe but including
Thulamela, which has until recently remained a secret.
slapping the sides of dhow boats. This is big sky and wide space country. It is a baking 35 degrees Celsius and we sit in the shade of a nyala berry tree, grateful for cold water and the promise of a gin gong at sunset.
What is exciting, says Delius, is that the trading system linked to societies 1 500kms to the west in Botswana and 1 000kms south to Natal. Beads and chicken bones helped archaeologists trace key nodes in this trade, which included Madagascar, the Persian Gulf, India, Indonesia, and China. We close our eyes and listen to imaginary ancient sounds: the morning rooster, a call to prayer, women singing, and water
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Thulamela Municipality
SOUTH AFRICA
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