SECRETS OF THE PAST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 20106, 27 March 1928, Page 11

SECRETS OF THE PAST

LOST CITIES OF AFRICA STRANGE RHODESIAN RUINS. Africa is still a mysterious continent, but glimpses of the romantic past are always being revealed to explorers. The recent discovery of an ancient city in the tropical bush at Gedi, neor Mombasa, writes Mr Lawrence G. Green, from Capetown, is one of many fascinating finds.

These relics of lost civilisations • must make the archaeologist feel that j he is on the edge of incredible won- [ ders. Year after year the misty legends of primitive natives are taking shape as new links with the ancients come to light. Desert, jungle, and bush are giving up their secrets. Fever, sleeping sickness, dozens of African diseases make research worK dangerous in many remote corners of the continent. That is why so little exploration has been carried, out in Rhodesia, a land rich in traces of the ancients, probably tho fabled Land of Ophir. Beyond a certain amount of work at the famous Zimbabwe ruins, practically nothing has been done to uncover lost cities that are known to be waiting the spade of the explorer. At Inyanga, in southern Rhodesia, 1 there are miles of terraced, walls along the slopes of a mountain range. I No organised party of scientists has i investigated the strange finds whic.w , have been made there. An urn con- ■ taining bangles was dug up by a farmer not long ago, and experts agreed that they were thousands of years old. ! The bangles were of pure copper and I had evidently been made by craftsmen who understood the art of refining 1 minerals.

Zimbabwe has absorbed the interest i of excavators, and other ancient cities : in the Rhodesian bush have boon left alone. There is a forgotten city to the north of the Zambesi much greater ! than Zimbabwe, with walls and brick i towers and slave dungeons hewn out . of tho solid rock. Yet this lost city ! may contain the key to the mystery of j the olid, unknown gold workers of Rho- 1 desia, for many of the buildings ! strongly resemble the architecture of i South Arabia. Old Portuguese settlements are often re-discovered in the palm forests ' of East Africa. Jesuit priests sailed ! out of Lisbon, bound for Africa as ! early as the sixteenth century. In the ! cellar of one of these mcidicval mjs- : sions interesting relies were found a ' few years ago —a priest’s private seal, i silver plate, a molten silver cross, go?.; ! chain and bronze brccch-loading can- ! non bearing the Portuguese royal coat of arms.

Wave after wave of invaders swept southward into Rhodesia or voyaged perilously from tho east in tiny dhows to the African coast. Persian pottery and Nanking china have been found in some of the ruins, and there arc many relics which arc supposed to be the work of the Phoenicians.

In the Kalahari desert of Bechuattaland live a brown people called the Makalakas. Professor E. H. L. Schwartz, the well-known South Afrtcan scientist, thinks they are the descendants of Malays w.ho colonised Madagascar 2000 years ago, sailed on to the mainland and built towns near the lakes of Bechuanaland. Makalnka ■ means people of the sun, and their arts arc certainly the arts of the East. Their towns offer a splendid field of research. Until Professor Schwartz visited them a year or so ago tho ox- ■ istenco of this remote tribe was hard- I ly known to any one. >