Note 10 — Chapter VI · THE FINDS AT THE GREAT ZIMBABWE RUINS

Concerning the bronze and iron weapons and implements which we found at Zimbabwe it is very difficult to say anything definite. In the first place, these ruins have been overrun for centuries by Kaffir races with a knowledge of iron-smelting, who would at once utilise fragments of iron which they found for their own purposes; secondly, the shapes and sizes of arrows and spear-heads correspond very closely to those in use amongst the natives now. As against this it must be said that there are many iron objects amongst our finds which are quite unlike anything which ever came out of a Kaffir workshop, and the patterns of the assegai, or spear-head, and arrow are probably of great antiquity, handed down from generation to generation to the present day. Amongst the most curious of our iron finds at Zimbabwe certainly are the double iron bells, of which we found three in the neighbourhood of the temple on the fortress. Similar bells are found now on the Congo. There are some in the British Museum, and also in the Geographical Society’s Museum at Lisbon, which came from San Salvador, on the Congo, and are called Chingongo, whereas amongst the present race inhabiting Mashonaland the knowledge of this bell does not exist, nor did it presumably exist in Dos Santos’ days, who enumerates all the Kaffir instruments which he saw; and he would assuredly have mentioned these bells had they existed there in his days 300 years ago. We must, therefore, conclude that either these bells are ancient, and were used by the old inhabitants of these ruins, the traditional form of which has been continued amongst the negroes of the Congo, or that some northern race closely allied to the Congo races swept over this country at some time or another, and have left this trace of their occupation. The barbed bronze spear-head we found under a mass of fallen rock close to the entrance to the fortress. This again finds a parallel in weapons which come from much farther north in Nubia, though its execution is finer than any of that class which has come before my notice. The shape of this weapon is exactly the same as that of the unbarbed spear-head, which has a coating of gold on it,10 and shows the same peculiarity of make as the assegai-heads still made by the natives—namely, the fluting which runs down the centre being reversed on either side. Then there are the tools—chisels, an adze, pincers, spades, &c., which are quite unknown to the Kaffir races which now inhabit this country. Still it is possible that all these things may have been made during the time of the Monomatapa, who evidently had reached a higher pitch of civilisation than that existing to-day; so that I am inclined to set aside the iron implements as pertaining to a more recent occupation, though at the same time there is no actual reason for not assigning to them a remoter antiquity.