Bantu trading network part 2 and it's demise

You can see the whole series from link bellow

http://www.youtube.com/user/bfq3000

Piles of boulders were nestled at the summit, to be rolled down upon visitors. Here Van Graan's party found the typical remains of daily life: broken pieces of pottery, bone fragments, spindles for weaving, pieces of iron and copper. But they also found a tantalizing wealth of gold objects: a scepter covered with gold plates expertly hammered to within a five-thousandth of an inch in thickness, free from holes. A magnificent rhinoceros fashioned from gold plate tacked down with gold pins onto a core material that had long since disintegrated. There were graves bearing skeletons adorned with gold and glass beads, and wooden headdresses that had been covered with gold sheathing, as well as a superbly crafted golden bowl....

Mapunguebe quickly became the most excavated site in South Africa, but the results of these efforts went virtually unpublished since the existence of the oldest urban settlement discovered in southern Africa flatly disproved the Afrikanner myth of origins.... It's as if these rare artifacts were left so scandalously unprotected in order to facilitate their decay and disintegration, thereby relieving apartheid South Africa of the embarrassment of Mapungubwe's achievement....

After Mapunguebe, we drove to another stone settlement, this one only recently discovered: Thulamela (which means "place of giving birth"), located in the Kruger National Park. Established by the ancestors of the Shangaan, Tsonga, and Venda peoples, this settlement thrived between AD 1350 and AD 1650 and was in regular contact with traders from the great Swahili states along the coast. Today the stone-walled hilltop site is covered with ancient, sprawling baobab trees.

Thulamela is clearly a part of the larger trading and Metalworking Empire associated with Great Zimbabwe and related to similar settlements found in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Botswana, and Mozambique.

The contrast between the governments's handling of Thulamela and Mapunguebe could not be greater: First excavated in 1996, this site has been reconstructed from the original stones found by archaeologists from the University of Pretoria, in the atmosphere of openness created by the ANC government. People living near the site have been actively engaged in the excavation, sharing oral history with the scholars. Thulamela proves that black South Africans had evolved sophisticated mining skills long before Europeans arrived. Their metalworkers succeeded in converting iron ore into carbon steel for use in tools and weapons.

-"Wonders of the African World" by Henry Louis Gates 1999

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[aaliyah104]

they're not talking about south africa.

[Taharkaimhotep]

nice vid

[wachaushenzi]

interestingly, in any so called," Bantu " language, Bantu or its many variations only means, people,nothing more,or nothing less ..examples, but not limited to, Abandu-Abantu-Andu-Bandu-Vandu­-Bantu-Batu-Mantu-Mandu-Watu-p­eople ,or

Mantu-Muntu-Mundu-Mutu-Mtu-per­son..so calling us bantu people is but, a repetition,...i.e bantu people= people people..

[ceXhc]

@maaruz1979 Yes, diverse people speak English, but obviously that's a result of recent colonialism and technology, not that people of different races just randomly started speaking English independently across the world in ancient times. If you look at what ethnicities traditionally speak a language, you'll find they are closely related to other ethnicities who traditionally speak similar languages. Obviously. There's also archaeological and genetic evidence for the Bantu expansion.

[Bazompora]

@maaruz1979

"i don't get jumpy because someone writes the word 'evidence'...anyone can write it"

How 'bout you go to Wikipedia and then follow the references and external links to read into the scientifical publications backing the theory? When it comes to genetics, the science is quite exact.

[Bazompora]

@maaruz1979

"since all people originated in africa and so-called bantu are the majority people on the entire continent, how do you know the original people on earth were not the so-called 'bantu'?"

The original people on earth were hunter-gatherers, like the small-statured Khoi and San, while the Bantu peoples are much bulky agraric peoples, lacking the protuding eyebrows and other traits of the original population; genetically, the Y-DNA haplogroup of Bantu has mutated far from the original.

[Bazompora]

@maaruz1979

"what about zimbabwe ruins...what about southern africa zulu oral tradition? what about the san khoisan people who are possibly the most ancient of all people on earth?"

• An-cient: BEFORE the Middle Ages; ALL known Sub-Saharan kingdoms, including Great Zimbabwe, date from the Middle Ages or later.

• King-dom(s): the Khoi and San peoples, all hunter-gatherers until Medieval contact with the Bantu, had none such.

So, what "better" explanation have YOU got for this?

[maaruz1979]

@Bazompora well so-called scientists used the bogus terms 'negroid, caucasoid & mongoloid' for centuries & many people to this very minute still use them. those terms are completely useless but people are easily swayed by the words of so-called scientists...if one goes deeper & analyze they will see just how nonsensical these designations are. never the less the majority of the world swears by them. africans in the americas even called themselves "negroes" & still do. ppl still use "caucasian"

[maaruz1979]

@Bazompora "evidence shows the bantu people"...excuse me if i yawn over this so-called evidence...what 'evidence'; they also once had 'evidence' that the african was more closely related to the ape than to other humans...i don't get jumpy because someone writes the word 'evidence'...anyone can write it

[maaruz1979]

@Bazompora what evidence? u keep saying "the bantu people..you keep telling me 'they' originated in west africa when everything i read says either east or central africa.since all people originated in africa and so-called bantu are the majority people on the entire continent, how do you know the original people on earth were not the so-called 'bantu'? perhaps theirs was the first language on earth? this is silly- there is no way to know that; and where did the san who u call 'bushme) come from?

[maaruz1979]

@Bazompora " sub-saharan" africa has no ancient kingdoms? what about zimbabwe ruins...what about southern africa zulu oral tradition? what about the san khoisan people who are possibly the most ancient of all people on earth?

[maaruz1979]

@ceXhc what european languages are indian languages related to? english is now pretty much the "lingua franca" of the entire world...extremely diverse people speak it-- you could draw no conclusion from the fact that they speak this language...this is hypothesis & theories...semitic speakers are found in western asia & eastern africa who are completely unrelated by race or ethnicity...it can always be broken down further; mass labeling is questionable for some disciplines