DILAPIDATIONS
At Zimbabwe both the ravages of time, as well as preventable damage during the last decade, have brought about the wholesale destruction of walls as seen to-day in their dilapidated condition. This is the plaint of all who have known the ruins since the time of the occupation. These all bemoan the fact that on each renewed visit to the ruins some wall is found to have disappeared, or some new bulging out of the massive structures threatens serious and immediate destruction, which no amount of lateral support or pinning up can now possibly prevent. Many such visitors complain that the decorative patterns are becoming less perfect. Photographs show this to be the case. In fact, so much dilapidation has taken place within the last few years that it is a common remark of pioneers that “the ruins are becoming less and less every year,” while intense disappointment and vexation are expressed by “old hands” when they revisit the temple after an interval of a few years at the serious reduction in the height of the Conical Tower. Photographs of the tower taken as recently as 1896 represent the summit as being higher than is seen to-day, while almost every photograph taken within the last two or three years of any single part of these ruins shows portions, if not the whole, of walls, with their distinctive features that have completely disappeared. To those who venerate these ancient edifices nothing can be sadder than a comparison of the ruins as seen to-day with the ruins as they were some years ago.
But before dealing with the dilapidations of later years it might be well to examine the history of such of the dilapidations as can be read in the wall débris heaps which line the bases of every wall, for these débris heaps can be read with the same facility as one can read a book. These dilapidations are what might be termed legitimate, being the natural results of the ravages of time, which no means taken could possibly have avoided, and which have extended for very many centuries on end since the latest of the ancient occupiers disappeared.
In Tintern, Melrose, and many another old building at Home we have ruins even now incomplete, owing to the dilapidations of but a few hundred years. But the most ancient ruins of Great Britain, excepting, of course, Stonehenge, the round towers of Ireland, the Druidical circles of Wales, the stone circles and cloven stones of the Isle of Man, and the reputed pagan temples found elsewhere, and certain of the Roman remains of which at present little is known, possess histories, and Domesday Book, and even much later records, state the names of the actual builders of these castles and abbeys. These buildings have a stamp upon them of modernity which is altogether absent at Zimbabwe, in comparison with the age of which the term “ancient,” as applied to those at Home, elastic as it is, sounds strangely inappropriate. And yet after a comparatively short period of non-occupation of these castles and buildings only sections of them can now be seen. Guides will state that the walls have been quarried for material for farm buildings, most probably for the erection of the adjoining mansion, and that portions were destroyed by lightning.
But Zimbabwe, with its minimum age of some three millenniums, stands far more firm, more intact, and complete than any one of the comparatively few-centuried old ruins to be found anywhere at Home. Planted in South-East Africa at over two hundred miles inland from the coast, in the midst of populations that know nothing whatever of its origin, Zimbabwe’s massive and imposing walls reveal even to the most casual and indifferent of visitors the plan, purpose, and design of the original builders. Yet has it been subjected for three millenniums to the destructive agency of lightning storms, the frequency and severity of which in South-East Africa are well known. Severe earthquakes must have shaken its foundations, but the massive walls remain practically intact. Arab tradition speaks of violent earthquakes in South-East Africa during the fifth century, while the condition of some of the ruins in Rhodesia, where the walls have fallen en bloc sideways on to the ground, testifies to frequent, general, and violent earth-movements and earth-strains having taken place. The South-East African cyclones passing over it during thirty centuries probably have caused further dilapidations. Still, though so many walls at Zimbabwe remain more or less intact, it would be impossible to estimate the extent to which many walls may have suffered, or what have possibly disappeared altogether from the effects of earthquakes, for it would be difficult to suppose that these extensive ruins—some walls being built on the actual brink of precipices—have escaped all the destructive effects of earth-movements and storms which have occurred during the last three thousand years.
The action of sub-tropical rains for centuries has destroyed whole lengths of walls. For instance, a trench which occupied half a dozen labourers two days to excavate was, after a heavy shower lasting but an hour, completely filled up by mud streams from a higher level. There is hardly a wall on the Acropolis Hill that has not had to bear some added weight of silted soil from higher levels, and these in places have been so extensive that when accumulated on the upper sides of walls the effect has been to push the wall bodily over. In this way the terraces of enclosures round the north, west, and south faces of the Acropolis have in most instances been entirely filled up and buried, while in others the outer and down-side wall has been burst through and destroyed. Streams of water during storms of real African violence have worn deep channels along the bases of some of the walls, exposing the foundations which bridge across the holes, the water causing the decomposition of the cement bed of the foundations and making the wall throughout its complete height to sway downwards and to bulge threateningly outwards. Some of these water-made holes up against the bases of the walls contained damp and moisture all through the dry season, especially those on the south side of walls where the holes were protected from the sun. In as many cases as possible for the time engaged on the preservation work (1902–4) these spots were levelled, and catchment areas were made, so that for the future no rain-water can lodge there, but the waving lines of the courses in the walls still show where these holes existed.
In a similar way block débris falling from higher levels has lodged behind lower walls and eventually pressed them over. In some instances on the Acropolis a mass of walling has fallen from a great height and completely demolished walls below. These were no gradual dilapidations, but instances where sections of the higher wall had gone completely over en masse. Such falls almost entirely explain the damage done to the outer walls of the South-East Ancient Ascent, lengths of which have evidently been made good by Kafirs of a very old period, as the well-built ancient foundations can be seen below the later walls.
But some walls have also been seriously damaged by falls of huge slabs and boulders from the faces of the granite cliffs, buttresses have been broken, entrances and passages completely blocked up if not utterly demolished. These falls, though later than the times of the ancients, occurred very long ago, for the depressions in the cliffs from which these slabs and boulders fell are now become weather-stained, but the shapes of the depressions and of the slabs and boulders still agree. It is conjectured that the gap in the central portion of the main wall of the Eastern Temple was caused by the fall of an immense boulder from the summit of the sixty-foot cliff on the north side of the temple. By the moving forward of a boulder for six feet from the position it occupied at the time of the ancients—and they had utilised this boulder in forming the west entrance of the same temple—the entrance was completely blocked up.
But there is a process of dilapidation going on continually, a process which, judging by the débris piles, has been operating for many centuries. When walking near a wall one has to be very careful not to walk under any of the overhanging blocks on the summit of the wall. Some of these blocks are very delicately poised on the edges of the walls, so much so that it seems as if a shout would cause them to fall. Wherever possible these blocks have been drawn back flush again with the face of the wall, but in very many cases the walls are so ruined that it would be dangerous work to do this. It is one of the unfortunate effects of this ancient dry masonry that when one block topples over a small cascade of blocks usually follows it. Such falls, followed by cascades of blocks, are continually taking place. One hears them night and day, especially after rains, and frequently these cascades, especially those from walls above the precipice on the Acropolis, will continue uninterruptedly for some minutes together. There are many points in walls so threatening to collapse that no builder’s art of shoring-up could possibly prevent their fall, for sooner or later they must come down with a crash. Natives give the information that from the time of their childhood they always remembered these falls taking place when no one was near the walls. Probably the noise of falling blocks, especially at night, has served to inspire the local natives with some of the dread in which after sundown they regard the ruins. After a heavy shower one can always find some damage done to the walls. This is mainly due to the quantity of silted soil behind walls, which, becoming overgutted with water, forces the walls over. The only remedy, and that a partial one, would appear to be to remove the silted soil from behind the walls, but to complete such operations a large gang of labourers would have to be engaged for many months. Still the complaint of the early pioneer that the walls at Zimbabwe are gradually becoming not only less but fewer remains perfectly incontrovertible.
But there is an infinitude of other causes working for the dilapidation of the ancient walls at Zimbabwe, and some of these are undoubtedly preventable. It was for the purpose of removing such causes of damage that the recent work of preservation was undertaken on behalf of the Rhodesian Government, and these operations it is the purpose of this volume to describe.
The Great Zimbabwe, as also the many associated ruins scattered throughout Southern Rhodesia, has been subject to wholesale destruction of its walls by the growth of trees, the presence of damp, the falling of immense trees across walls, the quarrying of its walls by past and present natives for building material, for cattle kraals, and other purposes. All the ruins at Zimbabwe afford ample evidences of the ravages caused by vegetable growth, and no ruin appears to have escaped some measure of destruction from this cause.
In 1902 the Elliptical Temple was found to be full of large trees of immense girth, some being at least sixty feet in height. The shelter from the chilly winds prevailing at night and in the dry winter season, and the protection from damage to bark by grass fires provided by the high and massive walls, together with the perpetual state of damp from wet season to wet season prevailing within the walls, the close, hothouse temperature most favourable to the promotion of growth, provided an area in which trees and plants could flourish most luxuriantly.
The trees within the temple are almost all hard woods of slow growth. One tree, not by any means a large one, showed by its rings an age of over a hundred years. The numerous fig-trees must be of great age. The three immense hard-wood trees in the centre of the building may possibly be a hundred years old. The rest of the temple was as full of soft-wooded trees as space permitted, while the branches of trees near the main walls crowded over the tops of the walls towards the outside. Undergrowth of monkey-ropes, wild vines, thorn creepers, and large bushes formed a dense jungle through which it was almost impossible to pass, while the damp maintained the soil in a wet, soggy state, the trees being covered with orchids and long, trailing festoons of lichen, the shaded walls being one mass of creepers, green moss, lichens, and ferns, and dripping with damp. Certainly such growth made the temple beautifully picturesque, and added greatly to its weird, desolate, and solemn appearance.
But a succession of “dust-devils” or “wind twisters” that very frequently pass over the country in the breathless sultry hours of noon passed over Zimbabwe on the second day after our arrival, and at once demonstrated what damage the trees were inflicting on the ruins. Branches were set crunching and thumping on the summits of all the walls, soft-wood trees bent and swept the walls of loose blocks, two huge hard-wood branches remorselessly scraped noisily up and down the sides and on the top of the Conical Tower, while small trees growing on the actual summits of the walls shook and bent and still further loosened the blocks among which their roots extended. During the few minutes these “twisters” lasted the labourers studiously avoided the walls from which the ancient blocks were falling. Under every branch that crossed over a wall was a deep depression in the summit caused by the branch thudding upon it. Many of the trees growing close to the walls had, with long years of banging against the side of the wall, lost all their bark on their inner sides, and these had become perfectly flat. All this havoc, caused by rocking trees and sweeping branches, and by huge broken limbs falling upon interior walls, must have been going on for many years. The effect has been to cause the removal of the “throughs,” ties, and large bonding stones with which the ancients secured the summits of the walls, and these once gone the wall was subject to rapid dilapidation. Later, during high winds which prevailed for some days, it was most distressing to hear the noise of the trees grating and heavily beating against the walls, and the constant falling down of ancient blocks. The effects of such destruction can be seen to-day in the broken edges of the summits and in the deep depressions which occur at intervals along the lines of both main and divisional walls. Even the chevron pattern has been irretrievably damaged by branches of trees growing outside the temple, while the little tower in the Sacred Enclosure has, within the last few years, been thrown over by a huge branch.
But in 1902–4 all trees growing near walls were felled, all projecting branches and rotten limbs were removed, as well as all trees which caused damp to collect on walls, while a general thinning out was made of all branches which interfered with a general view all round the building. Such trees as had done all the possible harm they could do and all trees standing at a distance from walls were left standing. The result has been to make the temple less “picturesque” than in its neglected state, but it still remains picturesque. The temple now appears to be larger, and its massive proportions now made visible stand out far more prominently than before.
The present trees appear to have been the first that ever grew within the temple area. In the soil removed from ancient floors there were no signs of any older generations of trees having existed. The first appear to have arrived with the soil brought in by the past Makalanga in the course of their usual practice of converting ancient enclosures into platforms on which to erect their huts. The trees evidently flourished in the soil made rich by huge piles of bones of oxen and buck, the remains of feasts and sacrifices. Except in a few instances where rain-water was unable to escape, and has caused the ancient cement flooring to become decomposed, the roots of the trees rarely pierce below the ancient floors, the surfaces of which are covered with matted roots closely interwoven in masses like the roots of a large plant growing in a small pot.
The jungle growth of small trees, bushes, and creepers would seem to be the result of excavators, who have broken up the hard clay floors of the old Makalanga and thus ventilated the soil below, as those places where most excavation work has been done have produced the greatest quantities of trees and the densest jungles. Until the whole of this foreign soil is removed down to the level of an ancient floor this jungle growth will always spring up afresh.
But the growth of creepers such as monkey-rope, wild vines, and a climbing plant known as “Zimbabwe creeper,” has wrought untold havoc, but mainly on the faces of the walls. These creepers pierce into the joints of the dry masonry and emerge at a point some feet higher up. Later the branch inside the wall swells and forces out of the face of the wall all the blocks between the points where it enters into and emerges from the wall. This destruction of the walls by creepers is seen in many places at every one of the numerous ruins at Zimbabwe. Monkey-rope at the Elliptical Temple and wild vine on the Acropolis have been the most destructive agents of any of the creeper plants. The “Zimbabwe creeper” was found to be growing on the temple walls with its roots on the summits. This plant covered the main walls as with a thick green mantle, at some points completely hiding the entire surface of the walls. It also had its roots in the interstices of the Chevron Pattern, from the blocks of which it hung in festoons of over one hundred-weight each. This constant strain on the pattern has effected some destruction in addition to the injuries caused by the overhanging boughs of trees. The dilapidation of the walls of the Elliptical Temple is fairly typical of the dilapidations at all the ruins at Zimbabwe.
But there are also minor causes for the dilapidation seen in the walls outside the larger ruins. The restless herd of some seventy cattle belonging to the Mogabe climb the lower walls with ease, and will walk along their whole length clanking the ancient blocks, and awkwardly clamber down broken ends of walls and gaps, bringing down a cataract of blocks as they descend. Some two hundred goats appear to live on the walls. Large baboons can be seen taking their morning exercise on the walls of the Acropolis, and as these scamper about and chase one another the blocks fall off the walls. Natives pull out the faces of the walls to secure honey, or in ferreting out small animals for food.
It must also be remembered that the ancient walls have been quarried by Makalanga of past times and even by the present local Makalanga, all of whom have extensively used the ancient blocks for their inferior walls. But perhaps the greatest amount of dilapidation was effected when the large enclosed areas of the ruins were filled up and converted into raised platforms. In these instances, which are very numerous, the divisional walls suffered most, the blocks from their summits being thrown into the area till the interior was raised from 4 ft. to 7 ft. above the ancient floors, when clay floors were laid upon the filling in.
On entering the Elliptical Temple of the Acropolis one of the first questions asked by visitors is—Are all these walls ancient? It is to the interest of our local archæological researches that such a question should be fairly dealt with, and the frank admission made that certain of the walls are not ancient. In examining the evidences against the antiquity of such walls a further proof is secured, were it needed, that such of the walls as are ancient possess undoubtedly the true seal of antiquity.
Makalanga walls within ancient ruins at Zimbabwe.—It would be preposterous to expect anyone who visited the ruins to believe that every single wall one saw at Zimbabwe, whether at the Elliptical Temple or on the Acropolis, was necessarily ancient.
Some of the slighter-built walls within the ruins, which are of poor construction, and were once thought to be ancient, can now be shown to have been built by the Makalanga, the evidences of whose long and successive periods of occupation of these ruins are not only most obvious to all explorers and are confirmed by finds and conditions generally, but are a matter both of actual history as well as of tradition among the local natives themselves. Some of the ruins have been used by them for kraals, others—the smaller ones—were converted into cattle kraals with the huts outside the walls, while some have served both purposes. It is highly probable, judging by the state of the wall-débris, that the natives, in converting an ancient enclosure into a cattle kraal, have found portions of the divisional walls to be so dilapidated that they have rebuilt those portions after their own peculiar and recognisable fashion in order to keep in the cattle, at the same time building up gaps and entrances.
While, according to statements of natives and judging also from the state of the ruins, there has been no occupation of the Elliptical Temple as a place of residence for the last three generations, still there are Makalanga walls to be seen, both here and in the Acropolis, at which latter ruins was the kraal, till four years ago, of the present Mogabe; and on the Acropolis are walls of Makalanga construction, both old and comparatively recent. The western enclosures of the Elliptical Temple have been used as cattle kraals up to the early seventies.
The following are some of the evidences of Makalanga construction of walls within the ruins:—
(a) The definite and circumstantial claim of the Makalanga to have built certain walls, and their ability to assign particular generations for the erection of other walls.
(b) The construction of such walls is identified with obvious Makalanga buildings in their kraals, where there are no ancient ruins. The purpose of the later walls is in many instances patent, especially when the smell of the modern byres still lingers in the soil of the areas used by natives as cattle kraals enclosed by such walls.
(c) Stones once part of the faces of ancient walls are used in the construction of those walls, the weather-stained, lichen-covered, and decomposed faces of the blocks being turned inside the walls either sideways or backwards, while the walls show no sign of age, and have a comparatively fresh appearance. Slate and granite monoliths, as well as ordinary slate beams which had once been lintels, have been used as building material.
(d) Débris heaps of ancient blocks have been used as foundations, and sometimes these heaps acted as sections in the length of wall.
(e) Frequently such walls are built in a very irregular line along the almost buried summits of ancient walls, and across filled-in entrances and even passages, the foundations of such walls projecting from underneath the Makalanga walls on either side.
(f) Some of the Makalanga walls are built over damp, black leaf mould containing undecayed vegetable matter and also ordinary Kafir articles, the mould being over a stratum of red clay foundations of Makalanga huts, and with two or three feet of soil and stones between the clay and any floor below for which antiquity could be claimed. Makalanga pottery has been used to support and wedge up uneven ends of blocks.
(g) The made foundations of Makalanga walls are of common clay, those of ancient walls being of a splendid quality of granite cement.
(h) Nothing ancient or even approaching to antiquity is ever discovered on the levels of the bases of Makalanga walls, but round about their bases quantities of Makalanga articles may be found, some perhaps of better make and quality than now produced by them.
(i) Local natives can to-day build very fair stone walls, but these have straight joints and are without tie or bonding, the courses are most erratic, and the line of wall wavering. The common feature of Makalanga wall construction is to build the stones up exactly over one another, giving the appearance to the wall of being built on columns. Their stone walls of cattle kraals can be seen in many deserted villages, as well as other of their walls where there are no ancient ruins. The Makalanga graves in the passages, both in the Elliptical Temple and in the Acropolis, were very well built in with cross-walls.
(j) The Makalanga since mediæval times have always been known as builders in stone. Their circular hut and granary foundations of stone can still be seen in many parts of the country, especially on the clay floors of filled-in enclosures of ancient ruins of the terraced order. This art is mentioned by Mr. Selous and by almost all writers on this country before the Occupation, and pioneers and early settlers have affirmed this to be the case. Bent gives the names of Makalanga villages which he visited where these contained stone buildings of native construction. The names of other villages where such buildings are to be found are given by other writers. Bent actually saw their stone-building operations being carried on at Chipanza’s kraal. Professor Bryce describes a Makalanga village with stone buildings, but just as the arts of mining, smelting, wire-twisting, and cloth weaving are now fast disappearing on the advent of the cheap imported article, and on the natives finding other objects upon which to spend their time and labour, the art of stone building is becoming neglected. Old pioneers visiting the ruins are unanimous in affirming that such walls so built and so conditioned are of undoubted Makalanga construction. There are stone buildings at Cherimabila’s kraal, nine miles west from Zimbabwe. Mr. Drew considers the Barotse to be now the best stone builders in this district.
OTHER WALLS NOT ANCIENT[42]
But there are other walls in these ruins which are not believed to be ancient, and these have not been erected by recent generations of Makalanga, but possibly by mediæval Makalanga, or by Arabs, who had large influential colonies in this country, especially at the various Zimbabwes of the successive Monomotapas. The arguments against these walls being ancient are just as numerous and equally as cogent as those just enumerated, but the consideration of such walls is dealt with in detail in the description of the walls themselves.