The Sunday News
JUST how connected was the ancient world? We ask this question in view of certain cultural similarities between peoples who lived far apart. While the Neolithic San in southern Africa were inscribing the chevron design on ostrich egg shells, the builders of Stonehenge in England were executing the same designs as part of the Beaker Tradition. Their pottery exhibited chevron designs and herringbone motifs. These were done as grooves or incisions. Interestingly, the less aesthetic Ndebele were also embellishing their clay pots with similar slanting grooved or incised motifs.
This is not all. The peoples of the first nations (Eskimos) were building their housing structures called igloos in a way similar to the Zulu/Ndebele or Nguni beehive huts. The former were using ice blocks to build their shelters while the latter used wood saplings and grass. The emphasis is not on the nature of materials used. Each group was using material resources that were locally available.
The more fundamental similarity lay in the design by the two peoples who were far apart. Both structures were hemispherical in shape, provided with low entrances. Both were undifferentiated: no separate wall and roof. Both peoples sought to mimic the cosmos in their architecture. There was this universal desire to imitate the cosmos.
Further, we can’t help seeing more similarities when it comes to perceptions of certain landscapes. Certain natural places were regarded as having some sacredness about them. In all cases these were places that were out of the ordinary or the common, such as caves, mountains, springs and rivers. Each group of people appropriated such a landscape although in different ways. More significant though was the fact that such places were appropriated and infused with cultural or spiritual meaning.
Some of the ways resorted to, included the placing of votive deposits, the carving of rock art, extraction of raw materials for tools, and re-sculpting of natural landforms. Nearest to us are the spherical caves in the Matobo cultural landscape: Nswatugi, Pomongwe and Bambata, all of which have San rock art. Research seems to point out that the Stonehenge was located where there were naturally occurring parallel ridges whose alignment was in congruence with the summer solstice sunrise and winter solstice sunset. The people were aware of the movement of the sun.
The people who lived then saw the spot as significant in that it was where the heaven and earth met. It was a place with some supernatural force. If such a place served as a link between the two worlds, it was thus ideal as a burial place — where the living and the dead would continue to interact. Their two worlds were brought together at such a natural place.
The idea of linking the dead and the movement of the sun was not unique to England. Here in Zimbabwe the Nyathi people (of the Serumola/Luphade section) will identify the East-West solar axis and align their graves accordingly. This should be seen as not very different from the considerations applicable at Stonehenge. Astronomy played a significant part in people’s lives and their lives in the hereafter. It brought together the two worlds, heaven and earth. The dead and the living belonged to the two worlds respectively and thus had to be accordingly aligned. This seems to have been a universal consideration.
The places identified above, that is springs, rivers, mountains and caves were equally revered in Zimbabwe. The Voice of Mwali spoke from a cave on Njelele Mountain between Dewe and Halale. It seems the ‘‘disabled spots/places’’ on the landscape do possess some supernatural power. The early peoples upheld a cosmology that seemed to recognise power resident in the disabled, be they humans or the natural environment. What is different and unique is infused with some supernatural power. Do you appreciate why the albinos are a hunted people in East Africa?
It is the desire to link the two worlds that accounts for the adoption of the same design by different peoples living thousands of kilometres apart. The cosmos brings them together and is as close to one group as to the other.
The early settlers were exposed to the shapes of the sun and the moon — both were circular in design. For many hemispherical caves on mountains provided them with their first settlements. As their technology advanced the mountain dwellers migrated downwards to occupy the plains. The stone settlements were abandoned but their design was retained as hemispherical structures made from tree branches and grass in tropical and temperate climates and ice in the Arctic region. In any case, the heavenly bodies were still visible and exerting influence on the hunter-gatherer peoples.
This is the stage when the hut structures were undifferentiated. The circle was the ordering design regardless of the building material being used. In due course the rough tree branch and grass structure developed into a more elaborate and bigger bee-hive that we are familiar with. Life had become sedentary following the adoption of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Such an undifferentiated hut structure was ideal in wetter climates where high rainfall discouraged the activities of the white ants. Once the Ndebele moved away from KwaZulu-Natal they were in essence moving to a drier climate with a shorter rain season. The area where they settled was already occupied by the generic Bakalanga whose huts were already differentiated into separate roof and wall.
However, even then there was adherence to cosmic dictates. The roofs were conical in shape – actually a circle of decreasing diameter or radii. The wall was cylindrical – comprising an infinite number of circles. Be that as it may, the differentiated hut structure was better adapted to a drier, hotter and colder climate. The space between the roof and the wall provided a barrier to the white ants that might have crept up the wall.
The Ndebele bee-hive thus faced structural challenges resulting from a different climate. Further, there were cone-on-cylinder hut structures all around them. It was under these circumstances that the beehive underwent some structural transformation. It too became differentiated – having a separate roof and wall. Architectural tradition continued to exert some influence. As a result the roof was not conical but some sort of ‘‘mushroom’’, what I have termed the ‘‘uplifted mushroom’’. The wall was short and bulging at the centre – plastered only on the inside. The entrance was low as before. The timber used was small hence the roof was put together on the ground and lifted onto the wall.
The uplifted mushroom was in vogue at the time of the demise of the Ndebele State. Very few people alive today saw this type of transitional hut. Later, a third phase of the Ndebele hut was constructed which still came under the architectural traditions brought out of KwaZulu-Natal. The wall was however cylindrical and the entrance high. It was the roof which still exhibited some elements of the mushroom, taking from the original bee-hive. Despite these structural changes adherence to the cosmic dictates remained exhibited through the circular design of both the roof (conical and therefore circular) and the wall (cylindrical and therefore circular). The three hut phases are captured in the wall murals being painted by Bheki Ntshali at Amagugu International Heritage Centre (AIHC), courtesy of Hivos and the Norwegian Embassy.
