A-Level Notes History - Early Communities Of Zimbabwe - The Leopard's Kopje 800 - 1250

This is a Middle Iron Age Society near Robert Sinyoka in the Matabeleland North Province of modern Zimbabwe. The Leopard's kopje site is dated between 800-1250 AD. These are believed to be direct ancestors of the Great Zimbabwe acropolis. The group resided in the south-west plateau of Zimbabwe and the Shashe-Limpopo valleys.

A Level History Mar 16, 2024 0 538 Add to Reading List

A-Level Notes History - Early Communities Of Zimbabwe - The Leopard's Kopje 800 - 1250

This is a Middle Iron Age Society near Robert Sinyoka in the Matabeleland North Province of modern Zimbabwe. The Leopard's kopje site is dated between 800-1250 AD. These are believed to be direct ancestors of the Great Zimbabwe acropolis. The group resided in the south-west plateau of Zimbabwe and the Shashe-Limpopo valleys. From anthropological investigation in the area, coupled with ethnographic evidence, all point to a well-developed pastoral economy. The economy was supported by the Shashe Limpopo Rivers and the vast green pastures and foliage plants throughout the valleys. Valley fields attest to a crop growing culture. They grew a variety of the tropical crops like the short season crops from the Savana regions like millet, rapoko, sorghum, melons, pumpkins, and other tubers. These crops were often drought resistant or needed very little rains and a short season.

Evidence of pottery, with remains of these crops, attest to Leopard Kopje people depending on crop cultivation as their staple food. They also practised trade, the long distance trade to the Indian Ocean with the Swahili-Arabs, Indians and Chinese. The Silk Route to China, left a trail of eastern products like Chinese bowls, bottles, marrows, beads and other jewellery, cloth, ceramics and gun powder. They exchanged these luxuries with gold, ivory, leather, feathers of birds, treasures, tin, copper, and iron products. The kopje people were reputable miners, smelters and blacksmiths. They produced weapons and implements for agriculture. They also made various cultural ornaments and craft, baskets and pottery.

The leopard kopje culture thrived on a neat compact and dynamic society. They succeeded the Zhizo culture, which was concentrated around the Matopo valley and the Limpopo valley. They lived in small villages which were productive units and industries for the state. The economy was run on the House System where homesteads were the Productive units of the state, the factories and also the main market. From archaeological accounts of historical sites, the Zhizo farmers migrated westwards into the fringes of eastern Kalahari of Botswana in the 19th century AD. Around the Toutswe, Palapye, Shoshong and Serowe regions in eastern Botswana, they formed a very strong iron-age chiefdom related later to the formation of Great Zimbabwe. It remained a surrogate vassalage of Great Zimbabwe, Mutapa, and Rozvi empires. So the Leopards kopje, on the Zimbabwean plateau, occupied territories left vacant by the Zhizo farmers or the people around 800AD. What is baffling and still debatable is to arrive at a conclusion that the leopard's kopje is a successor of the Zhizo culture. Two pieces of evidence are confirmed by anthropological and ethnographic evidence that they are Shona speakers. The former president of Botswana Festus Moai, confirmed that he was a descendent of the Zimbabwean culture and heir to the Mutapa crown. The Shona influence is still very strong among areas in Eastern Botswana where they speak a Shona or Kalanga accent. Like elsewhere, though, the rich trail of abandoned mines, crop fields and pastures, the Zhizo culture exported their economic and social way of life associated with the later iron-age into the Kalahari deserts. These theories could be supported by the fact that they occupied an area under desertification. Historical hypothesis is on whether the Zhizo abandoned the Matopo farming regions for the drier pastoral regions of Botswana. The matrix could be on the value attached to cattle wealth or having been physically displaced by the leopard kopje cultural societies. Traceable though is their closely related pottery culture and settlements.

Imperatively, both the Zhizo and the leopard's kopje cultures have been associated with the early formation of states by the inhabitants of the Zimbabwe plateau. The physical material remains unearthed at Ndabazingwe Hill, on the North West of modern Bulawayo, Mapela on the Shashe basin and Bambadyanalo near the Shashe -Limpopo confluence attest to the development of a state given the common culture associated with the sites.

Archaeologists discovered cattle enclosures and bones on these sites showing a very strong pastoral economy. From this evidence, it is prudent to realise that cattle wealth became synonymous with cattle power. The cattle owners assumed dominating authority to dictate and impose their will on societies with little or no such wealth. Cattle wealth fostered the genesis of gender based craft and specialisation and thus accumulation of more wealth and power. This became the mantra of state formation. The rich cattle owners became chiefs and later kings of Great Zimbabwe, Mutapa and Rozvi empires. They created vast empires on the premises of protecting their wealth and preserving it. The cattle rich tycoons reinforced their will and wealth, authority and prestige through ritual and ceremony. Religion became the dogma of wealth and human protection. The rich assumed divine power and providence which scared the poor and plunge into visible obscurity. Power became divine as was God given and so the respect and fear that accompanied power. Authority became intimidating that families became monarchies and royalties. Societies enjoyed order and prosperity.

Exploitation of trade rich resources like gold and ivory to satisfy the export oriented economy resulted in a dog eat dog affair. Many people were condemned into oblivion as many Shona societies were whipped into submission through war and vice. Leaders became more manipulative to maximise on not only wealth but power through state formation.

Wealth and power became the calibrated measure of human quest for life. The two throve to survive during depletion of the eco-system. The brutal Shangwe, droughts and subsequently shrinking of arable land and resources left the wealth and the powerful desperate state to control resources on the Zimbabwe plateau which further favoured state formation after the 11th century AD. By the 12th century, the leopard's kopje forming communities had annexed Mapungubwe Hill along the banks of the river Limpopo on its southern side. Material remains of the Mapungubwe site are closely related with the leopard's kopje which was to later grow outward into a very strong and stable state of Mapungubwe.