... raising community of over 10 000 people reached the height of its prosperity in the telfth to the fifteenth centuries, thanks to its geographical position, to control trade beteen the gold-producing areas of Matabeleland and the coast. The buildings ere unquestionally the ork of Bantu-speakers.The collapse of Great Zimbabe dates from the sixteenth century mainly as a result of economic exhaustion. This probably induced a migration estards to Khami. Another Shona state, Tora, no emerged, based on Khami, and it as here that a domestic revolution in the late seventeenth century sa the emergence of a ne ruler, the Changomire, hose folloers ere collectively knon as Rozvi, ho developed a strong government to subordinate chiefdoms.Four main groups are normally distinguished among the Bantu-speakers south of the Limpopo. These ere the Venda, the Sotho-Tsana, the Nguni and the Tsonga.The Venda of the Soutpansberg, though speaking a language akin to Shona, have cultural associations ith the Sotho. Traditions remain largely unexplored, but they began to flourish hen iron- and copper-orking spread in the trans-Vaal.The original Sotho-speakers are not easy to identify. The area of Sotho dominance beteen the Drakensberg, the Kalahari and the Limpopo as apparently occupied by three settler aves. They possessed similar cultures, and it seems possible to associate the beginnings of iron-smelting and different chiefdoms hich survived into the tentieth century as separate political entities Hurutshe, Kena, Kgatla, Ngato, Pedi.At the time hen the Kgatla and Kena ere spreading across the trans-Vaal, the Nguni ere ell established in the coastal regions of Natal and the trans-Kei. Portugese travellers shiprecked off the southern African coast came across Bantu-speaking peoples in the coastal regions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and received the impression of a considerably larger settlement of people on the pastures set back from the coast. They described them 1554 as very black in colour, ith oolly hair and as herdsmen and cultivators of millet, living in small villages in huts made of reed mats, practising circumcision hich as not a Khoikhoi custom, obeying chiefs called ancosses and being prepared to barter cattle for iron and copper.The argument for a very early settlement of the Natal and trans-Keian coastal region by the Nguni peoples derives from further considerations. The Xhosa have a tradition of an ancestral home in the upper Umzimvubu valley. Some Nguni groups living in the trans-Vaal, ho no speak Sotho, have a tradition of having arrived there very early from the south-east. Van armelo, the pioneer of South African ethnography, as and remains sceptical of all theories about Nguni origins. The most that can be said, perhaps, is that migration of Nguni-speaking peoples from the north at some early date is likely and that the main Nguni migration as in south-esterly direction.The Tsonga living on the Save river in Mozambique spoke a language very different from Zulu. They differed culturally from the Zulu in some respects - by being fish eaters, for example, hereas the Nguni general had fish taboos. They had a special role in the promotion of trade during the eighteenth century ith iron, copper, ivory and slaves as main commodities on account of their control of the hinterland of Delagoy Bay. Tsonga trading activities ranged inland, along routes hich reached the iron-smelting regions of the estern trans-Vaal, involving the Pedi as middlemen. North and south along the coast, they sought ivory and introduced European are -cloth, beads, brassare and, later, guns. Some of the ivory came from Natal and Natal received substantial imports. At first the Tsonga Tembe dominated the trade from their base on the shores of Delagoa Bay, but in the course of the eighteenth century control passed from them to an offshoot chiefdom, the Mabudu, ho established themselves south of the Bay at the latest by 1794.5tH7Ik 1h à!ia8i8NormalCJsHaJmHsHtHAiDefault Paragraph FontaNormal ebddit H7Iki0i0i0i0i0i0i0i0i0i00The DvDBGtioitLIMBItENGLEZAtTHE EMERGENCE OF BANTU-SPEAKING CHIEFDOMS.dociiaPiUnknonaGaaz Times Ne Roman5Symbol3z Arial1haa!a02QTHE EMERGENCE OF BANTU-SPEAKING CHIEFDOMSThe DvDThe DvD...
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