Portuguese East Africa is Key to Continent’s History

Grey River Argus, 9 August 1948, Page 2

Portuguese East Africa is Key to Continent’s History

LOURENCO MARQUES By Airmail Portuguese East Africa is destined to play an important role in any attempt which may be made to piece together the early history of the African Continent, according to Professor van R'eit Lowe, Director of thUnion Archaeological Survey. In u paper read to the annual meeting o the South African Association for th Advancement of Science, Lowe said that the Union and Rhodesian enquiry into the early history of Southern Africa cannot be carried to finality or achieve any real success without the close co-operation of the Portuguese. He stressed that during the centuries of Arab, Chinese and P° s " sibly other foreign exploitation, ana infiltration, before the appearance of the earliest Portuguese navigators, Mozambique was the gateway to South Africa. He is convinced that the most important secrets of the Zimbawe culture must lie there. The ruins of Mavita, Zemba and Nhaangara aie undoubtedly related to those, that lie across the Rhodesian border. The rivers which flow from them to the sea of Beira, and near it, are the natural avenues from the coast to the interior. For example says Professor Lowe, Medaeval and other glass beads and glazed ware from the old Arab settlement at Sofala can be matched by material from Cairo, India, Ceylon, Zanzibar, Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe. Great Zimbabwe itself lies in the basin of the- Rio Save, which may prove to be as important as a pre-Europ'ean corridor from the coast as the Buz and Punge. In the absence, therefore, of the development of archaeological exploration in Portuguese East Africa, with special reference to foreign influences revealed in rock painting which are known to have a wide distribution in the colony, progress in the interior and especially in Rhodesia, must be impeded The people cf the Portuguese possessions, says Professor Lowe, _ are rightly proud of their pre-historians. who are doing first-class work in their own time and at their own expense. But the time has come when means, official and otherwise, should be found to help, encourage and support them to devote more time to intensive exploration. The rock paintings, the ruins and the reasons for vast gold extractions in the interior and the unknown dest’nation of the Teat wealth removed through Portuguese East Africa so long ago. have fired the imaginations, not only of the archaeologists, but of a much wider public, and have thu<? imposed a grave scientific respons'bil'ty on al 1 who live and work in the African Continent.