Thulamela

Thulamela is the most dramatic of the around 300 archaeological sites identified in Kruger National Park. It is located on heights south of the Levubu River offering a panoramic view. Sidney Miller led excavations from December 1993 to July 1995, and the site has also been partially reconstructed.

The opening of the rebuilt Thulamela was attended by a hundred guests, including then Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Pallo Jordan and then SANParks chairman, the late Dr. Enos John Mabuza. The name Thulamela comes from a portmanteau of thulwi ("mound") and mela ("growing") in references to the tall anthills in the area.[1]

The Makahane, a subtribe of the Vhalembeth branch of the Venda people, inhabited the Thulamela stone fortress from 1250 to 1700 C.E. Glass beads, Chinese porcelain, imported textiles, ivory bracelets, gold, bronze, and other jewelry testify to extensive trade links. Skilled goldsmiths, the inhabitants traded the metal as currency, and they also mined iron ore that they forged into iron for export. Both metals were traded for ivory, glass beads, and grain from merchants closer to the east coast. There were likely also trade links with West Africa.[2]

The graves of a 16th-century king and queen were unearthed in the 1990s excavations. Archaeologists named them King Losha and Queen Ingwe, and their castle was estimated to house 1,000 people. Dwellings along the ruined walls on the hillsides beyond could regularly have housed 2,000.

Similar village ruins can be found in the Mateke Hills on the other side of the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe. The Makahane Cliffs can be found in the same area of Kruger National Park, northeast of the Punda Maria Gate near the Levubu, and was also a Vhalembethu settlement.

Visitors to the park can book tours from Punda Maria Camp up to Thulamela.

Sources
  • Miller, Sidney Mears (2018). Thulamela: The Lost Gold of the Vha Venda.
gollark: I think modern WiFi stuff uses *multiple* antennas, actually, it's called "MIMO".
gollark: It would also not be very useful for spying on people, since they would just stop saying things if they got a notification saying "interception agent has been added to the chat" and it wouldn't work retroactively.
gollark: One proposal for backdooring encrypted messaging stuff was to have a way to remotely add extra participants invisibly to an E2Ed conversation. If you have that but without the "invisible" bit, that would work as "encryption with a backdoor, but then make it very obvious that the backdoor has been used" somewhat.
gollark: Not encryption itself, probably.
gollark: They don't seem to want to *ban* end-to-end encryption as much as backdoor the popularly used stuff. Which is still bad. I should finish writing that blog post on it some time this decade.

References
  1. "Thulamela". Luonde, VhaVenda history.
  2. "Thulamela". Kruger National Park.
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