The Golden Rhino

In front of the Standard Bank building in the CBD is a large-scale replica of the Golden Rhino excavated in a burial site at Mapungubwe. The real rhino sculpture is apparently much smaller than this replica and is made of pure gold.

Mapungubwe is a World Heritage Site about four hours north of Joburg on the Zimbabwe border and it is high on our list of planned long weekend trips. I want to do an archaeological tour of the site and I also want to see the actual Golden Rhino itself housed in Pretoria at the University of Pretoria Museum.

I will surely blog about it when I do, but in the meantime, there is a shocking story about the public disclosure of its discovery I want to share.

Jo 

Mapungubwe is considered by archaeologists to be the very first complex ancient society in Africa. The kingdom lasted from about 1075 to around 1220 AD.

According to Past Experiences founder, tour guide and real life archaeologist Jo Buitendach, a complex ancient society is one that has a king and a class system.




 The kingdom of Mapungubwe was one of the earliest examples of sacred leadership where the king had god-like powers and infallibility. The complex class hierarchy was comprised of specialized craftsmen and artists, farmers and an established trade society. There is archaeological evidence that the kingdom of Mapungubwe even traded gold and ivory with Asia.

Now here comes the interesting part. Since its discovery in 1932 this Iron Age site has been excavated by the University of Pretoria. However, the findings were kept from public attention until 1993, just prior to South Africa's first democratic elections! Why? Because evidence of a highly advanced indigenous society existing centuries before European colonialism spread across Africa ran contrary to the racist ideology of apartheid. The discovery of the Golden Rhino in particular disproved the propagated  fallacies that gold was a European discovery and that the skills necessary to mine, process and craft it into something as extraordinary as the golden figure of a rhino are too highly advanced for native Africans.

Shocking!