The author of this book, George Robert Gayre of Gayre
and Nigg, was a British anthropologist, archeologist and expert on heraldry. He
was also the founder of Mankind Quarterly, a journal often accused of
“scientific” racism. Gayre of Gayre's book “The Origin of the Zimbabwean
Civilisation” was published in Rhodesia under Ian Smith's White minority
regime. It does contain interesting speculations, some of which have been
confirmed by recent DNA studies. However, Gayre's work is also marred by a
rather obvious anti-Black racism.
Ancient Zimbabwe was a mysterious high culture which disappeared shortly before the first Europeans arrived in southern Africa. Only its magnificent ruins are left, including those of its presumed capital, Great Zimbabwe. The territory of ancient Zimbabwe was roughly coterminous with the entity later known as Southern Rhodesia or Rhodesia. Speculations about ancient Zimbabwe's origins and downfall abound. They are often politically and racially charged. When Ian Smith's racist regime ruled Rhodesia, the most popular theory claimed that Zimbabwe wasn't the work of Black Africans, but of non-Black foreigners. White colonialists, perhaps? When Smith's regime fell, the new Black government of Robert Mugabe renamed the country “Zimbabwe” after the ancient high culture. The favored theory under Mugabe, which is also the favored theory in archeology at large, is that ancient Zimbabwe was the creation of Blacks, more specifically “proto-Shona” ancestors of the Shona, the dominant ethnic group in modern Zimbabwe. The iconic “Zimbabwe Bird” found in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe was/is used as a national symbol by both Ian Smith's Rhodesia and Mugabe's Zimbabwe.
It shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that R Gayre of Gayre and Nigg supports a version of the White supremacist theory of ancient Zimbabwean origins. In his scenario, White Semites – more specifically Judaizing Arabs from Sheba (Yemen) - journeyed to southern Africa after their kingdom had been overrun by Christian Ethiopians in the 6th century AD. Eventually, they established the civilization of Zimbabwe and mined gold for export by enslaving the “Bantu” and the “Hottentots”. During the period we would call the Late Middle Ages, the area of Zimbabwe was conquered by the Bantu, which led to the decline and destruction of the Semitic high culture. The surviving White Zimbabweans were “Bantuized” by “miscegenation” with Black Africans, and eventually evolved into the Lemba people, which still inhabit areas in South Africa and modern Zimbabwe. The Lemba are a “Negroid-Caucasoid cross”. The neighboring Venda probably also have some Semitic blood, but less than the Lemba, being their ancient allies but not directly related to the builders of Zimbabwe. The idea that the Bantu could have created something as magnificent as Great Zimbabwe is simply unthinkable to Gayre, who claims that the Bantu have always been primitive, unless forced to civilize by the whips of slave-masters, etc. I think it's obvious that the founder of Mankind Quarterly is running the errands of Ian Smith & Co. For “Bantu”, read ZANU and ZAPU. For “ancient Zimbabwe”, read modern Rhodesia. The point of the pro-slavery references is Über-obvious…
Gayre emphasizes that many non-Bantu African peoples are Hamitic or Semitic. Note that Hamites and Semites alongside Indo-Europeans are “Caucasoid” according to classical racial typology. Gayre believes that all advanced cultures in Africa were the work of Caucasoids! The author strongly suggests that the original Caucasoids were White “Aryans”. He habitually refers to Arabs, Jews and ancient Egyptians as “White”. In effect, they were off-shots of the Aryans. In Gayre's speculative recreation of ancient history, the primordial White civilization was Aryan and had its center in Europe, where it was represented by the Neolithic megalith builders. This megalithic culture also spanned North Africa and the Middle East. It was patriarchal and worshipped the fallos, symbolized by the megaliths. In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and India, this patriarchal culture was combined with a less advanced matriarchal stream to a syncretic culture with both fallic worship and mother-goddesses (most notably Ishtar). Ancient Zimbabwe is a later derivative of this compromise culture. As for the Bantu, Gayre believes that they were extremely primitive and matriarchal, and didn't even understand the role of the father in the reproductive process! Needless to say, most of the author's speculations are considered fringey or even beyond the pale by today's standards.
Due to the racialist character of “The Origins of the Zimbabwean Civilisation”, it's somewhat difficult to give the White Devil his due, but Mr Gayre's work does contain interesting information and, yes, intriguing speculations. Ironically, I suspect that his main point – the “foreign” character of ancient Zimbabwe – might be true! The idea that the Lemba, a Black people with some “Jewish” traditions, are descended from actual Jews, sounded crazy until recent DNA research. If anything, it seems that Gayre on *this* point didn't go far enough. The Lemba, or at least their most important clan, are descended from the original Jews in “Palestine”, rather than being Yemeni Arab converts to Judaism. Since this confirms Lemba oral tradition (which also mentions stays in Yemen and East Africa), one does wonder what other part of their tradition may be true? The Lemba claim that their ancestors built Great Zimbabwe. Later, they built a smaller walled city in South Africa. Conversely, the Bantu interviewed by Portuguese explorers during the colonial period claimed that their ancestors *didn't* build Great Zimbabwe. Apart from various surviving Jewish customs (including kosher dietary laws and male circumcision), the Lemba have also been gold-smiths, suggesting a connection to the gold-mining culture at Zimbabwe. Of course, even Gayre has to admit that the Lemba look more Black than Semitic, but explains this by gradual “Bantuization”. Lemba tradition claims that only the males are descended from Jews, while the females are native to southern Africa.
Another intriguing point raised by the author is that of possible Egyptian influence on both ancient Zimbabwe and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. In the author's scenario, the Egyptians are (no surprise) White, but a more reasonable position is to see them as “people of color”, perhaps even as Black Africans. The similarities between the famous Zimbabwe Bird and the Horus falcon are obvious, and it's also interesting that the symbols on its pedestals can be found in the Neolithic megalithic cultures. To me, this suggests that Egypt and the culture of “Old Europe” was part of the same *matriarchal* complex, and it also raises interesting questions about what “racial type” these peoples may have belonged to, since the Indo-Europeans didn't enter Europe until much later. We know that Egypt influenced both the Biblical Israelites and the Nubians. Gayre believes that most of sub-Saharan Africa was influenced by Egyptian culture. If so, the iconic bird sculpture could have reached Zimbabwe both by a Semitic sea route and an African land route. It's almost as if Gayre is right, despite being wrong! He seems to have stumbled on the truth, but interpreted it completely backwards, according to his patriarchalist-racist presuppositions…
I'm not claiming that Zimbabwe was “matriarchal” or “Egyptian”, nor that it was “Jewish” in the narrow sense (Jews, of course, being patriarchal). However, both the symbols used by this culture and the oral traditions of its putative descendants raise a lot of questions (not to mention eye-brows). My guess, without being a scholarly expert on African archaeology, is that Zimbabwe was a product of a Jewish-Arab culture whose members intermarried with the local Blacks and used some ancient Egyptian symbols. There is nothing inherently strange with such a proposition. There have been Phoenician, Arab, Persian and Indian merchants or settlers in East Africa since time immemorial. Gayre's book contains a whole chapter on such contacts. The island of Madagascar was settled by sea-farers from far-away Indonesia. The more permanent settlers along the African coast would have intermarried with locals. Thus, the migration of the Lemba from Yemen to Zimbabwe fits a broader context. It's not as strange as it may seem at first glance. Rather, it's something we almost should expect! That Zimbabwe was a more “advanced” culture than most was probably due to its gold mines. The Egyptian survivals need not surprise us either, for reasons already mentioned.
In the end, I give “The Origin of the Zimbabwean Civilisation” by R Gayre of Gayre three stars. One star off for the Rhodesian thing!
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