Victoria Falls: Difference between revisions
From Chalo Chatu, Zambia online encyclopedia
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Further geological history of the course of the [[Zambezi River]] is in the [[Zambezi River#Geological changes to the course|article of that name]]. | Further geological history of the course of the [[Zambezi River]] is in the [[Zambezi River#Geological changes to the course|article of that name]]. | ||
==Pre-colonial history== | |||
Archaeological sites around the falls have yielded ''[[Homo habilis]]'' stone artifacts from 3 million years ago{{Citation needed|date=November 2011}}, 50,000-year-old Middle Stone Age tools and Late Stone Age (10,000 and 2,000 years ago) weapons, adornments and digging tools.<ref name="UNEP">[http://www.unep-wcmc.org/sites/wh/mosi-oa-.html United Nations Environment Programme: Protected Areas and World Heritage World Conservation Monitoring Centre]. Website accessed 1 March 2007.</ref> Iron-using [[Khoisan]] [[hunter-gatherer]]s displaced these Stone Age people and in turn were displaced by [[Bantu peoples|Bantu]] tribes such as the southern Tonga people known as the [[Tokaleya|Batoka/Tokalea]], who called the falls ''Shungu na mutitima''. The [[Northern Ndebele people|Matabele]], later arrivals, named them ''aManz' aThunqayo'', and the [[Batswana]] and [[Makololo]] (whose language is used by the [[Lozi people]]) call them ''Mosi-o-Tunya''. All these names mean essentially "the smoke that thunders".<ref name="NRJ">[http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V1N4/V1N4.htm ''The Northern Rhodesia Journal'' online]: "Native Name of Victoria Falls", Vol I No 6 pp68 (1952). Accessed February 28, 2007.</ref> | |||
A map from c. 1750 drawn by [[Jacques Nicolas Bellin]] for Abbé Antoine François Prevost d'Exiles marks the falls as "cataractes" and notes a settlement to the north of the Zambezi as being friendly with the Portuguese at the time. Earlier still [[Nicolas de Fer]]'s 1715 map of southern Africa has the fall clearly marked in the correct position. It also has dotted lines denoting trade routes that [[David Livingstone]] followed 140 years later. | |||
The first European to see the falls was [[David Livingstone]] on 17 November 1855, during his 1852–56 journey from the upper Zambezi to the mouth of the river. The falls were well known to local tribes, and [[Voortrekker]] hunters may have known of them, as may the Arabs under a name equivalent to "the end of the world". Europeans were sceptical of their reports, perhaps thinking that the lack of mountains and valleys on the plateau made a large falls unlikely.<ref>[http://www.nrzam.org.uk/NRJ/V1N4/V1N4.htm ''The Northern Rhodesia Journal'' online]: "Native Name of Victoria Falls", Vol I No 4 pp80–82 (1951). Accessed February 28, 2007.</ref><ref>[http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=816081722&searchurl=sts%3Dt%26tn%3Dagter%2Bdie%2Bmagalies%26x%3D0%26y%3D0 ''Agter die Magalies"]: "Agter Die Magalies" B.K. de Beer, pp43–44 (1975) Postma Publications. Accessed September 1, 2007.</ref> | |||
Livingstone had been told about the falls before he reached them from upriver and was paddled across to a small island that now bears the name Livingstone Island in Zambia. Livingstone had previously been impressed by the [[Ngonye Falls]] further upstream, but found the new falls much more impressive, and gave them their English name in honour of [[Queen Victoria]]. He wrote of the falls, "No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight."<ref name="Spectrum"/> | |||
In 1860, Livingstone returned to the area and made a detailed study of the falls with [[John Kirk (explorer)|John Kirk]]. Other early European visitors included [[Portugal|Portuguese]] explorer [[Serpa Pinto]], [[Czech Republic|Czech]] explorer [[Emil Holub]], who made the first detailed plan of the falls and its surroundings in 1875 (published in 1880),<ref>[http://www.radio.cz/en/article/70921 ''The international service of Czech Radio online:] "Statue of explorer Emil Holub unveiled in Livingstone, Zambia" accessed 28 February 2007.</ref> and British artist [[Thomas Baines]], who executed some of the earliest paintings of the falls. Until the area was opened up by the building of the railway in 1905, though, the falls were seldom visited by other Europeans. Nonetherless, many writers still believe that it was the Portuguese priest [[Gonçalo da Silveira]] the first European to catch sight of the falls back in the seventeenth century.<ref>Eric Anderson Walker. ''The Cambridge History of the British Empire'', volume 2.. CUP Archive, 1963. Retrieved 4th October 2015.</ref><ref>Lawrence George Green. ''There's a Secret Hid Away''. H. Timmins, 1956; 244p. ISBN 9780869782071.Retrieved 4th October 2015</ref> | |||
