Cape Town historian Dr Cyril A Hromnik, has produced a vast body of research that rolls the story back 2000 years. He paints a compelling picture of an ancient settlement of gold miners in the Eastern Transvaal and Swaziland with roots that go back to the early Dravidian seafarers who had expert navigation skills and a lust for African gold.
The term Dravidian comes from the Sanskrit term Dravida, historically referring to Tamil Indians. There are three subgroups within the Dravidian language family: South, Central and North Dravidian which correspond to these regions of the Indian subcontinent.
The story goes back even further than this. As a leading proponent of the popular “alternative history” theory, Dr Hromnik contends that Mpumalanga was settled by ancient sea-faring Hindus some 40,000 years ago. They came for the ivory, the gold and the iron and erected temples and astronomical observatories on mountain tops. They built strong stonewalled cities from which they hunted, mined and traded throughout Southern Africa.
Dr. Hromnik believes that these people, who were mainly speakers of Dravidian languages and early Shivites by religion, were responsible for the ancient gold mines found in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
The accounts of people recognised as “Indian” in the southern African region, when Europeans first appeared in the 15th century, has always been a puzzling question for historians. Why were these people there?
No comments:
Post a Comment