Limpopo, The Soul Of Africa

The ancient heart of Africa beats a lovely rhythm in Limpopo Province. It beats in our lost city of gold, it beats in the royal palaces, it beats in the cool dark caves and in the trunk of the majestic baobab tree.

In the north of the province, you can visit Mapungubwe, ruins of an ancient civilization, overlooking the Limpopo River valley and its elephant highways. Mapungubwe was the greatest African kingdom to have flourished in South Africa, and these hilltop ruins date back to the 12th century. 

A thousand years ago, Mapungubwe was the centre of the largest Iron Age kingdom in the sub-continent. People traded gold and ivory with China, India, Egypt.

Mapungubwe was recently declared a World Heritage Site.

Powerful symbols

Two giant baobabs stand at the site of an ancient meeting place at Thulamela, in the far north of the Kruger National Park (KNP). Set high on a hill above the Luvuvhu River, these baobabs are over four thousand years, and they guard the old stone ruins of an ancient fortress dating back to between 1200 AD and 1640 AD.

Thulamela - the name means “giving birth” in Shona - was the political capital of an Iron Age kingdom, and the place evokes a powerful sense of ancient Africa.

Elephants and gold

Thulamela overlooks an elephant highway that ran from the Indian Ocean in the east and westwards towards the Okavango. The rulers here at Thulamela controlled a far-reaching trade network between Mozambique and the South African interior.

The people of Thulamela were skilled goldsmiths and they traded gold and ivory for glass beads, cloths, cermamics and corn, with traders who came north of the Limpopo from what is today Mozambique. There is also evidence they had contact with people from West Africa.

The architecture here is purely African. There is a central royal enclosure that would have accommodated a thousand people or so, amongst them the chief or king and his family. Beyond the walled citadel, the hillsides are peppered with ancient stone walls and houses that show that as many as 2 000 people may have lived here.

Go back to your roots

Humanity evolved beneath the canopy of African skies on the card table of the African savannah. Visit Makapans Valley World Heritage Site and sister to the Cradle of Humankind. This incredible cave and archaeological site is where Raymond Dart found the fossil remains of Australopithecus Africanus, a 3,5 million year-old apeman in 1948. 

Ancient cultures

Limpopo is also the land of the legendary Rain Queen, whose ancient kraal at Modjadji village dates back several hundred years, while the enormous cycads in the reserve above the village date all the way back to the time of the dinosaur. 

It’s also home to the country’s biggest baobabs at Sunland, near Modjadji, which is reputed to be over 4 000 years old. The province has snapped up the tree as one of its tourism icons, believing, like many, that few other trees quite embody the spirit of Africa like the baobab.