Heads and Tales

Abstract

On 5 September 1871 Carl Mauch, an energetic and credulous explorer of central southern Africa, was led along a long line of tumbled down stones to masses of rubble and parts of walls and dense thickets; the place that was to become known as Great Zimbabwe. In 1956 or 1957 (the record is unclear), a schoolboy exploring the veld several hundred kilometers to the south discovered the sherds of a broken terra-cotta head. The pieces, which fitted easily together, showed two heavily lidded eyes and a nose, clearly part of a human face, now known as the Lydenburg Heads.