Victoria Falls: History

Pre-20th-Century History

Southern Africa contains many archaeological records of the world's earliest human inhabitants. While scientists and researchers dispute exactly who evolved into whom, and when, most accept that the first 'hominids' (upright-walking human-like creatures) became established in the savannas of East and Southern Africa nearly four million years ago. In Southern Africa, evidence of early hominids over 2.5 million years old have been discovered in Malawi.

The oldest Stone Age sites in Zambia are around Livingstone, particularly on the cliffs of the Batoka Gorge overlooking the Zambezi River. The sites used to be right next to the river, upstream from Victoria Falls, but in the last two million years the waterfall has eaten back through the rock and moved about 20km, creating the gorge and leaving the archaeological remains high and dry.

The zenith of Early Stone Age tool development in Zambia occurred around 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. Zambia's most celebrated early inhabitant lived around this time. Known as Broken Hill Man (after the mine near the town of Kabwe where his skull was discovered in 1921), this Neanderthal human has been defined as Homo sapiens rhodesiensis, and is thought to be about 100,000 years old. A copy of the skull can be seen today in the museum at Livingstone.

About 30,000 years ago, the humans in Southern Africa had developed an organised hunting and gathering society. Use of fire was universal, tools were more sophisticated - made from wood and animal products as well as stone - and natural pigments were used for personal adornment.

By around 3000 to 4000 years ago, another group with larger body types and darker skin was emerging in West Africa, the Bantu. They had developed iron-working skills which enabled them to make tools and weapons. Over 2000 years ago, the Bantu moved into Zambia and other parts of Southern Africa.

The earliest Iron Age sites in Zambia are near Sesheke (on the Zambezi River west of Livingstone), dating from about 300 BC, and near Kabwe (north of Lusaka), dating from about AD 300. Iron Age sites have also been found at Victoria Falls and Kalambo Falls, some on top of pre-existing Stone Age sites.

By about AD 400 most of Zambia was inhabited by Iron Age Bantu people. Southern and western Zambia was occupied rapidly and extensively, and the archaeological map is dotted with evidence of Iron Age sites, including Kumadzulo, northwest of Livingstone, dated as 6th to 7th century.

Through the second millennium, the Bantu societies in the African interior became increasingly organised. As early as the 12th century, south of the Zambezi River, the city-state of Great Zimbabwe had been founded. This became the wealthiest and most powerful society in Southern Africa, with trading links to the east coast of Africa and across the Zambezi Valley into today's Zambia.

A significant period in Zambia's history runs from about 1450 to 1750. Several new kingdoms were established as another wave of groups migrated from the Congo region. These were breakaways from the large and powerful empires of Lunda and Luba (which united around 1600 to become the larger and even more powerful Lunda-Luba empire) and significant because they laid the foundations for the tribal territories that still exist in Zambia today.

The power of the Bantu kingdoms started to falter in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as two significant events had a tumultuous effect on the region. The first was a major dispersal of indigenous tribes, called the difaqane , and the second was a rapid increase in the number of European settlers.

Modern History

From South Africa, over the next 100 to 150 years, an ever-increasing number of Europeans settled in areas that became the colony of Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe). With this change, Southern Africans would never again be permitted to follow entirely traditional ways.

The first Europeans to enter what is now Zambia were Portuguese explorers. From the late 18th century, they followed routes established many centuries earlier by Swahili-Arab slave-traders. Often in collaboration with the chiefs of powerful tribes, the slave-traders captured many people from Zambia and took them across Lake Malawi and through Mozambique or Tanzania to be sold in the slave markets of Zanzibar.

The celebrated British explorer David Livingstone travelled up the Zambezi in the early 1850s. He searched for a route to the interior of Africa and hoped to introduce Christianity and the principles of European civilisation to combat the horrors of the slave trade. In 1855 he reached the awesome waterfall that he christened Victoria Falls.

Livingstone's work and writings inspired missionaries to come to the area north of the Zambezi; close on their heels came explorers, hunters and prospectors searching for whatever the country had to offer. The British South Africa Company (BSAC) laid claim to the area in the early 1890s and was backed by the British Government in 1895 to help combat slavery and prevent further Portuguese expansion in the region.

Like many parts of Southern Africa, Zambia's history was largely influenced by the BSAC during the next few decades. The city of Livingstone began to take shape after the Victoria Falls Bridge was constructed in 1904, and in 1907 it became the capital of the new colony of Northern Rhodesia. In 1924 the colony was put under direct British control and in 1935 the capital was moved to Lusaka.

Recent History

Today Livingstone is the undisputed capital of Zambia's fast-growing tourist scene, and lies 10km (6mi) north of Victoria Falls. Also a handy gateway for national parks in the surrounding area, it's no surprise that Livingstone has become a major hub for travellers in Southern Africa.

In recent years, the ongoing political and social crisis in Zimbabwe has boosted Livingstone's share of tourism at the expense of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, which in the past was the most popular base from which to visit the falls.

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