K2 (Bambandyanalo) and the rise of Mapungubwe

Ivory had drawn farmers into the Shashe–Limpopo basin before: in the 10th century the Zhizo people had their main settlement at Schroda near the Limpopo. Around 1000, at the start of a wetter period that made farming more productive, people of the Leopard's Kopje culture — probably speakers of an early form of Shona — moved south across the Limpopo and settled at K2, below Bambandyanalo Hill. They grew sorghum, millets, beans and cowpeas and kept large herds of cattle, which they grazed on other communities' land, so building ties with their neighbours. Women worked copper and men iron; rainmaking rites were widespread, and by 1200 K2 had some 1,500 inhabitants.

Through the Limpopo valley K2 took part in the Indian Ocean trade of the East African coast: ivory and, increasingly, gold went down to the coast — at first through the port of Chibuene, later through Sofala — and glass beads made in India and South-East Asia, used as currency, came inland. Archaeologists disagree about what transformed the society. Thomas Huffman argued that the wealth of long-distance trade turned a society based on rank into one based on classes, with an immense gap between rulers and commoners; Shadreck Chirikure and his colleagues stress the agropastoral economy, and Nam Kim and Chapurukha Kusimba also point to agricultural innovation, the accumulation of cattle and ritual power.

Around 1220, amid a drought, the elite moved their residence to the flat summit of nearby Mapungubwe Hill, while the people settled at its foot. The leader living above his subjects on the old rainmaking hill is seen as an early instance of sacred kingship in southern Africa. The new capital had some 5,000 inhabitants by 1250 and was abandoned around 1300; the famous gold rhinoceros comes from the royal graves on the hill. The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.