Comments on: Earliest battle site rediscovered—part one

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 00:52:34 +0000

Thanks for your evocative photograph of Cape Town’s “eternal graveyard” and the reference to the African Sacred Ibis. Your evocation of the ibis as both protector and slayer is most apposite since, curiously, it echoes how sixteenth-century Portuguese chroniclers described Almeida’s assailants, namely: “they appeared as birds, or rather, like the devil’s executioners”. (KoS p.46)

Your photo also captures the scene vividly described by Herodotus when he says that the bones were heaped together, some in large piles, others small, but too many to be counted. From the dowsing done by Dr Young in situ last year, it appears that there are still countless bones, large and small, buried under that patch of land. So yes, Mike, as you say, go figure!

By: Mike Golby

Mike Golby — Sat, 16 Nov 2013 21:11:59 +0000

Thanks for including my photograph of the ibises above. For what it’s worth, I’ve always been drawn to that particular patch of land. I don’t know how many others have felt compelled to go down there to try capture what feels to be an eternal graveyard. This was taken two years ago at the entrance to the yards on the Cape Town side of the river, pretty close to where you locate the site of Almeida’s death. The birds? Go figure. Wikipedia tells us:

Venerated and mummified by Ancient Egyptians as a symbol of the god Thoth, the Ibis was according to Herodotus and Pliny the Elder also invoked against incursions of winged serpents. Herodotus’s account follows as thus:

‘There is a region in Arabia where I saw the bones and spines of winged serpents in such great quantities that it is impossible to report on the number. There were heaps of spines, some heaps large and others less large and others smaller still than these, and these heaps were many in number.

‘The spines are scattered upon a great plain that adjoins the plain of Egypt. Here, at the beginning of each spring, the winged serpents are met by birds called ibises which fly out to kill them. On account of this, say the Arabians, the ibis is greatly honoured by the Egyptians.’

Source: Wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/q5xna3y

By: Sigi Howes

Sigi Howes — Thu, 17 Oct 2013 20:10:17 +0000

Fascinating history.

By: Belinda Kingsley

Belinda Kingsley — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:11:31 +0000

Interesting!

By: Enrique Motech October

Enrique Motech October — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 07:09:32 +0000

Thanks for pointing that out—if only people could see history for what it was an not by who it was told.

By: Nicolaas Vergunst

Nicolaas Vergunst — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:23:54 +0000

Thanks for the valuable contribution, Willem, and for your remarks on early combat tactics at the Cape. My main character (or "focaliser") is a Dutch historian and keen equestrian, Sonja Haas, who I'm sure would love your reference to Van Riebeeck's horses! The fact that the Portuguese shunned the Cape of Good Hope is a matter already mentioned on my blog below. As the full title of Knot of Stone proposes, this was a day that changed South Africa's history since, were it not for this event, the entire sub-continent from the mouth of the Congo River to the Mozambique Channel may well have fallen to the Portuguese for the next four hundred and fifty years. That is, until the 1970s, making of southern Africa a second Brazil, potentially? Although my book deals with this thematically, and then only in brief, you may find it convenient to start with my synopsis below: Why South Africa isn't Brazil. As to your lovely closing comment, I couldn't agree more. The ties which bind us to the Cape are far greater than those that divide us.

By: Willem Steenkamp

Willem Steenkamp — Wed, 09 May 2012 09:39:07 +0000

All this makes for a fascinating read and it's just as well I published my own book Assegais, Drums and Dragoons before seeing this, or I might have wandered seriously off-subject! Whatever the deeper causes, I stand by what I wrote about the fight: that Kwena headman knew his onions. The most significant aspect, of course, is that it led to the Portuguese shunning the Cape (which in my opinion was a good thing for the locals, given the unfortunate Portuguese predilection for slaving) and therefore led to a totally different history for all of South Africa and far beyond. I think that I also managed to put one important fact in perspective: a unique military combat mindset developed at the Cape as a result of a blending of orthodox European doctrine and the local concept of high mobility and veldcraft; the final element which brought all this together was Jan van Riebeeck's introduction of horses, the ultimate mobility requirement. That mindset exists to this day—all that has changed are the vehicles and weapons. In some ways the same sort of blending (conscious or unconscious, obvious or invisible) took place on the social history side as well, so that the Cape was well on its way to developing a unique society by the end of the 18th Century. It's sad that we spend so much time arguing about the iniquities and otherwise of the past when, instead, we should remember that what we have in common as a community is far greater than that which divides us.