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ISSUE: q406
01/11/2006
By Adam Goulding
The Sterculia trees stand out like markers around the entrance, in a uniform spread of hillside miombo. Looking in, shafts of sunlight illuminate dusty vortices otherwise undetectable. A spider’s web is lit up and reveals its perfect geometry woven between the roots of a Sterculia that flows and cleaves the rock surface. In the gloom ahead, the steady flutter of wings and the occasional chirp of a bat. To my left, embedded in the wall of the cave is the tooth of an antelope, carried into the cave perhaps two million years ago and preserved. Porcupine quills litter the dusty floor. Welcome to a Zambian cave.
It has been estimated that Zambia contains about 13,400 square kilometres of rock in which caves can form. Long and complex cave systems can develop in carbonate rocks, i.e. limestone and marble and are created by the dissolution of these rocks through the percolation of acidic water through them. (Think of vinegar fizzing away as it dissolves the lime in your kettle). However many areas in Zambia where these rock types are exposed are swampy, and due to the high water table and resultant low hydraulic gradient, provide poor conditions for cave formation.
Other rock types can also give rise to caves such as the quartzite hill hosting Nachikufu Cave in Northern Province (an important Stone Age site) and the rock shelters formed in granites in Eastern Province with various rock paintings; these are generally short in extent.
Karst terrain, characterised by sink holes and pinnacles of limestone, is formed by eroded limestone, leaving underground voids that cause the overlying soil to collapse as demonstrated at the Eastern end of Kabulonga Road, on the southwest flank of Kabulonga Hill in Lusaka where the road has collapsed on several occasions and houses have had to be demolished.
The Importance of Caves
Caves act as dustbins preserving archaeological remains and allow us to reconstruct past climates and environments using a wide variety of techniques. Bones can be washed down into caves and preserved. Lime cements these together with soil and stone, preserving them and providing information on early man that is otherwise not available in Central Africa. Zambia’s most famous fossil, the Broken Hill Man Homo Rhodesiensis, was found in 1921 in a near surface cave in the Kabwe area (See Black Lechwe Vol.11 No. 4 p 12-16), now since mined away for the lead, zinc and vanadium deposits surrounding it.
The Zambia Palaeokarst Research Programme in the Mumbwa area is currently examining mammal fossils preserved in this manner, discovered by stone crushers near Mumbwa Caves. The programme hopes to link up information from this south Central African region with Southern and East African fossil sites. Apart from stone tools, caves and associated fossil, breccias are the only clues available to us to chart man’s evolution in this area. Other hominin fossils such as those found in the famous Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania have been preserved in sedimentary rocks and volcanic deposits. In Zambia, the Luangwa Valley and possibly the west side of Lake Tanganyika sedimentary rocks may yield fossils preserved in this manner.
In a threatened world, caves have provided a place of refuge from the Stone Age and during raids in the1800’s. Twin Rivers, a limestone kopje to the West of Lusaka, has provided the oldest evidence for the use of ochre in a burial site.
Caves provide habitats for many animals often specialised and adapted to living in the dark. In Zambia, genets, porcupines, hyraxes, barn owls (Tyto alba) and, of course, plenty of bats and a myriad of insects such as cave crickets and moths, are among the inhabitants.
Caves also provide sporting potential and cavers are always on the lookout for new passages to explore and survey. The ‘undiscovered continent’ as it is sometimes called has yielded an underground world of beautiful formations and underground lakes.
Better caving gear and techniques have led to great lengths of caves being discovered. Recently cavers have descended through a series of pitches and squeezes, often full of ice cold water to a record depth of over 2km in a cave in Georgia (former USSR).
Most Zambian caves are hot and dusty, often obscuring calcite formations, with rain water sluicing through only during the rainy season. Sport caving is limited here with few recorded caves to visit and with no cave rescue organisation coupled with the ever-present risk of histoplasmosis (a potentially fatal but curable fungal disease that lives on bat guano). A recent case was recorded in Lusaka.
Only in the last few decades has conservation of caves become an important part of caving as a hobby. Brittle calcite formations, thousands of years old, are easily damaged and discoloured by touch, souvenirs taken from caves often appear beautiful when wet, but look dull and uninteresting on your bookshelf. In Zambia we need to encourage cave conservation to avoid the type of damage that has been done in other countries.
Ceremonial uses have been recorded for caves, Chanyungwe Cave has a ceremony.
Guano, a fertiliser rich in nitrogen, potassium and phosphates, is derived from bat droppings and has been successfully mined in caves on a small scale for agricultural purposes often disturbing archaeological and fossil remains. The author has, for example, picked up pieces of mineralised bone in cultivated maize fields near the mouth of Leopard’s Hill caves, east of Lusaka.
The National Heritage Conservation Commission, in charge of Zambia’s immovable heritage, automatically bestows protection upon sites that have a proven cultural or other significance. Nevertheless, a blanket protection of all Zambian caves is required to protect these remarkable environments for the future.
References
Drysdall A.R. & Utting J. Occasional Paper No. 58 of The Geological Survey of Zambia.
Kaiser, T.M., C. Seiffert & T. Truluck, The speleological potential of limestone karst in Zambia (Central Africa), 23-28 Cave and Karst Science Volume 25, Number 1, April 1998.
Mwamulowe K., Wiessener W., Sinvula M. Mumbwa Heritage Sites.A geological and historical guide.
Cave entrance, part of the Karenda Series, North of Mumbwa. Photo: Peter Chalcraft.
Graffiti on flowstone, Eastern entrance of Leopard’s Hill Caves. Photo: Shane Canavan.
Date: q406
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