21 DECEMBER 1929, Page 20

The fmal verdict on Zimbabwe, in Rhodesia, is given by

that experienced archaeologist, Miss Gertrude Caton-Thompson, in Antiquity for December. (Gloucester. John Bellows, 5s. 6d.). As she told the British Association last summer, her excavations prove conclusively that the oldest of the famous and much debated ruins cannot be placed earlier than the tenth century, and that the latest " may be—and almost certainly are—as late as the sixteenth century." She finds it " inconceivable how a theory of Semitic or civilized origin could ever have been formulated," as every detail of the ruins, save for imported beads, porcelain and the like, is " typically African Bantu." Dr. Randall Maclver came to this conclusion in 1905 ; Miss Caton-Thompson's exhaustive study shows that he was right.