dam Renders has the credit of being the first white man in modern times to see the mysterious Zimbabwe ruins. Renders was born in Germany in 1822. He emigrated to the United States and in about 1842 came to South Africa where he settled first in Natal and then in the Transvaal. While on a hunting trip beyond the Zoutpansberg in 1867 Renders stumbled on the ruins of Great Zimbabwe. He was fascinated by the place, entertained the notion of annexing the area to the Transvaal, and came back to Zimbabwe in 1868. Being unable to get home Renders settled down near the ruins and took the daughter of a local African chief as his wife.

he ruins were then described by another German explorer, Karl Mauch, who saw Great Zimbabwe from the top of a hill five miles away on 5 September 1871. He found the Renders living in African style nearby. Mauch experienced the greatest difficulty in persuading local tribesmen to allow him to visit the place, and in fact his first investigation of the ruins was made during a furtive visit at night. In the first report of Zimbabwe to reach the outside world, Mauch was so carried away by his imagination that he wrote, "I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon’s Temple on Mount Moriah, and the building in the plain is a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon."

fter the British occupation of Rhodesia, Zimbabwe and other walled ruins were ransacked by treasure hunters; many relics were lost, and irreparable damage done. Theodore Bent investigated them in 1891, and in 1903 they became protected by an ordinance. In 1905 Professor Randall-MacIver made the first scientific examination of Zimbabwe and concluded that it was of African origin and dated from mediaeval times. This view, so at variance with Mauch’s exciting theory, raised a storm of controversy which has continued to this day. Another careful investigation of Zimbabwe was made in 1929 by Miss Caton-Thompson who supported Randall-MacIver’s contention that the builders of Zimbabwe were Africans, and she expressed her belief that none of the buildings was of an earlier date than the ninth or tenth centuries A.D.