http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe
"...at its peak, could have housed up to 18,000 people."
That "Great Zimbabwe" is NOT what this First Civilization is all about.
There are THOUSANDS of gold mine shafts.
There are MILLIONS of stone circles.
Which means this Southern African area used to have an IMMENSE civilization... probably even more immense than our biggest "mega-metropolises" that we have today.
It is mind boggling.
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Someone already asked more questions about the gold mining:
"To step back for a moment, and look at the facts, we see that the mining operations in the main area of ancient settlements have taken place up until about 16,000 to 20,000 BC. After that, the mines seem to have been abandoned for a period of time, before modern man reopened some of them for present day mining. If the Sumerians did get gold from these people in South Africa, they must have kept a need for gold going for a long time. Which presents the question: If they mined for tens of thousands of years, where is all of the gold? The amount of gold mined in that time would make a pile big enough to gold plate one of the pyramids, or maybe even build one from gold!
The matter that presents itself is this. The amount of gold that was removed from the ground during that time is colossal. There is a lot of gold in the world now, but not near what was mined in the times these settlements were occupied. If the gold was hidden, it would have surfaced by now. If the gold had been used for various reasons throughout Africa and the middle east, it would be part of existing artifactual evidence due to the fact that no one disposes of gold, ever.
There just isnt enough gold in the world to explain nearly 50,000 years of mining.
Wherever the gold went, or was placed, was clearly of importance to the people of the Maputo gold mines. Their entire existence was built on efficient methods of mining the gold, and keeping the health of the miners in good accord. They were not nomadic, and had no need to travel. This is what led to the amazing size and sprawl of the settlements. They had no need for any outside intervention and lived for milleniums in a civilized manner which belies the technology of the time."
http://www.floridafusion.com/blog/?p=152My short possible hypothesis is... how about that gold could have gone most of it to some Atlantean lost land mass now under the ocean?