Ancient African coins that could change history of Australia
Kilwa -- full name Kilwa Kisiwani
-- is a former city-state that rose to become one of the most dominant
trading centers on the coast of East Africa in the 13th and 14th
century.
The standing ruins of Kilwa
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- African coins dating back to 1100s found in remote part of Australia
- Coins were minted in powerful African city state of Kilwa, in modern-day Tanzania
- Australian professor leading an expedition to discover how they got there
(CNN) -- Can a handful of ancient copper coins from a
once-opulent but now abandoned corner of East Africa change what we
know about Australian history? A team of researchers is on a mission to find out. With its glittering
wealth, busy harbor and coral stone buildings, the island of Kilwa rose
to become the premier commercial post of coastal East Africa around the
1300s, controlling much of the Indian Ocean trade with the continent's
hinterland.
Situated in present-day
southern Tanzania, during its heyday Kilwa hosted traders from as far
away as China, who would exchange gold, ivory and iron from southern
Africa's interior for Arabian pottery and Indian textiles as well as
perfumes, porcelains and spices from the Far East.
But the Kilwa sultanate's
heyday came to a crashing end in the early 1500s with the arrival of
the Portuguese who sacked the city in their bid to dominate the trade
routes between eastern Africa and India.
From then on, Kilwa never
managed to recover its greatness. With its trading network gradually
eclipsing, the once flourishing city started to decline in importance.
It was eventually deserted in the 19th century, its crumbling,
UNESCO-protected ruins offering today a glimpse of its glorious past.
But interest in this
nearly forgotten East African city has resurfaced lately thanks to the
mystery surrounding a remarkable discovery thousands of miles away, in a
long-abandoned, remote chain of small islands near Australia's Northern
Territory.
Astonishing discovery
Back in 1944, an
Australian soldier named Maurie Isenberg was assigned to one of the
uninhabited but strategically positioned Wessel Islands to man a radar
station. One day, whilst fishing on the beach during his spare time, he
discovered nine coins buried in the sand. Isenberg stored them in a tin
until 1979, when he wondered if they might be worth something and sent
them to be identified.
Four of the coins were found to belong to the Dutch East Company, with one of them being from the late 17th century.
But the rest of them
were identified as originating from Kilwa, believed to date back to the
1100s. The sultanate started minting its own currency in the 11th
century.
A Kilwa coin.
BRITISH MUSEUM
"It's a very fascinating discovery," says Ian McIntosh, an Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis anthropologist.
"Kilwa coins have only ever been found outside of the Kilwa region on two occasions," he explains.
"A single coin was found
in the ruins of great Zimbabwe and one coin was found in the Arabian
Peninsula, in what is now Oman, but nowhere else. And yet, here is this
handful of them in northern Australia, this is the astonishing thing."
Re-write history?
According to history
textbooks, Aboriginal explorers arrived in Australia from Asia at least
60,000 years ago. The first European widely known to have set foot on
the continent was Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606, more than 160
years before captain James Cook arrived at Australia's south-eastern
coast to claim the territory for the British empire.
So how did the five
coins from distant Kilwa wind up in the isolated Wessel Islands? Was a
shipwreck involved? Could it be that the Portuguese, who had looted
Kilwa in 1505, reached the Australian shores with coins from East Africa
in their possession? Or was it that Kilwan sailors, renowned as expert
navigators all across the sea route between China and Africa, were hired
by traders from the Far East to navigate their dhows?
"If we find something then we'll prepare for a more detailed and focused exploration in specific areas."Ian McIntosh, professor
These are the kind of
questions that McIntosh now hopes to answer as he bids to unravel the
mystery of how the coins, which are currently stored in Sydney's
Powerhouse Museum, were found in this part of the world.
"We have five separate
hypotheses we're looking to test about how these coins got there, each
one quite different from the other," says McIntosh. On July 15, he will
lead an eight-member team of archaeologists, historians and scientists
to the area where Isenberg discovered the coins.
"This is an initial
survey; if we find something then we'll prepare for a more detailed and
focused exploration in specific areas," says the Australian professor.
"We are interested in a more accurate portrayal of Australian history
that is currently allowed in textbooks."
Ian McIntosh pointing to the general area where the coins were found.
IAN MCINTOSH
The team will embark on
its quest for answers equipped with a nearly 70-year-old map on which
Isenberg had marked with an X the spot where he found the coins.
McIntosh, who was sent
the map before Isenberg's death in 1991, says he first tried to mount an
expedition to the Wessel Islands in the early 1990s but at the time
he'd failed to gather funding.
"In 1992 there was a
very limited interest for such a venture," he says. "But we maintained
an interest in the Kilwa connection because it was such a famous place
in its day -- from the 1100s to the 1300s it was the most prominent port
in the entire east African coast, bigger than Mombasa, Zanzibar and
Mogadishu."
"If you bought these
coins in a shop in Kilwa, you could probably get them for a few
dollars," says McIntosh. "But in northern Australia, these are priceless
in terms of their historical value."
