Episode 566 - Paul Hubbard || The History Of Hunting In Zimbabwe

Summary

Podcast Summary: Blood Origins

Episode: 566 - Paul Hubbard || The History Of Hunting In Zimbabwe
Host/Author: Blood Origins Inc.
Release Date: June 10, 2025
Knowledge Cutoff: October 2023

---

Introduction

In Episode 566 of Blood Origins, host Robbie engages in an insightful conversation with Paul Hubbard, a distinguished archaeologist, historian, and professional guide based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The discussion delves deep into the rich history of hunting in Zimbabwe, exploring its evolution from the Stone Age through the Iron Age, and its enduring significance in modern conservation efforts.

---

Paul Hubbard's Background

Paul Hubbard introduces himself as a multifaceted professional dedicated to the study and preservation of Zimbabwe's history and culture. With expertise in archaeology and anthropology, Paul has conducted extensive research across Southern Africa, including Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Botswana. His passion for his homeland shines through as he describes his role in guiding tours that emphasize the historical and cultural narratives of Zimbabwe.

Paul Hubbard [10:25]:
"At this moment in time, I'm a practicing archaeologist and historian in Zimbabwe, specializing in the history, culture, and archaeology of my hometown. It's a great place to live, and I really think it's one of the best places to do what I do."

---

History of Hunting in Zimbabwe

Stone Age Hunting Practices

Paul elaborates on the origins of hunting in Zimbabwe, tracing it back over 2 million years. He discusses the Acheulean hand axe, a significant Stone Age tool used for various purposes, including hunting small animals.

Paul Hubbard [19:04]:
"In Zimbabwe, we have evidence of humans hunting from the archaeological record dating back over 2 million years ago... These hand axes were designed to be held in the hand and thrown at small animals or used for cutting and scraping."

He emphasizes the role of hunting in human evolution, suggesting that the consumption of meat was pivotal for brain development.

Paul Hubbard [21:10]:
"The consumption of meat allows our brain capacity to grow, providing more energy and essential nutrients compared to most vegetable matter, setting us on the course to becoming modern humans."

Evolution and Hunting

The discussion shifts to the implications of hunting on human evolution. Paul addresses contemporary debates around vegetarianism, arguing that hunting has been integral to human development.

Paul Hubbard [23:09]:
"Vegetarianism today arises from industrial and ethical movements, but historically, meat consumption was essential for our survival and brain development."

---

Hunter-Gatherer Societies

Roles Within the Group

Paul provides an anthropological perspective on hunter-gatherer societies, highlighting the division of labor and social structures.

Paul Hubbard [38:54]:
"In these societies, small bands of 10 to 20 people operated egalitarian structures. While some were skilled hunters, others served as gatherers, cooks, or builders, ensuring the group's survival and cohesion."

He underscores that hunting was predominantly a male activity, although gathering was a cooperative effort involving all members.

Paul Hubbard [45:07]:
"Hunting big game was mostly done by men, while gathering and processing hunted animals were collaborative efforts involving the entire group."

Gender Roles in Hunting

Paul discusses the evolving understanding of gender roles in hunting, acknowledging historical biases in research.

Paul Hubbard [44:56]:
"Early research was male-dominated, often overlooking the significant role women played in gathering and supporting hunting activities. Recent studies have begun to rectify this oversight."

---

Archaeological Sites in Zimbabwe

Matobo Hills World Heritage Site

One of Zimbabwe's most significant archaeological locations, the Matobo Hills, serves as a focal point for understanding ancient hunting practices.

Paul Hubbard [53:15]:
"The Matobo Hills, covering 60km by 40km, host the densest concentration of hunter-gatherer rock art in the world, far surpassing Western Europe in sheer number of sites."

Paul recounts his extensive exploration of the Matobo Hills, discovering over 1,500 rock art and archaeological sites, many of which were previously unrecorded.

Paul Hubbard [55:49]:
"I've reported over 700 archaeological sites in the Matobo Hills alone, many of which were new additions to the existing database."

Kami World Heritage Site

Another pivotal site, Kami, offers insights into the Iron Age and the transitional period between hunting and farming.

Paul Hubbard [57:35]:
"Kami was a major trading post that evolved into the capital of a vast empire, controlling resources like salt, ivory, and gold. This site showcases the technological advancements brought by the Iron Age."

---

Iron Age and Bantu Migration

Technological Advancements

The arrival of the Bantu people approximately 2,200 years ago introduced significant technological shifts, including agriculture and metalworking.

Paul Hubbard [67:54]:
"The Bantu migration brought agriculture, pottery, and iron smelting to Zimbabwe, fundamentally altering the landscape and hunting practices."

Shift from Hunting to Agriculture and Pastoralism

Paul explains how the Bantu introduction of farming and domestic animals complemented existing hunting traditions, leading to a more diversified subsistence strategy.

Paul Hubbard [72:43]:
"Even after adopting farming, hunting remained integral for raw materials and social status, ensuring its continued relevance in Iron Age societies."

Impact on Hunting Practices

The integration of farming and hunting led to changes in social structures and economic activities, with hunting extending beyond mere subsistence to include trade and status symbolism.

Paul Hubbard [75:47]:
"Hunting became a source of trade goods like ivory and skins, as well as a symbol of social status and authority within communities."

---

Modern Hunting and Conservation

Historical Hunting Methods

Paul describes traditional hunting techniques used in pre-colonial Zimbabwe, emphasizing their efficiency and integration with the environment.

Paul Hubbard [76:20]:
"Traditional methods like dead traps and poisoned arrows were highly effective for hunting large game, balancing risk and reward for the hunters."

Evolution of Trophy Hunting

The conversation explores how trophy hunting has evolved from subsistence and trade to an experience-centric activity contributing to modern conservation efforts.

Paul Hubbard [81:46]:
"Today's trophy hunting focuses more on the experience and storytelling, with significant contributions to conservation through fees and support."

Hunting's Role in Conservation

Paul advocates for the role of responsible hunting in conservation, arguing that it provides funding and incentives to preserve wildlife habitats.

Paul Hubbard [73:18]:
"By paying substantial fees, trophy hunters contribute directly to anti-poaching initiatives, community development, and wildlife conservation projects."

---

Conclusion and Resources

As the podcast wraps up, Paul shares resources for those interested in exploring Zimbabwe's rich hunting history and archaeological sites. He directs listeners to his website hubbardstours.com for bookings and further information, and mentions his publications available on Academia.edu and Amazon.

Paul Hubbard [83:25]:
"You can find my publications on Academia.edu and Amazon, and for tour bookings, visit hubbardstours.com or contact us at [e-mail]."

Robbie expresses gratitude for Paul's participation and highlights the depth of knowledge shared during the episode, encouraging listeners to engage with the content and support conservation through informed hunting practices.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Paul Hubbard [21:10]:
  "The consumption of meat allows our brain capacity to grow, providing more energy and essential nutrients compared to most vegetable matter, setting us on the course to becoming modern humans."

• Paul Hubbard [53:15]:
  "The Matobo Hills... host the densest concentration of hunter-gatherer rock art in the world."

• Paul Hubbard [68:40]:
  "Iron as a medium is much better for practical reasons compared to making and using stone... It stays sharper for longer and is easier to resharpen."

• Paul Hubbard [81:46]:
  "Today's trophy hunting focuses more on the experience and storytelling, with significant contributions to conservation through fees and support."

---

Final Thoughts

Episode 566 provides a comprehensive exploration of hunting's historical and contemporary roles in Zimbabwe. Through Paul Hubbard's expertise, listeners gain a nuanced understanding of how hunting has shaped and been shaped by cultural, technological, and ecological factors over millennia. The conversation underscores the intricate balance between human activity and wildlife conservation, advocating for responsible hunting as a means to support and preserve Africa's rich natural heritage.

Transcript

[Paul Hubbard]

Fishing trips anywhere, anytime. Fishingbooker.com want to plan your next fishing trip without the hassle? FishingBooker.com is the best way to find and book a fishing charter anywhere in the world. Whether you're chasing trophy fish or just looking for a family day on the water, fishingbooker makes it simple, fast and secure. With thousands of experienced guides, verified reviews and 24. 7 customer support fish, FishingBooker takes the guesswork out of planning. Visit fishingbooker.com and book your trip today. FishingBooker fishing trips made Easy Wanna plan your next fishing trip without the hassle? FishingBooker.com is the best way to find and book a fishing charter anywhere in the world. Whether you're chasing trophy fish or just looking for a family day on the water, fishingbooker makes it simple, fast and secure. With thousands of experienced guides, verified reviews, and 24. 7 customer support, FishingBooker takes the guesswork out of planning. Visit fishingbooker.com and book your trip today. FishingBooker Fishing trips made easy Paul Hubbard.

[Robbie]

Is one of the most interesting individuals I've ever met. He lives in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He is a. A guide, as you'll say, not established, full tenured Zimbabwe professional guide, but he's an archeologist, anthropologist, knower of all things. I'm a huge fan of Paul Hubbard. You guys will become big fans of Paul Hubbard. Today, Paul and I talk about Stone Age Iron Age hunters in Southern Africa. The guy's just such a wealth of knowledge that I didn't know where to start. And he said, why don't we just start there and then we'll migrate into Iron Age, you know, early 18th, 17th century hunting and just build on a couple of podcasts. This is podcast number one of probably lots of podcasts with Paul, but you're going to find it fascinating. You're going to love Paul and really enjoy the topic because it's a, it's a diverse topic that we, we cover in this podcast. So enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins, and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting. It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals.

[Mike Axelrod]

How do I start it? Brittany?

[Robbie]

My name. Does my hair look okay? My name is Mike Axelrod. Start again. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a feminist that works for a nonprofit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game for the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to a hunter. Listen, you've just got to. You've got to appreciate anything technologically that comes out of Zimbabwe. You look so much better than Ian Harmer when I podcast with him. His freaking technology sucked ass, but you guys are in the same bloody town.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, you know, it's. It's. I think it's the time of day and the age of the computer maybe. I don't know. You know, it's always got that. Who knows what software he's on. I'm on a Mac, so, you know.

[Robbie]

I'm on a Mac too. I don't have any issues with Macs.

[Mike Axelrod]

I think it's always the operator more than the equipment. That's my experience.

[Robbie]

Well, I was going to WhatsApp. You're going, holy shit. If this works and Paul Hubbard and technology come to a perfect marriage together, we're going to be in good business today.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, you know, miracles happen, eh? That's what we're here for.

[Robbie]

So, man, so good to see you, my friend. You're one of my favorite people to talk to in Zimbabwe.

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, that's very kind, man, Robbie. Thank you.

[Robbie]

There's only, like, four people I want to talk to in Zimbabwe, so it's like, you know, one of four.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, at least I'm on the list, good or bad.

[Robbie]

Paul Hubbard, I have a sneaky suspicion. I know that you have been, you know, you're a very busy man, but then at the same time, when you say I'm a very busy man, I'm very envious of your lifestyle, because I do remember at one time you telling me, robbie, I work about six months of the year, and then the other six months of the year, I read and I write and I'm like, fuck, okay, this boy's got things, like, squared away, like. And then I. But then I come to, like, when I. When to schedule this podcast. You're like, look, let me look at my calendar. Three months from now, I'm available for you. Will that work?

[Mike Axelrod]

I'm like, what the heck? Well, you know, I got taken off guard this year. It's amazing, as I joked with a friend of mine, it's amazing how many bookings you can get when you answer your emails. And also, I'm very, very blessed that I've now got someone who handles all the. The admin of one side of my life. So it's taken a lot of pressure off and Things happen now. You know, it's I've been this year just before after I saw you at the agm, I've had a lot of guiding and then I was very blessed to be part of the annual guides training program down in the Lowfeld for the Guides Association. And then after that, just a lot of guests coming through Bulawayo out of the blue as far as I'm concerned. And so getting to show them around and have fun with them. So, you know, I still haven't worked a day this year. Quite honestly, it's been too much fun, you know.

[Robbie]

That's amazing. That's amazing. Well, Paul Hubbard from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, thank you so much for joining us. I'll let you introduce yourself here shortly, but I'll do a little quick thing in that. I met Paul two years ago at the first AGM of that I attended of zpga Zimbabwe Professional Guides association. Probably the highest standard of guiding in Africa. Not probably, it is. And I was regaled with stories from Paul in which he stood up and this is just a forewarning for what this podcast is going to be because he was asked to be, you know, give a small, you know, five to 10 minute speech at a dinner and he stands up and he whipped out these four pages of typed written notes like oh man, this isn't going to be five minutes.

[Mike Axelrod]

But here's some of my reading for our talk today.

[Robbie]

You know, I was enthralled the entire time and you just are a lexicon of information from all sorts of fields. So let me just turn it over to you and introduce yourself what you are, who you are, what you specialize in, if anything, and we'll go from there. Look guys, I'm a hunter, right? And when I go hunting, I like to figure out how to get my trophies back home as expeditiously as possible. Well, you don't have to look much further than Safari Specialty Importers. We know that trophy importation can be quite a headache. That's why Safari Specialty Importers strives to make it as easy and hassle free as possible. They have access to a bonded warehouse, you won't be charged storage fees and you get a dedicated team that's readily available and will update you at every step in the process. They'll even go one step further. Safari Specialty Importers is working with us at Blood Origins and they are going to donate a hundred dollars from every shipment that they work with to conservation projects that include anti poaching, community development and wildlife conservation. At the end of the day choose to spend your money with a team that's dedicated to you and is dedicated to helping show how hunting is a great conservation model. Hassle free logistics, fuel and conservation Go with safari specialty importers. Did you know that in 42 states it is 100% legal to buy a suppressor and protect your hearing? Silencer Central pioneered the simplified silencer buying process. It allows you to buy a suppressor online or over the phone. You go through all the paperwork with a certified expert and that suppressor ships directly to your front door. It I don't even believe it but I've done it and it's come to my door. You can buy a suppressor and have it shipped to you. They offer the best in service, a suppressor expert to make sure you get the suppressor you want and from there they take care of everything. They take care of the paperwork, the applications to the atf. They even set up a free trust if you want one. And if you don't have the money, put down an interest free payment plan. It's incredible. You get access to your own customer portal online. It tracks your progress. So why not go get started today? Go to silencecentral.com or call 866-811-6536 and with today's fast approval times, you're actually going to be shocked at how quickly your suppressor arrives at your door. Bushnell has been a longtime supporter of Blood Origins and in keeping with the spirit of our collaboration, we've come up with an amazing idea. Bushnell is eager to help you get set up for conservation success. That's right. They want to help you. The conservation and research community is dominated by good people doing good things and investing significant time and effort for the benefit of habitat and the species. So what do you need to do? Pretty simple. Send us your conservation story and or your conservation wish. Could be managing whitetails, could be understanding your environment or species or something else related to conservation. What would you be able to do if you had a great trail camera setup? We will select the best story every other month and send you a camera bundle. Cell camera, normal SD camera, SD cards as well as optics. Everything you need to get set up for success. I can't wait to see what you submit. You can email us at infoloodorigins.com DM US Message us whatever you want. We are not hard to find. Good luck.

[Mike Axelrod]

Well thank you Rohi. I really appreciate being on here. I've been very excited thinking about it and planning ahead. As you know I always get A bit of a mind block when someone asks me who I am because I've been lucky enough to have a lot of different things in my life. But at this moment in time, I'm a practicing archaeologist and historian in Zimbabwe, which is, you know, one section of my life. And then I'm also a guide here in Zimbabwe, but specializing in history, culture, archeology of my, my hometown, my home country, Zimbabwe. So I have a lot of fun exploring, you know, places and events and stories with guests from around the world and then also conducting my own research projects which again mainly focus on Zimbabwe. In my life I've managed to work all around southern Africa, you know, from Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Lesotho, Botswana and a few other places besides, you know. But Zimbabwe is home and as I've gotten older, this is where I spend most of my time. And just it's a great place to live and I really, really think it's one of the best places to do what I do in terms of history, culture and archaeology of this country is just phenomenal. Yeah. And that's about it as far as professional life goes, I guess.

[Robbie]

No. Fantastic. You hunt or don't hunt?

[Mike Axelrod]

I did quite a bit when I was younger, but I don't do much anymore. My brother in law is a hunter so every so often I bug him to let me accompany him, but just to observe and appreciate the trekking and the exploring and all that sort of stuff. He's very long suffering, I have to tell you. He was one of my tut, you know, for my guide's license and stuff like that. I've never ever done my full proficiency simply because I just don't want to fit the.

[Robbie]

It just doesn't fit the model of you. And to, for everyone to understand. And I say that with all. No, it's all due respect. Right. Because the full guides license at zpta. The reason I said it's the gold star standard in Africa is that in Zimbabwe there is no differentiation of somebody who takes safari guides, a walking, you know, ecotourism, photographics and somebody like you who would take like archeological walking tours. As a full person, full proficiency, full guide versus a professional hunter. You have to go through the same things. So you would have had to shoot buffalo, you would have had to shoot elephants.

[Mike Axelrod]

So just to clarify, I don't have my full guide's license as Zimbabwean law stipulates, you know, by going through that whole process, I did my shooting, I did quite a bit of hunting when I was younger and I've shot, you know, big Game, except for elephants. And you know, it's an entirely personal thing that I just don't want to shoot an elephant. I've been on elephant hunts and thoroughly enjoyed it. I just don't want to kill one myself. And you know, I've had long discussions with friends who are fully qualified and you know, a bit of soul searching and stuff like that. And you know what's quite fun is a lot of them say, oh, what's wrong with you? Go. And you know, just get it out of the way. And I said, no, you know, I like them too much. And for me, a lot of the guiding where I work, one of my blessings is that I always get to collaborate with other guides and that's how I set up a lot of my tours. If we're going to go walking in areas with dangerous game and stuff like that, it's much more fun to go with someone who does that as their full time job in life. And then we just, we just share off each other, you know what I mean? And you know, the, the, I don't feel a lack in that. And like I say, it's always an entirely personal thing. I have no, no objections to anyone who does it. No, you know, I don't stand on a soapbox and decry it or anything. For me it's just, you know, it's an entirely personal thing and I, I get good natured ribbing from a lot of the guys, but it's also a decision from many of my peers and my mates and fellow guides and, and professional hunters and they respect it. You know, they just say, well, that you just crack on and you know, you, you carry on. Which I'm always very thankful for as well. You know, nobody mocks me for that discussion or anything like that.

[Robbie]

Except Dave Carson maybe, right?

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, Dave. Well, you know, he's actually been the most supportive, but he just said, you know, you're going to be, you're going to become Zimbabwe's oldest learner guide. And I said, oh no, there's a couple of guys who're still ahead of me there, you know, and you know, one of the, one of the jokes that I've had with Dave is I said, now I want to change the, I said, rather than me going to shoot the elephant, I want to work on changing the whole system of guides licensing here and we introduce mid tier one where you get qualified as a driving guide and then you left alone. You know, if you want to carry on to become a, a walking guy, then that's a different thing and he just think that he, you know, he's listened to me and then just said, okay, we'll talk about it. And that was the, that was the thing, you know, but, you know, it's, it's a, it's a hell of a thing as well. And, and you know, I, I just have fun with it and you know, because to me also, I would rather, quite honestly, you know, when it comes to being a pro guide in Zimbabwe, whether you decide to go into hunting or photographic side of it, you know, it's one of the most incredible qualifications. You know, I have a couple of degrees and stuff like that, and I keep telling them when you get your full proficiency, you should get a cap at the end of it, quite honestly.

[Robbie]

Because how long does it take, typically people?

[Mike Axelrod]

Four years. It's a minimum of four years. Many people do it in five or so because of the amount of information you've got to know, also the amount of experience, experience you've got to gain in everything from knowing your weapons to the ecology and habits and habitats of the wildlife, but also everything from basic mechanics through to running a camp through to cooking and, you know, and also working and managing, you know, on top of that, because, you know, the law is once you get your license off, you go into the bush and you are fully responsible for people, their lives and what you do there. And nobody passes if they're not fully qualified. And so, you know, nowadays the, the instruction is, is that it'll take you a minimum of four years, which is basically an honors degree in Zimbabwe. You know, you, you in zim, we have a different education system, but like, you know, I did my honors degree in three years, but generally it takes you four. You know, just. I always tell them you should get a minimum, an absolute minimum of an msc when you finish your guide's license.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

And indeed, there's a couple of universities looking at trying to, to do that at the moment, but there's no, I haven't heard any actual movement simply because of how the law and everything is set up for how you are registered as a guide. But honestly, it's, it's one of the greatest professions in Zimbabwe at the moment and also one of the most highly regulated and exceptional. You know, you, when you get your license, you are among the top of the top in, in our part of the world.

[Robbie]

Yeah. And really, to start the, And I said this already, but to start, I assume this will be the first of many. Not assume, I know this will be the first of many podcasts that we have Paul Hubbard on because of just the interest and details of information that you have in the history of things. And when I was in Zimbabwe this past year, we were in Bulawayo, where it's your hometown, and you and I started having conversations about. Well, you gave us a little speech about the history of hunting in Bulawayo. You also gave us little history about the Boy Scout that I was super interested in, and we had a conversation about that, and I took some of that information home and brought it to my. My oldest. And so I was just like, man, it's such an interesting topic about, you know, hunting Zimbabwe right now being the sort of, again, the gold star hunting standard in Africa. You know, we started talking about the origins of hunting, and you started sort of peeling back some layers around Bulawayo and who was there and what they were doing and how it started and all that kind of stuff. I said, whoa, whoa. Just. Let's just. Let's just put a. Let's put a virtual recording device in front of you called the podcast, and let's just capture this information. So I don't even know where you want. Where to. Want to start, Paul?

[Mike Axelrod]

Hey, I don't know is.

[Robbie]

Let me ask this. I'll start with a softball question. Is hunting something that is a modern concept in Zimbabwe, or has it been around for quite some time?

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, geez, that's a great question. So, you know, it depends on how far back you want to go. You know, in Zimbabwe, we have evidence of humans hunting from the archaeological record dating back over 2 million years ago. You know, and what I thought I'd do is just, you know, this is one of our earliest hunting tools here that we ever find in this part of the world. And this is a stone hand axe. If you want to get technical. It's called an Acheulean hand axe. And this is. This was our. Some of our earliest hunting technology. But, of course, we're not running down, you know, megafauna, you know, like, anything bigger than a small antelope or anything like that. But, you know, in our part of the world, you know, hunting was an essential part of human life, dating back at least 2 million years. And in Zimbabwe, we don't have any fossils of ancient humans that we've discovered. But what we do have is a lot of the auxiliary evidence for the hunting and gathering culture of these. These Stone Age peoples. And, you know, to the south of us in South Africa, and then to the north of us through Zambia, Malawi, and into East Africa, those. Those fossil human sites are very well known. Zimbabwe, we haven't discovered anything of that, that kind yet. But what we do have is, you know, when you start looking at stone tools, like there's just a different. It's a different type of hand axe. It looks very different just because of the raw material here they've used. And then this stuff here is something called chalcedony. And this is a Rolls Royce stone to make your tools out of. And your hand axe was the equivalent of a multi tool. You know, I'm a leatherman man myself and have been for many, many years. But, you know, the fascinating thing with this is this is for digging, for cutting, for scraping, and also for hunting. It's designed to be held in your hand only. But recent evidence by much cleverer archeologists than me, who go into the microscopic level and start looking at really in depth studies have shown that these things are also designed to be thrown at small animals, Killing them or wounding them enough for us to run them down on foot and then take them.

[Robbie]

So the axes, you think the axes were used as tools for killing? Or is it more like. Because you would think in America you'd think of like the bison, you know, cliffs and stuff, that they would, they would corral animals over kind of thing. You don't think that they did something like that, put them in a trap, run them into a trap. And then potentially, how do you think that worked in your brain?

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, okay, so that is definitely hunting behavior, but much more recently in this part of the world because you're dealing with 2 million years ago. And it also depends on what you define as hunting. For me, hunting is the killing of any animal for meat, for consumption by humans. You know, as a, as an archeological definition, you could. There's much more technical stuff to get into.

[Robbie]

But, you know, so potentially the axe being used on a python, right? Something like that.

[Mike Axelrod]

Python, A tortoise, a, A small. You think of a little hyrax running around, a rodent running around the camp. You know, they've been thrown also birds on the wing and on, on water bodies and stuff like that. And the reason is, is of course, they, they. We're also using these tools for cutting up carcasses and stuff like that. Because before humans really figured out hunting, we were gatherers and scavengers. And it is genuinely the consumption of meat that allows our brain capacity to grow our stomachs to shrink, giving more blood to the brain, which helps enhance our intelligence and stuff like that. Because of the amount of minerals, vitamins, and energy that we get out of meat compared to most vegetable matter. That really sets us on the course to becoming what we are now, you know, modern humans. And there's all sorts of debates as to the exact amount and all that, but that gets into heavy scale archeology stuff, which would be a whole podcast in its own.

[Robbie]

Paul, are you suggesting that those that are becoming vegetarians today are regressing our evolution?

[Mike Axelrod]

So let me just tell you. So that's a great question actually, because, you know, vegetarianism as we understand it today, as a movement and all that is really, to my mind, and I don't knock them. I have friends who experience various reasons, but one of the things is our bodies and our digestive system. And also what our brain needs from us is most easily gotten from meat. And of course, with our modern technology, that's what humans are great at, is technology and changing it to suit what we need. You're getting all the supplements and stuff to help vegetarians. But vegetarianism as a movement as we understand it today actually comes out of the Industrial Revolution and especially Victorian era Britain and Europe. And that is also where the modern ideas of human animal rights movements also emerge. Because you have the development of this leisured class who start to, you know, they've earned money, there's others working in factories and stuff like this, and they start to question what are, what are our ethics, what are our social mores? And you start to get this, this huge awakening of various cultural narratives. And two of those very important ones are, you know, for the purpose of this discussion is the idea of vegetarianism and also the idea of animal rights. And this is because of the horror of how animals were being treated in Victorian England during the Industrial Revolution. You know, the, the poor horses being forced into. Into precarious situations with pulling, transport and coal mining and stuff like that, as steam power starts to replace them and the mass culling of these animals when they're no longer needed. You know, this horrified people at the time. There's a couple of very fantastic books I've got somewhere in here about that sort of stuff and how it really does shape the modern world. Because we start to see a different connection to animals, both domestic and wild, no matter their form or function. And it's a very Western European thing that then gets spread out around the rest of the world owing to colonization and colonialism.

[Robbie]

Do you think the leisure lifestyle afforded people the opportunity to think about things like that?

[Mike Axelrod]

To an extent, yes. Because if you are struggling for survival, you do not think of animals. And I'll be very broad here, understand is that they are a resource that has to benefit you in some way. Even the keeping of pets as we understand them today with these treasured young ones, be they dogs, cats or anything else that we have as pets nowadays, as something that's consuming resources within your life, you have to have a certain amount of money and leisure to be able to afford this. And again, it's not to say that people didn't have pets in the past. There's lots of archaeological evidence of how animals were revered and respected going through ancient Egypt into Paleolithic Europe, even here in Africa. Animals, they were resourced, but they were also well looked after and regarded. You know, there's a whole bunch to unpack there as well. But certainly the way again that we see people keeping animals and pets and stuff today, to me is quite fascinating from an anthropological point of view as to we, you know, I grew up on a, firstly on a mine and then on a farm. And that certainly does not make you very sentimental towards animals in one regard. But it also teaches you a lot about how to look after them and, and respect them and revere them, you know, for what they are and not to be cruel, not to be exploitative of the animals, but also to understand that in our modern world today, you know, most of the animals that we come into contact with outside of a wildlife thing must have a purpose for us, whether it be food or other raw materials for industry and so on and so forth. And we're seeing the rise of alternatives all the time. But that then has other economic consequences and ecological consequences. Oh, absolutely. You know, yeah. Again, you know, our farm was a mixed farm where I grew up and we had everything from, what do you call it? You know, we had some cattle which were for ourselves and then we also had sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, and then also grew a lot of crops and stuff like that. And it was just absolutely, you know, we looked after them, so on and so forth. But you also understood where that stuff on your plate came from at very, very well. And we used to host school trips all the time and some kids came away traumatized and wouldn't eat meat for the next three months because we'd walk you through an abattoir. You have to understand where you're coming from. You know, these are 12 to 14 year old kids and it wasn't like we were trying to shock them. It's just this is understand, you know, where stuff comes from. And in some ways I think in the modern world today, ignoring, you know, some of the issues around things like factory farming and things like that, that's not stuff we deal with necessarily down here, with one or two exceptions in Zimbabwe, you know, the, the practicality of, of animals in our daily lives, I think gives us very different perspectives compared to the rest of the world. You know, a dog is a pet, but it's also something that has to hunt or it has to protect you or it has to look after you in another way. You know, that's, that's how we look at them. And of course you love them and you look after them, but.

[Robbie]

Yeah, and it's difficult for people to, you know, I think because we're so insular in societies today, though we're supposed to be. Given the technologies that we have at our fingertips, we're not supposed to be insular. But I think for, you know, one shape or one reason or another, we, we. We get pigeonholed into certain mindsets, which is a dog is a dog because it's a pet and a companion animal, and there's no way that that companion animal could actually turn into a hunting animal in another scenario. And so it's just, it's a, it's, you know, and, and to the. Sorry pigeon to, to rabbit hole us for a second there. But I think it's, you know, going back in time, like, I think people have forgotten about, like, where do we actually come from evolutionarily, you know, from a human perspective. And the question that people ask today was like, well, that was, you know, that was in the past. And, you know, they use stupid and silly arguments like, well, if we were child rapists in the past, does that mean we should be child rapists today? I'm like, yeah, it's false equivalency.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, it's complete false equivalency. Yeah, it's crazy if those sort of comparisons are made, you know. And of course, you know, from, from my perspective, especially as an archaeologist, you know, what fascinates us a lot of the time is seeing how people interacted with animals throughout the past. You know, it was hunting. Hunting was a major form of our interaction. Animals were resource, plain and simple for a couple of million years in our part of the world. And it's only within the last three to five thousand years in West Africa that you see domestication taking place as well as earlier domestications of things elsewhere in the Middle east and into India and northern India and stuff like that. But for us here in Africa, you know, our interactions with animals is. They were either a threat to us, you know, Such as the larger carnivores on the African plains, or they were a resource for food, for skins, for meat, milk and so much else besides fat, you know, and that sort of stuff besides. And certainly, you know, to go back to our Stone Age ancestors, for example, you know, we have a lot of evidence of both scavenging carcasses. You know, the animal had died or being killed by another predator and the humans run in and take over the kill or they managed to dig in and exploit it somehow. And there's a lot of cool ways that the people who study this stuff full time, I'm not one of those guys necessarily. I just love reading their work and learning from it and then asking them annoying questions. You know, a lot of my email boxes, me writing to researchers say I read this thing. What can you tell me about this? Because I've got this question and often they, they're very good and reply back or they'll send me something else to read like a teacher with homework, which is even better. But the, you know, meat, especially for us, it's eating that allows our brains to grow and also to provide us with a growing intelligence that then allows us to become ever more sophisticated in how we acquired what we needed to survive in Africa. And it's only in Africa, all humanity derives from Africa. You know, there's several migrations of human ancestors out of our continent into Europe and Asia and then ending. Those are some of our earliest ancestors, starting with Homo gaster and then also Homo heidelbergiensis. But for our purposes, you know, for Homo sapiens, we arrive from Southern Africa, our species today Homo sapiens, what we are today evolve in southern Africa. That's something that's quite a startling.

[Robbie]

Zimbabwe, southern Africa.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yes. So even though we don't have any fossil remains of humans, that doesn't mean that stuff wasn't happening here. But at the moment, all the direct evidence in the form of the changing bones, especially the skulls and post cranial remains, especially looking at the development of this amazing thing here, the wrist and also your ankle, those are two physiological features that modern humans have that are very different in, in many ways to, to our earlier ancestors, allowing us full upright posture and also bipedal walking, although that, that develops much earlier on in, in the human thing. But there's this physiological changes. So it's only in South Africa at the moment that all that sort of direct physical evidence of the skeletons and the skulls and all that sort of stuff has been found and then moves on up. And then there's also in Malawi, they Found some archaic Homo sapiens, as they call them, which is these guys who they look like us, they behave like us, but their brain capacity is not quite there yet. You know, they're still a few milliliters off. And then Homo sapiens remains start to appear up in. There hasn't been a lot of research in the areas from northern Kenya through Sudan into Egypt into modern Homo sapiens. But there has been a lot of stuff in the Levant, in the Middle east and in Turkey and into Europe like that as well. And there at the moment, there's always arguments over dates with archaeologists because new research is always updating and changing that sort of stuff. But very broadly Speaking, definitely by 60,000 years ago, we were in Europe from having traveled from southern Africa beginning around 150,000 years ago, ending up in Europe at least by 60,000 years ago. Asia, within 55 or so thousand years gets very rapid one. They've crossed that barrier between Africa and Europe and Asia. And then of course, humanity spreads out around the globe, arriving in North America again. There's been so much exciting research there recently. When I was at Archeology, we were told there were no humans in North America before 12,000. Sorry, before 10,000 years ago. Today there's recent researchers pushing that back to maybe as much as 14, 15,000 years ago. You know, it's really cool. The more we learn, the more we don't know and the more we have impetus to discover. But it's on that move that our primary way of life, the only thing that allowed us to colonize the world as it were, to spread out and make Earth the whole planet our home, is hunting and gathering. There was a seminal book came out in 1968, which is still one of the most widely quoted works on this whole topic, which is called rather sexist, but called man the Hunter. And that looks at different hunter gatherer societies around the world at the time, both past and present, and how hunting was an essential part of life and not just for food, but as a social cohesion. You know, it was something that allowed people to bond both in the act of hunting, but also in the sharing out of what was hunted and also, you know, sharing in the, the promise of life that the successful hunt also gave. On top of that, a lot of ritual and religion that has developed over the last 60 plus thousand years around the world is centered on aspects of hunting and animals within our cosmology. You know, we use animals to think with, and that's because we hunted them. If you don't know and understand an animal, you cannot hunt it. You know, hunters are some of the greatest conservationists in the sense that they know and understand those animals and those creatures and their habitats, their behavior and their environment better than many researchers ever get to in their whole lives, because they're spending the time and they also having to develop a whole set of knowledge and skills that is as ancient as we are. Sorry, I'm meandering on.

[Robbie]

What is your. No, no, no, Paul. What. Do you. Maybe let me poke a little bit and ask if you had an opinion. In these old hunter, gatherer tribes 60,000 years ago, do you believe everybody. Obviously there were some gatherers. Do you. Do you believe everybody was a hunter? I have my own opinion. Go ahead.

[Mike Axelrod]

No, no, sorry. Your own opinions are.

[Robbie]

I have. No, I have my own opinions in that. I don't believe. I believe, you know, we have hunters and gatherers. Certain people in the tribe were gatherers. And I don't believe, you know, some historical evidence suggests that that wasn't just a purely female task, nor hunting was a purely male task. It might have been the majority male, majority female. There was certainly a little bit of crossover. But I don't believe that everybody was a hunter in the tribe. I believe that there were certain people in the tribe that were very good hunters. I believe there were people in the tribe that were almost like beaters, the guys that helped the hunt. I believe that there were people that were your cooks and your prep people and whatnot. I believe that there were people who were your industrial people that were building the shelters and helping people. And the reason I say that is, you know, people today, in our modern culture, you know, people say we're losing hunters. You know, we're only such a small percentage of the population. Whatnot. I said, but in my brain, that's. It's. We've been that way through time.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah. For a long time.

[Robbie]

We've always been 4%, 5% of the population. It's not like everybody being hunters because there's not enough resources for everyone to be a hunter. Thoughts?

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, I really think you've hit it on the head there, Robbie. You know, in these societies. Now, again, I'm going to speak very generally here and only confining myself to what's going on in southern Africa and, you know, those early human ancestors, because there's a lot to unpack with other things there. But, you know, one of the things that we strongly believe today, thanks to the research and ethnography and stuff like that, is that first and foremost amongst these communities There were small groups, bands of people moving around, you know, 10 to 20 people at a time. They would meet and match up with other groups at certain times, but within that they were egalitarian. So everyone had an equal opinion and an equal skill set, as it was perceived by the others in the group to help with survival and also to live life. So certainly within those bands you would have had those, a couple of people who were the best at stalking and hunting the larger animals. And then there would be others who would, as you pointed out, would be running along to either to learn or to also function in other capacities as a beater, as a spotter, just to go along to help carry stuff back to the camp, you know, once they've butchered the carcass after a successful hunt, to carry meat back or to run back and tell them, hey, you find us here, we've killed a giraffe. You all come and live next to this giraffe until we've eaten the whole thing, you know. Absolutely. And one of the things that's quite interesting is research done amongst the hunter gatherer peoples in southern Botswana, especially the Naron of the southern Kalahari in the 1880s, showed that what would happen is there was no leader in the group. What would happen is when you're going out on the hunt, you're the best hunter, so you're in charge for the duration of the hunt. And once you've killed that animal, you got to share out the choice cuts and so on and so forth. If it was your arrow or other weapon that had killed that animal, and then after that everything was back to square one, where you all just had the same status once again and you didn't get any extra credit in day to day life just because you were the best hunter. It's not like you would automatically be the leader of the group. We do see that start to change in a later period of African history, which is something we could talk about another time or today, whatever called the Iron Age, which is some of your hunters assume leadership status amongst the group. And their whole reason for being the leader is partly because they know how to hunt and hunt well. And hunters were revered and respected in the society because, you know, you think of how much knowledge they had to have in order to look after the people. Now, just as a quick aside, we always say hunter gatherers. And I jokingly tell people that when we talk about these sort of, you know, pre industrial people is another way of thinking about them. But one of the things is that I always jokingly Used to tell my students was that we should call them gatherer hunters simply because gathering implies that you're picking up wild foods, especially focused on plants, okay, so that be fruits, roots, nuts, seeds, so on and so forth. And then you're gathering them and then you have to process them, you know, cook them and do whatever else to make them edible. And hunting specifically refers to killing something to eat it. Now, if you're an anthropologist, gathering also includes the harvesting of smaller animals such as, you know, your little reptiles like lizards, tortoises, so on. Fishing is its own category. And again, some of the earliest known fishing equipment in the world comes from our part of the world. So we were really having a good life here, hunting, fishing. And then unfortunately, the Iron Age arrives and we get put to work here in this part of the world. Life becomes tough. But tilling our fields and all that sort of stuff, it becomes. Only someone else would have thought that that would be an improvement on life. But the, you know, once you so gathering. And so anthropologically, but to me, that's also quite a bit of hunting. So absolutely, women were hunting in the sense of killing something as a food and other resource. But also, I think there's been a blindness in certain research that's been done into these hunter gatherer communities because until very recently, almost all the researchers were men. So of course we got to look at men as the hunters and, you know, see them as the most important and all this sort of stuff. And it's only recently with, you know, lady archaeologists and historians and other researchers coming up, that it's like, oh, sorry, there is gender. Yes. No, you know, and that's just a wonderful thing because we being for. I can tell you now, since I was at university, which is 25 years ago now, the amount of stuff that I've had to update it here because I learned it then, you know, and now we're getting new researchers, also getting challenged by people that I talk to at conferences, and it's like, oh, geez, I had some baggage there that I didn't know about, so I better learn, better upgrade my knowledge here. But gathering as an aside as well, you know, there's been research done on this once again, stretching from the 1880s until the 1950s, especially amongst the hunter gatherer peoples of southern Africa, especially in Botswana, Namibia and northern South Africa. So those collectively are the San people. They also used to be called Bushmen, which is a name, name that we, we don't use anymore today, but you'll find it in a lot of the earlier research papers and books and stuff like that. But one of the fascinating things is as well is that men would gather. It wasn't like they just say that, hey, you know, you're. I'm a man, I don't do that sort of stuff. They absolutely, because it's about your survival. But also, hey, we're all in this together, we gotta, we gotta make life. But when it came to hunting, well.

[Robbie]

They were probably gathering. They were probably gathering on the hunt at the same time.

[Mike Axelrod]

Right.

[Robbie]

They came across something. Yep, Put that in the basket. Yep, put that in the basket. Oh, whack that tortoise. Quickly put it in The Baske basket.

[Mike Axelrod]

100%. But we do think that the majority especially of hunting big game was done by men in those. One thing that's very clear even when you read some of the early explorers and hunters and traders and missionaries coming through our part of the world and bumping into these people from the 1700s very clearly when it came to hunting big game. So that's anything of impala size or bigger, that was definitely mostly men. There's no evidence of females actively participating in the, the hunt itself, of course, in the processing and also sometimes acting as spotters and beaters and all that, you know, as hangers on. Absolutely. But in the actual act of tracking and killing something that's bigger than that 100%. We think it was a male dominated thing. And there's probably various reasons for that. In one way you can get a bit fancy, fancy and say, you know, it's a way of balancing out the, the relationships within the community as well that women are doing all this work because they're also in charge of child rearing. They're also in charge of maintaining the, I suppose you could call it the home, as it were. And men, you know, they, they still getting involved. It's not like at that time that we have the sharp divisions that develop in more modern history, especially amongst European cultures. But at the same time, you know, there's a way that the men have to show themselves, you know, as we. It's about protection, but it's also about providing. And that's a very old male instinct in some ways, you know, that we are the provider and as well as the protector, you know, and there is a psychological physiological aspect to that, but also a lot of it is reinforced by culture.

[Robbie]

You know, it's fascinating the field that you're in, the archaeological field, you know, humans differentiating different kinds of humans. Before I came to you guys last November, went to the Custodians, agm. And we did a field trip to the cradle of, of mankind. And just listening to that.

[Mike Axelrod]

Like you.

[Robbie]

Said, you learn these things 25 years ago. And then I listened to that and I was like, oh, okay, that's a lot different. Like, for instance, the whole, like, idea, and this is way off topic for this podcast, the idea of that we evolved from apes. Right. The way that it was posed to me was evolution, which is correct. Evolution is an improvement of something.

[Mike Axelrod]

And.

[Robbie]

That something disappears because it wasn't as good as what was evolved. It came next, came from it.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

And so the idea that apes are still around today and we evolved from.

[Mike Axelrod]

Them.

[Robbie]

It was fascinating. It was just like. It blew my mind. I was like, oh, shit, you're right.

[Mike Axelrod]

Like, well, the thing to always, what I always tell people, because I get hammered on this a lot of the time, you know, I've had, bless their hearts, a lot of guests who are creationists or are literalists regarding their religious texts and stuff like that. And one of the ones that we end up having is a lot of discussion about what is, you know, do I believe in evolution? And I said, well, I believe in it the same way I believe in gravity. I know it's happening. You know, it's like it's a physical force. But the thing that I always say is that first and foremost, we didn't evolve from apes. Apes and us shared a common ancestor. That's the one thing. That's it. That's it. And that's why we can still have apes and other primates and stuff today of all different kinds and sorts. And all that is that it wasn't just a direct line. You've got to think of it, our family tree is a bush, really. There's so many forks in the road stretching all the way back as far as the first multicellular life on this planet. But at the same, the same time as well is we are still learning all the time to put this into both the popular concept of it and at the moment, globally, there's a growing anti science movement that you have to be very diplomatic.

[Robbie]

Come on.

[Mike Axelrod]

And we're seeing massive pushback. And in archaeology, geez, I proceed. I get it in the neck a lot. Even online, you know, I've disengaged from certain places now media platforms because I'm just tired of shouting into. Not shouting, actually trying to have a discussion, but being shouted down. You know.

[Robbie]

I divulged this into evolution and creation. But what I was trying to get at is how how the science is constantly evolving and improving and whatnot. Right? That we thought this was 25,000 years ago. Oh, no, that and also like Sterk Fontaine, in this cradle of mankind, there's 130 caves or something stupid like that, right? And only 13 have been explored. And it's like, well, what else are we going to find? Like one of the things that show changed like the, the whole tree branches. Oh, somebody found a skull that was perfectly intact in 2015. Dude, that was nine years ago. And it's like, holy shit. What else haven't we found yet in these 130 caves that nobody's bothered to go into yet? Yeah, that will absolutely rewrite textbooks 10 times over, 100%.

[Mike Axelrod]

And you know, like even, you know, when I was, when I did Stone Age archeology for my, for my honors degree. And one of the things is, I went back and I read my thesis the other day because someone had asked me a question. I thought, I know I wrote about this somewhere along the line. And I realized it was 25 years ago, you know, but the humor is, is that I read parts of it and I thought, my God, this is all wrong now. You know, like everything we knew, but we knew it. We knew it the same way we know stuff today. It's so cool. And that's one of the magic things about especially what I do. And it's one of the things why I keep telling you and many others, I never work because that's why I love researching and writing and all the rest of it. Because, geez, like, and especially in South Africa, they get a lot more government money, they get a lot more assistance to do this sort of research and also from overseas and they've also got the right geology and everything else. And it's just amazing what's coming out of that place all the time. I struggle to keep up, you know, like when I was at university, our book on the Stone Age of South Africa, I think was 200 pages. And I've just ordered the new edition and it's 594 pages, the same topic, but that's how much more cool stuff that we know about. And this is also why, you know, like, sometimes I get pushback where someone will say, no, but that's not what I learned. And I said, well, isn't that fun? Because now we learn more, you know, and it doesn't mean that you're wrong to know that never here's the chance that we're going to explore this together and get something new out of it as well. And that is always. Oh, man. That's why I love guiding as well, you know, because I get guests ask me the best questions, or I get guests to know more than I do, and then, boy, oh, boy, then I'm in your face, you know, Like, I really, really need to know what you know. And we're gonna. We're gonna pull this thing apart and chat about it. And that's part of the humor, you know. All right. Where were we? I've forgotten.

[Robbie]

We were nowhere. We were nowhere.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah.

[Robbie]

Let me ask this question. Maybe a couple of anecdotes. In and around Bulaway, Are there cool areas that show Iron age sort of civilization, hunter civilization? Or maybe before Iron age, like, you've been talking about these axes, the stone age. Are there places in and around Bulawaya that you're just like, man, this is, you know, what we. What we found and what we think it is.

[Mike Axelrod]

So. So, you know, there's two World Heritage Sites within 20 minutes drive of Bulawaya. The first one is the Matobo hills World heritage site, which is to the south of Bulawaya. And that's this big granite area that has been in the name change.

[Robbie]

Because I always thought it was Motopos.

[Mike Axelrod]

That's right. So Motopos is the old colonial name, and it's actually a misunderstanding of what the pre colonial name was. So the name of Motopis is. I use both interchangeably because when I, you know, they. Both names are stuck in my head. So Motopos is. You've got to imagine the early white guys coming up here, and they ask, what's this area called? And they get told us, matopo. Now, to a European ear, the p will sound like a. Sorry, the B sounds like a p. So they go, oh, it's Matopo. And, oh, there's. It's an area. So we must add an S on the end of the word, calling it Matopas. But the proper name is actually Matombo, which literally translated out of the Kalanga language, means rocks. That's what the Matobo hills are. And the name Matobo is actually a name given to the area by the great ndabele king Mzilikazi, who, on visiting the area for the first time in the 1840s, having migrated up here from South Africa, he sees the area and he says, well, what's it called? And the guy tells him, well, it's Matombo. And he says, no, we should call it Matobo. And the name Matobo, in the Ndebele language means bald heads. So which is also what it looks like, you know, all these beautiful rolling copies and dwalas and all that sort of stuff. So the Matobo Hills is the center of Stone Age research in Zimbabwe. And that's because there's a lot of sites relating to the Stone Age dating back more than 2 million years ago, all the way through until 2,000 years ago. And many of them are found in these caves in the granite hills and the rock shelters and stuff like that. And it's been well studied and well excavated over the years, starting in the 1890s the way through until the present day, we've actually just had a team from France doing all sorts of research. I have no idea what they found or what they've done. They came and they went, but eagerly anticipate reading up on what they found.

[Robbie]

Do you think that there's places in Matobo that are like Sterkfontein that nobody's ever touched before or nobody's seen before? Or do you think it's already. Most of it's been explored?

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, no. Geez. Like, you know, in Matobo Hills, one of the other outstanding remnants of the Stone Age culture is the rock art of that area, the hunter gatherer rock art. And Motobo Hills is recognized by UNESCO as having the densest such concentration of art in the world. To put it in perspective, there's more rock art sites within the Matobo Hills. Now, Matobo hills site is 60km wide by 40km long. Okay. There's more rock art in that area than the entirety of Western Europe.

[Robbie]

Jeez.

[Mike Axelrod]

In terms of just sheer numbers of sites, of course, not all of it is as delicate and beautiful and all the rest of it as you see in Western Europe, but just the sheer quantity of sites, because people have lived there and hunted and lived there for so long. And then in the Matoba Hills, the amount of research has been done, has always focused primarily on the area that is covered by the national park, which is less than 30% of the entire Matoba Hills area. So for sure, there's an enormous quantity. I myself, you know, every year I go out and I just walk and I'll talk to the community and I'll meet the chief and the headman and get permission to go into certain areas and I'll do a walk and I'll say, oh, this one isn't in the records, you know, because I have a copy of the database of the Manitoba Hills. And I'll say, oh, this is a new area. Let's go and look here. And you know, in my lifetime, I think I've visited more than in Manitoba Hills itself. More than 1500 rock art sites. And of those, 500 were new to the database, you know, that I've reported.

[Robbie]

And amazing.

[Mike Axelrod]

And that's just rock art, you know, all archaeological sites in the Matoba Hills. I think I've reported more than 700.

[Robbie]

And how far is Great Zimbabwe from Bulawaya?

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, so long way. Long way. It's only four hours drive. Three of David Carson's driving.

[Robbie]

Is this a Wang. Is this a Bulaway or a Wangi kind of condition road or a good road?

[Mike Axelrod]

No, no, this is a very good road.

[Robbie]

Okay, okay.

[Mike Axelrod]

So. So in Australia. Jeez, I should know this. It's about 300. It's about 350 kilometers.

[Robbie]

Okay, so that wouldn't be one of the other sites that you were talking about around.

[Mike Axelrod]

No, the other site we're talking about is the successor to Great Zimbabwe, also a World Heritage site. And it's where I get to. I did research there many years ago as part of a big international team. It was so much fun. And that's a place called Kami World Heritage Site. So Kami is the second largest collection of stone ruins in southern Africa after Great Zimbabwe. And Kami was initially started as a trading post, and then it grew up to become the capital of a massive empire that covered most of southern and western Zimbabwe, half of Botswana, and almost the whole of northern South Africa. You know, it was a really, really important thing. And these guys were trading with the east coast of Africa, initially with. With Swahili Muslim traders, and then moving on to trading with the Portuguese and the Kami empire outside of, you know, which was centered on Kami itself outside of Bulawayo survives from around 1420 thereabouts until it's destroyed by fire in 1642. And that was in a war with the Portuguese. And that's another. That's another story. It's a really cool story. But the. And the Portuguese had come here for two reasons, which was to find gold and to find ivory. You know, which takes us because that's one of the sources of wealth for Kami was why Kami gets put where it is, where Bulawayo is in. In southwestern Zimbabwe today is because we were on the edge of three crucial resources. It was salt to the west of us, which is from Khadijadi in Botswana. It was the massive herds of elephant in what is today Wangi, Victoria Falls, Barotsee land. You know, they controlled the hunting and trading of those animals, as well as lots of other wildlife. You know, we always focus on ivory because it's in the news and it's sexy and it's cool. But there was a lot of other wildlife being hunted and traded at that time. And then also, Kami was in the middle of one of the biggest gold belts in Zimbabwe. So they had these three crucial resources for trade that then allowed them to grow, among other things. And then the fourth resource was cattle, but that's another story as well, you know. So Kami is Iron Age. And that is where we found, like, during some of our research there, we found a lot of tools for hunting, you know, things like this. I don't know if that's in focus or not, but that's. That's an arrowhead. Little arrowhead, yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Point out.

[Robbie]

This is.

[Mike Axelrod]

This is not from Kabi. It's not like I've been looting relics or anything like that. Just in case there's question. Even the stone tools. All right, yeah, those are. Those are legitimately held. But, you know, we also find things like this. You can see the size. These are hunting spears. Okay. And you can see from the size and shape of it, it's designed to be driven in because you see how much it tapers in. It's designed that it's driven in. You twist it, and then you pull it out very easily. So it's like a. Does like a corkscrew like that. And this is also of that period as well. It's not from Karami or anything like this. This is a modern replica. I had a blacksmith make me many years ago in the rural areas, because I had a drawing of one and I wanted one. So. And that was a fun thing, getting to blacksmith with him and learn that. But that's another story. So the. These sort of things are, you know. So what's kind of amazing in our part of the world is that, you know, these are just for fun. Just to go back slightly. Where did I put it? It was on my desk. Oh, there it is. So, you know, this. This is a Stone Age spear, and that's your Iron Age spear.

[Robbie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

So you can see the technology and stuff like that. These were designed primarily to be thrown at the prey and wound them, and then you would run them down before we figured out how to make and use poisons. This was, you know, the. The main thing. And you can always tell these things are designed to be thrown because you never find a complete one. You see the flat edge here?

[Robbie]

Yeah, it's broken off.

[Mike Axelrod]

Exactly.

[Robbie]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

So this is from the mountain.

[Robbie]

How long do you think it was between that stone that you have in your hand and say, the, the steel spear?

[Mike Axelrod]

What are we talking about?

[Robbie]

A hundred thousand years between that that you had in your left and one in your right hand.

[Mike Axelrod]

So. So the earliest evidence of this that we have in Zimbabwe for the making and use of these specialized tools for hunting, you know, before it was our Swiss army knife, these guys, which go from around one and a half million years ago to 400,000 years ago. Okay, this was it. This was our technology thing. Then we start to make more specialized tools. So for these things, these sort of spear points, spearheads like this, 400,000 years ago until approximately 40,000 years ago.

[Robbie]

Okay, and do you think poison is in that timeframe? Have they figured out poison? Do they put poison on those stone arrowheads?

[Mike Axelrod]

Oh, that is such a cool question. Now you're singing my son song because I hopped a research project on this several years ago. So what's very cool is we don't know exactly when people start to make and use poisons in their hunting and equipment and stuff like that. But at the moment in southern Africa, some of the oldest known evidence for the manufacture and use of poison is over 60,000 years ago. Which is just amazing to me. You know, like, this is high technology here. We don't think about it. But, you know, poison is not just as. To make a poison that is useful for hunting is not just a matter of finding a plant and rubbing it SAP on the edge of the thing and then hopefully sticking it in the animal. It's a whole production process. You know, you gotta, you gotta. Depending on what you're using. Are you using plants are using reptile venom and stuff like that? Are you using a combination of them? And also, are you. Are you using other aspect? You know, you gotta prepare it, then you have to apply it and then you have to use it. So it's quite, quite high technology. So 60,000 years at least. We know that they were using various types of plant materials. And there's a whole list of them. One of my favorites is there's various acacantharia. There's also various euphorbia species. On top of that. And how they know this, there's a researcher in South Africa called Marlise Lombard, who's just one of the most cool archaeologists in the history of ever, and she is just one of the gurus on the middle Stone Age ever in the world, not just for South Northern Africa. And her and her team, they, they have a very cool lab and all the rest of it. And they, they have done absolutely microscopic analysis on residues on the edges of some of these tools and been able to separate out and identify at least down to genus, not necessarily the species.

[Robbie]

Of different that come from plants. Holy.

[Mike Axelrod]

They've done some incredible work on this and also other early hunting techniques as well as other cool stuff as well. She's one of the gurus ever, ever. And she's so kind and generous with her knowledge and time. And one of the things is. So in Zim, you know, we start to pick up these sorts of things like this from around 400,000 years ago, but there hasn't been that sort of residue analysis done on material from Zimbabwe yet. But there's no reason to assume that we're not in the same time period from 60,000 years ago or so. But of course, it would be amazing to get the money and opportunity to look at some museum collections and do that. And one of the cool things is, is by the time we. So from 40,000 years ago to 2,000 years ago, that is it for hunting. That's what we need. What is that? Okay, so just to give you an idea of size difference now, you know, so this is a, this is a stone, a late Stone Age flake. The late Stone Age in Zimbabwe kicks off from around 35, 40,000 years ago until around 1500 years ago. And this is very simply would have been embedded into a reed or a very thin stick or something like that. And then it would have been liberally coated with poison down here. And this is part of an arrowhead. And also in the late Stone Age, this is your spear points like that, they're tiny. It's like the size of.

[Robbie]

It's not necessarily anymore the implement being the killing agent, but rather the poison. It's the delivery agent, not the killing agen agent.

[Mike Axelrod]

Exactly. And you know, the toxicology that's been done on some of this stuff is just incredible. And especially in Zimbabwe, we identified more than 40 plants, as well as about 20 different reptile species, snakes, frogs and such like that could be used for poison, as well as a couple of other surprising things that were used as poisons. And these. A lot of the poisons were neurotoxic as well. So they affect the nervous system and a lot of them affect. Specifically they shut down the diaphragm. So there's also this, this very famous story, you Know that these hunter gatherers would shoot their air into the animal, then run after it for five days and stuff like that and eventually die. Some of the research done in this country has shown on those and also in South Africa recently has shown that some of these poisons, you have between five and 20 minutes and you're dead dead if enough of it got into the bloodstream from the initial application. And some of these poisons are incredibly long lasting. There's one in the museum collection that we have that was collected 80 years ago from a modern hunter gatherer, you know, in Wangi area. And they took his, confiscated his hunting equipment because he had been convicted of poaching, and they gave it to the museum. And that poison is still active today on the end of that thing. So this stuff had a long shelf life because it's made into a thick paste and applied on the back.

[Robbie]

So why do you think they went from that technology to that iron spear that you have in your right hand? Why would they need it if the things were doing so well?

[Mike Axelrod]

So how the Stone Age comes to end in Zimbabwe is because of a mass migration of people from West Africa into Southern Africa in something that's known to archaeologists, anthropologists as the great Bantu migration. And this is a movement of people out of the area today that is Niger, Cameroon, Central African Republic, that sort of area of Africa. We don't know why they start leaving there, but they leave out of there, they go northwards into what is today the Sahara. And then also throughout Africa they come down the west coast through the center of Africa and shut down the east coast of Africa. And these Bantu people, as they're known to us, it's not a racial designation, it's just a classification of these people moving in. They are agriculturalists. So they, when they come migrating down through Africa, this is what introduces agriculture, both crops and domestic animals. It's also what introduces the making and use of metals in society as well. And that's iron and copper at that time. So this is kicking off from around 2,500 years ago in West Africa. For us here in Zimbabwe, they reach us 2,200 years ago. So it's 300 years to travel down that, that whole, that's the, that distance is the equivalent of going from San Francisco to New York. Okay. In terms of movement of people, that's a, it's basically the expanding the, the, the, the mainland America, you know. And what's amazing with this is it also brings in the new technologies of making and using pottery and then on top of that, building houses. And these people are very different. They have a different language, religion, physical appearance and all that. And they migrate and they settle here. So a lot of these hunter gatherers who were in the Stone Age, some of them adopt the Iron Age technology. So they just become farmers themselves. Some of them marry into the farming communities and then that's the end of it. Some of them resist and there's violence and fighting and one or the other side wins in those early days. And then finally some of them say, no, to hell with this, we don't want anything to do with you people. And they move into areas that are not suitable for farming. And so it's a, it's a very complicated time. That period from around 2,200 years ago until about 1,700 years ago, and that hasn't been well researched in Zimbabwe, but the Stone Age, basically for much of Zimbabwe, that period of time is done by 1700 years ago. We, we see very little evidence now that could be a research gap. Absolutely. But also this stuff, stuff is, iron as a medium is much, much better for a lot of practical reasons compared to making and using stone.

[Robbie]

Sure, 100%.

[Mike Axelrod]

It stays sharper for longer and it's also easier to resharpen. Once these things get blunt, you can do something called retouching. This point in my hand has actually been retouched here on the edge. You can see where it's sort of been. The edge was flat. You can see there's these chips along the end here where they've tried to sharpen it like that, but it hasn't been very, very useful. Secondly, also iron comes with a greater status which might have helped it become more quickly adopted by people in this part of the world. You know, it's a new, we all like new technology. You know, I'll tell you now I'm an anti example of that because, you know, up until like five years ago, I didn't, I didn't have a smartphone. I was a very happy Nokia user, you know, but, but you know, they don't, they don't really make dumb phones the way they used to. So now I had to, I had to upgrade. And it's been a learning curve, still is. But the, the humor is as well, is that Iron Age we, we know it's a migration of people into this part of the world. And funny enough, that area I was talking about, Motopis, is in southern Africa. It's where we have some of the earliest known evidence for the existence of domestic animals. And Iron and pottery as well, all dating back at least around 2,200 years ago. The rest of Southern Africa kicks in from around 2,000 years ago. So what also happens is some of these people, these hunter gatherers, instead of becoming farmers, they actually become pastoralists. So they take on domestic animals and they make and they use pottery and stuff, but they don't settle down on farm, you know, growing crops and stuff like that. They become nomadic pastoralists and move around this part of the world. And, and Motopis is where we have evidence of both existing at one time. Pastoralists, agriculturalists and hunter gatherers all at once. And what's fascinating is you distinguish their material culture, the things that they made and used in different ways. But what's cool is every single one of them also has evidence for always hunting in the, in the natural environment as well.

[Robbie]

It never disappears yet.

[Mike Axelrod]

Never. And, you know, hunting is both. If we, you know, for the Stone Age, it was a way of life. Once we get into the farming communities, hunting remains an essential component of life, but the emphasis is slightly different. It's generally, again, generally speaking, it's not just about subsistence anymore. Hunting was about raw materials. So yes, we still want the meat. And especially because, you know, if you cattle and cattle especially were prized possessions.

[Robbie]

So you're not just going to kill economic asset, right? You're just not going to kill. Exactly, exactly.

[Mike Axelrod]

But you had sheep and goats if you wanted meat. But of course, game meat is an essential part of the diet. But on top of that, there's also social status because now we start to see hunting of a greater diversity of animals compared to the Stone Age. The Stone Age was often focused quite a bit on food, and you find the same old animals appearing in the deposits. Now, again, that could be a preservation factor, but it also seems to be deliberate choices. Whereas in the Iron Age, we see a lot more hunting of carnivores, especially lion, leopard, cheetah, because we want their skins, because we wear them as symbols of our power, authority and bravery and status. You know, we got the lion skin or the leopard skins. You know, I'm a chief or I'm a person like that. Secondly, thirdly, sorry, in the Iron Age societies, hunting is also an incredible source of ingredients for traditional medicine as well. And there's a lot of traditional medicines using both plants, but also aspects of parts from different animals. And this is both for medical and also spiritual uses as well as one example. And some of this must have been learned from these Stone Age hunter gatherers by these Bantu People later on. So as a classic example, giraffe fat is seen as something that is absolutely essential for healing. You would mix it into whatever other ingredients in that medicine and especially to do with issues with your stomach and chest and stuff like that. You know, giraffe fat is, is an incredibly important ingredient. Interesting. Now, it's medicinal uses I can't speak to, but certainly, you know, people make use of that. And I think it also, you know, giraffe fat tastes quite nice, to be honest. So I think that maybe it's a bit like, you know, your sugared cough syrups nowadays for kids. You know, maybe it was also, of course, there's a bit of magic to it, but also, you know, that's just a, a joke, but it's, it's, you know, how I think about some things at times as well. And then, you know, also among the Iron Age communities From, you know, 2,000 years ago up until the time of colonization in the 1880s, hunting was also essential for trade goods as well. You know, ivory is the big one, but also, you know, different skins and pelts and of different animals and birds and, and things like that. But also it's both for external trade and internal trade as well, you know.

[Robbie]

Yeah, it's a, it's a fascinating, you know, and for. We'll save this for another podcast because I think I've already asked you about this.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yes.

[Robbie]

Have you read the book White Hunters, Black Poachers?

[Mike Axelrod]

No, I have not. I would love to.

[Robbie]

I'll send you a picture of it. And what's fascinating about that book is, you know, this whole premise, modern of today, is that trophy hunting, the idea of going after the biggest animal with the biggest ivory, let's just use elephants, you know, is a colonial era mindset in that it's these rich white dudes coming to Africa and going off to the biggest animal when. If you go back in the, in the historical record or archeological record, whatever you want to do, this book, White Hunters, Black Poachers, talks about a Kenyan tribe, southern Kenyan tribe, I think, called the Katui or something like that. And there was a specific. So there was a tribe that went with were. Were notorious elephant hunters. They would cover themselves in dung and they would have poison arrows and they were known to go after the biggest elephants. And the reason they went off to the biggest elephants is because, one, it was the most meat and two, the biggest ivory that they could trade with the Arabs on the coast. Yeah, okay, makes sense. That's what we would all do. Right? But I would Anticipate that anybody in this Iron Age scenario, right. That you've just described in southern Zimbabwe, in this area, if they were doing, if they were hunting for trade.

[Mike Axelrod]

It.

[Robbie]

Would make logical sense that they would go after the biggest elephants. Let's keep it with elephants for a second. That they would go after the biggest elephant, not any elephant because. Yes.

[Mike Axelrod]

And also it's the risk factor as well.

[Robbie]

They're thinking about it from a trade perspective.

[Mike Axelrod]

Yeah, absolutely. And it was the risk factor to them as well. Don't forget our only before firearms start to become common in this part of the world from the 1600s before that you had to use a spear, a trap or a bow and arrow to hunt an elephant, to keeping it to elephants now. And in Zimbabwe we, we had professionals who used all three and you know, they had these dead traps where you used to have these trip lines across elephant paths and stuff. And they would have it with a big spear hanging down that was weighted and, and it would be timed that as the elephant hit the wire, this thing would fall down into the spinal cord and then they would all jump out and start hacking at the poor and thing thing to, to, to, to kill it off. And of course because, and then you know, going after it with poisoned arrows and stuff like that, there's a massive risk. So of course you're going to be targeting what's best for your, your risk versus reward. And you know, the, the, the, the, the difference I guess is maybe it's about the amounts of offtake. But we do know that from the 1700s onwards, you know, elephants were being hunted on a massive scale throughout southern and eastern Africa from the 1700s to feed the insatiable desire for ivory in Europe and Asia and India as well. But on top of that, as the new, later on, as the new technology of firearms makes its way into the African interior, elephant populations become targeted. And again it was always about trophy hunting. And this is something we could always talk about. On another thing, cause I'm busy writing up a paper on this is the activities and methods of ivory hunters in this part of the world from around 1700 to 1900. You know, it's that 200 year period because it just fascinates me the techniques and all the rest of it. But also the amount of stuff being export ivory especially being exported out of this part of the world was phenomenal. You know, thousands of tons a year. And in this pre colonial time, to the extent that today, you know, trophy hunting is irrelevant in my opinion in, in terms of ivory offtake and yes, everyone wants a trove, you know, a big pair of tusks and stuff like that. But in my experience, and certainly with the people I've been fortunate enough to meet, you know, because I've guided, I guide hunters as well, you know, like once they finish, they hunt and all that. And it's absolutely fun because, you know, I don't judge, I don't have any skin in the game. And I love to hear their stories and, you know, what's it. And we're seeing a huge shift now as well, where it's not just about the trophy in the sense of the tusks. It's about, you know, the story, it's about the experience, it's about the camaraderie. It's also about what they're contributing back to conservation by paying these massive fees to come and kill an animal that we have a lot of. And you know, that, that, that we. And again, that's another. I'm sure I'll get some hate mail for even putting it that way. But, you know, the, the, the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, trophy hunting, what is a trophy in an elephant? Today we. Seeing people's attitude shift. You know, when I was a kid and we went on an elephant and everyone wanted the feet to make wastepaper baskets on, you know, which seems rather barbaric today, but we had one in our house for years and you didn't think anything of it. You know what I mean? It was, it was part of the elephant. You don't waste, you know, that was the rule. Yeah. And the ivory, we actually, it was a pac, so the ivory went to the government, you know, and, you know, the, the what is also the point of ivory in today's modern world? You know, the, the hunger for ivory is, is another fascinating topic to me, you know, like, what is it for? What is it? Why do we want it? Nowadays, it's not just a, it's a commodity, but it's also a deeply embedded commodity in blood and fire, you know, in some ways in the history of ivory hunting. And quite honestly, you know, again, it's another deep, deep topic.

[Robbie]

Yeah.

[Mike Axelrod]

That is of great interest to me as well.

[Robbie]

Yeah. Well, Paul, I know I've taken up way, way more of your time than we might have anticipated, but fascinating stuff, man. I'm just. I know we'll do this again and lots of other things to talk about, for sure, if people are interested in. You said you've written a couple of books. Maybe if they're coming To Zimbabwe, you know, potentially hiring your great services. Where can people find you, bud?

[Mike Axelrod]

Well, since you're getting used.

[Robbie]

You are responding to emails now, so maybe.

[Mike Axelrod]

No, no, I've got someone responding to emails for me, much more professional than I am in that regard. You know, it's. I'm useless at correspondence. I. I warn you. No, well, I've got a website which is hubbards tours.com where there's a lot of that and there's a contact form there. Or you can use the email address info hubbardstours.com and that you'll be speaking to. To Tracy who, who deals with all my correspondence. And if it's something that you need to talk to me directly about, then just say that, you know, forward this on to Paul and she, she does that. But for bookings and inquiries and all that, then I've also got a. There's a website called Academia Edu. So if you search for my name there, Paul Hubbard, you'll see I've got a page there where I've uploaded a lot of my publications and writings and also, you know, unpublished stuff which is in preparation and you could download them for free. You just need to create an account on the website. I think it is. Yeah. And then there's. There's a lot of the books are available on Amazon, I believe.

[Robbie]

Okay, great.

[Mike Axelrod]

I partner with a. I own a publishing company, but I partner with someone who handles that side of life. You know, my job is to produce the book and their job is to sell it and share it with the world. So there's a lot of stuff on Amazon. They're all little guidebooks that I've written. And then there's a couple of big books coming out this year on history and amazing archaeology of Zimbabwe. So it's very cool. Like I told you, I still. I've never worked a day in my life and I don't intend to start now. You know, it's exceptional pleasure.

[Robbie]

Exceptional. Well, thank you, Paul. Much appreciate you. Can't wait to do this again.

[Mike Axelrod]

Okay, same here, man. Thank you so much for having me and I really appreciate it. And to all those who listen as well, really appreciate it. Thank you.

[Robbie]

Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening as always. Leave a review, share it with your friends, and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.

[Mike Axelrod]

Create stories for life on a scenic eclipse. Mediterranean voyage with scenic. It's more than a journey of a lifetime. It's ultra luxury. Cruising along elegant European rivieras and idyllic Italian coastlines. It's being immersed in the history and culture of glamorous cities, towns and villages, its colorful architecture, landscapes and regional cuisine. Scenic Eclipse in a Class of Its Own Book your all inclusive voyage now and save.