History
Vasco da Gama and his first expedition, probably the first Europeans to sight the river, anchored off the mouth in 1498. However, there has been human habitation in the region since time immemorial — sites in the Makapans Valley near Mokopane contain Australopithecus fossils from 3.5 million years ago.
The British author Rudyard Kipling popularized the Limpopo in his short story "The Elephant's Child", in the Just So Stories, in which he described "the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees," where the "Bi-Coloured Python Rock-Snake" dwells.
A Zambezi shark (Carcharhinus leucas) was caught hundreds of kilometres upriver at the confluence of the Limpopo and Luvuvhu Rivers in July 1950. Zambezi sharks tolerate fresh water and can travel far up the Limpopo.
Read more about this topic: Limpopo River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Dont you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, theres never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why its a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (18841978)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernisms high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)