Long before mining giants like Rio Tinto and Vale and BHP Billiton started extracting African resources and shipping them overseas, Africans were doing indigenous mining and metalworking.

But there are glaring gaps in the recorded history of pre-colonial African technology, says Shadreck Chirikure, associate professor of archaeology at the University of Cape Town. Chirikure directs the archaeological materials lab at UCT.

His research explores the survival of precolonial technologies such as metal and pottery production to the present day within the discourse of indigenous knowledge systems.

Chirikure talked at a TEDx event about excavating sites of ancient civilizations that lived at Great Zimbabwe and at Khami, a ruined city 22 kilometers west of Bulawayo — both UNESCO World Heritage sites.

His work focuses on the technologies that sustained those communities. He’s the author of two books, “Indigenous Mining and Metallurgy in Africa” (Cambridge University Press) and “Metal in Society” (Springer 2015).

Ancient mines exist in Phalaborwa, a town in Limpopo province, South Africa, where Africans were using technology that is essentially modern, Chirikure told a TEDx audience. This technology was invented by Africans.

In Malawi there are natural draft iron-smelting furnaces that could smelt iron ore too low-grade for modern technology to process today, but they were doing it and these technologies are made in Africa, Chirikure said. “They could produce cast iron, high-carbon steel and all the products we can imagine today.”

Shaka Zulu’s warriors used spears made with technology that formed an important component of precolonial economies. The iron used to make such objects was of a higher quality than those produced in Europe in the 19th century according to Scottish explorer David Livingstone, said Chirikure.

“Great Zimbabwe is amazing and spectacular,” Chirikure said, describing an African creation of advanced technological know-how.

So how come Africans don’t know much about African indigenous technology? Why do Africans have to go to Europe and America to learn about Africa?

“We don’t know much about the African continent,” Chirikure said. Africa is the cradle of mankind and the brain drain has been ongoing since earliest humans started migrating off the continent, he said.