Editing Lemba people (section)

===Oral traditions===
[[File:Hills of Hadhramawt.jpg|thumb|[[Hadhramaut|Yemen, Hadhramaut]]]]
What is possibly the oldest recorded origin story of the Lemba people was documented by [[Henri-Alexandre Junod]] (a Swiss-born South African missionary). In 1908, he wrote:<blockquote>Some old Balemba of both the [[Spelonken]] and the '''[[Modjadjiskloof|Duiwelskloof]]''' country told my informant the following legend:

: '[''We''] ''have come from a very remote place, on the other side of the sea. We were on a big boat. A terrible storm nearly destroyed us all. The boat was broken into two pieces. One half of us reached the shores of this country; the others were taken away with the second half of the boat, and we do not know where they are now. We climbed the mountains and arrived among the Banyai. There we settled, and after a time we moved southwards to the [[Transvaal (province)|Transvaal]]; but we are not the Banyai''.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Junod |first=Henri-Alexandre |date=1908 |title=The Balemba of the Zoutspansberg |journal=Folklore: Journal of the Folklore Society |volume=19 |pages=279–280}}</ref>
</blockquote>[[Tudor Parfitt]] interprets that the legend about the destruction of the boat and the division of the tribe is perhaps a way of explaining the fact that Lemba clans are to be found in several separate locations. However, it could equally be taken as an expression of a fractured sense of identity.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Parfitt |first=Tudor |title=Genes, Religion, and History: The Creation of a Discourse of Origin Among a Judaizing African Tribe |date=2002 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/29762754 |journal=Jurimetrics |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=209–219 |jstor=29762754 |issn=0897-1277}}</ref>

The original Sena was most likely located in [[Yemen]], specifically in the ancient town of ''[[Sena, Yemen|Sanā]]'' (also known as ''Sanāw'') which is located within the easternmost portion of the [[Hadhramaut]].<ref name="Parfitt, Tudor 2000"/><ref>[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2706israel.html ''Lost Tribes of Israel''], ''NOVA'' Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 22 February 2000</ref>

====Migration into Africa====
[[File:Lemba_man_from_the_transvaal.jpg|thumb|A Lemba man from the [[Transvaal (province)|Transvaal]], [[Union of South Africa|South Africa]] (1940)]]The Lemba claim that they settled in [[Tanzania]] and [[Kenya]], building what was referred to as another Sena, or "Sena II". Others supposedly settled in [[Malawi]], where their descendants reside today. Some settled in [[Mozambique]], eventually migrating to [[Zimbabwe]] and [[South Africa]]. They claim that their ancestors constructed [[Great Zimbabwe]], now preserved as a monument. Ken Mufuka, a Zimbabwean [[Archaeology|archaeologist]], believes that either the Lemba or the [[Venda people|Venda]] may have participated in this architectural project but he does not believe that they were solely responsible for its completion. Writer Tudor Parfitt thinks that they may have helped construct the massive city.<ref>{{cite book|last=Parfitt|first=Tudor|author-link=Tudor Parfitt|title=Journey to the Vanished City|publisher=Vintage (Random House)|year=2000|location=New York|pages=1–2}}</ref>
Most academics who are experts in this field believe that the construction of the enclosure at Great Zimbabwe is largely attributable to the ancestors of the indigenous [[Shona people|Shona]].<ref name="met"/><ref>Beach, D. N. (1994). A Zimbabwean past: Shona dynastic histories and oral traditions.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|title=Historium|last=Nelson|first=Jo|publisher=Big Picture Press|year=2019|pages=10}}</ref> Such works were typical of their ancestral civilizations.<ref name="met">{{cite web|url=https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zimb/hd_zimb.htm|title=Great Zimbabwe (11th–15th Century) |publisher=MetPublications |website=The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays }}</ref><ref>Pwiti, Gilbert (1996). Continuity and change: an archaeological study of farming communities in northern Zimbabwe AD 500–1700. Studies in African Archaeology, No.13, Department of Archaeology, Uppsala University, Uppsala:.</ref><ref>[[Webber Ndoro|Ndoro, W.]], and Pwiti, G. (1997). Marketing the past: The Shona village at Great Zimbabwe. Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites 2(3): 3–8.</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Pikirayi |first=Innocent |author-link=Innocent Pikirayi |title=The Zimbabwe culture: origins and decline of southern Zambezian states |year=2001 |publisher=Rowman Altamira |isbn= 978-0-7591-0091-6}}</ref>