The Matobo National Park forms the core of the Matobo or Matopos Hills, an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2 billion years ago with granite being forced to the surface, this has eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Matopo/Matobo is a corruption of a shona/Venda word, "matombo" which means stones in Tshivenda/chishona. It was named by the ancestors of Kalanga, Venda and shona people who are the original natives of the land. A different tradition states that the first King , Mzilikazi Khumalo when told by the local residents that the grate granite domes were called madombo he replied , possible half jest, "We will call them matobo" - an IsiNdebele play on 'Bald heads'.