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Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy

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Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy

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“In the 1820s and 1830s stone kraals were known to have been built by black people. By the 1860s, however, when other explorers ‘discovered’ stone ruins, they argued that black people could not have built them. Their arguments were based on prevalent systems of classifying humanity. It was generally believed that races were tied to discrete levels of culture by their average intelligence and their blood...Racial characters were thought to set a limit on the level that each race could reach. It was argued, for instance, that black Africans had reached the limit of their potential progress, whereas Europeans were still undergoing advancement. Consequently, Europeans were seen to belong to the most advanced races in the world; other races were ranked below them, and were thought to represent primitive stages through which Europeans had already passed.”

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Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy on JSTOR

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Daniel Tangri, Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy, History in Africa, Vol. 17 (1990), pp. 293-304

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Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, AD 700 to 1700

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Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, AD 700 to 1700

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“Because of its strategic position, coastal east Africa acted as a conduit which enjoyed benefits from outbound and inbound commercial traffic…evidence of long-distance connections comes primarily from glass beads…found at the coast at places such as…Makuru in south-central Zimbabwe…These imports were exchanged for ivory, cattle and possibly gold…The distribution of such…beads…are associated with not just major centres of power…but also commoner settlements. For example,...beads were recovered from many commoner and elite sites in the region…the glass beads…came from Egypt, Persia and the Indian subcontinent...subjects were often required to pay tribute and taxes in glass beads, cloth, gold, cattle or any other commodity” (Chirikure 705-711).

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Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, AD 700 to 1700 on JSTOR

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Shadreck Chirikure, Land and Sea Links: 1500 Years of Connectivity Between Southern Africa and the Indian Ocean Rim Regions, AD 700 to 1700, The African Archaeological Review, Vol. 31, No. 4, Special Issue: Africa and the Indian Ocean (December 2014), pp. 705-724

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Reading Guide Questions: Popular Fiction and Zimbabwe Controversy

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Reading Guide Questions: Popular Fiction and Zimbabwe Controversy

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1. To what extent can it be concluded that racial bias impacted the conclusions of historians that believe Zimbabwe originated from non-African groups?
2. What is the basis for the argument that Zimbabwe originated from Europeans?

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Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe

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Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe

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NOTE: Read AFTER “Popular Fiction and the Zimbabwe Controversy”
“Since the last century, a debate has ensued with the publication of rival theories to explain the origin of the ruins...Among the attempts to solve the dilemma of the Great Zimbabwe's origin noteworthy group maintains that the structures were erected by the Bantu who populate the region…many prominent twentieth-century archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians have argued in favor of an indigenous origin for the ruins. The English archaeologist, David Randall-MacIver, in 1906 was the first to assert that the architecture showed exclusively African influence and authorship…The alternative solution to the Zimbabwe riddle argues that the edifices were erected by foreigners…Several proposed alien authorships which only hold in common the assumption that the Bantu were incapable of building the Great Zimbabwe. Basically, there are three different groups of non-Africans most frequently mentioned as potential builders of the ancient ruins. The Arabs have been proposed as the true builders of Great Zimbabwe. [James Mullan] hypothesizes that the ruins were originally raised by dissident Arabs who, as a result of an internal upheaval within Islam, migrated to southeast Africa and constructed the great buildings. A second proposal is that people from southeast Asia built the Great Zimbabwe. [Leo Frobenius] insisted that a culture he named ‘Erythrean’ was responsible for the erection of Zimbabwe. He further conjectured that the Erythreans originally came from south India, based upon a supposed structural similarity between the Great Zimbabwe and remains at Hampi (which, coincidentally, were both located in the vicinity of gold mines). The final popularly suggested foreign source of the best be categorized as "Solomonic." Like the other alien source hypothesis, there is a wide variation in this explanation also. Generally speaking, this interpretation attempts to solve the Zimbabwe riddle by maintaining that the ruins correspond to Biblical accounts of Solomon's activity in a land of gold called Ophir. The Solomonic explanation is constructed around an account given in the first Book of Kings.”

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Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe on JSTOR

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Scott T. Carroll, Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 21, No. 2 (1988), pp. 233-247

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Reading Guide Questions: "Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe"

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Reading Guide Questions: "Solomonic Legend: The Muslims and the Great Zimbabwe"

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1. To what extent could racial prejudice, as discussed in the previous source, have similarly influenced the conclusions of historians that believe Zimbabwe originated from non-African groups?
2. How do the ideologies of the two authors, Daniel Tangri and Scott T. Carroll, compare?

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The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence

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The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence

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“We have, therefore, no trustworthy traditions linking the Mutapa state with Zimbabwe, although positive feedback from schoolbooks may lead to a lot of traditions on this appearing in the future. This does not necessarily mean that the Mutapa dynasty could not have derived from Zimbabwe originally, but the evidence from archaeology would suggest a less dramatic development than Mutota’s march to the north. It is now known that the primary successor-state of the Zimbabwe culture was the Torwa state at Khami. The Mutapa state appears to have developed gradually out of the northern outliers of the Zimbabwe culture— probably well before Zimbabwe's decline, since it was already flourishing by the late fifteenth century and cannot be definitely shown to have “begun” with the reign of the figure known as “Mutota.” Radiocarbon dates and a documentary reference show that Zimbabwe-style building was going on in the northern half of the plateau during this period, some of it within—or very close to—the area of the Mutapa state. The as yet unexcavated major site of Zwongombe is apparently close to the area designated as the center of the Mutapa state by most of the Portuguese documents. Since an archaeological culture is not equivalent to a political unit, it is probable that some of these northern Zimbabwe-culture stone buildings were early Mutapa capitals.”

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The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence on JSTOR

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D. N. Beach, The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence, History in Africa, Vol. 3 (1976), pp. 1-17

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Great Zimbabwe in Historical Archaeology: Reconceptualizing Decline, Abandonment, and Reoccupation of an Ancient Polity, A.D. 1450-1900

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Great Zimbabwe in Historical Archaeology: Reconceptualizing Decline, Abandonment, and Reoccupation of an Ancient Polity, A.D. 1450-1900

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João de Barros's account…does not say Great Zimbabwe was completely abandoned. Some members of the royal family were still living there despite the abandonment of the gold mines in its vicinity due to civil war.

The traditions about Guruhuswa origins seem to convey centuries-old historical processes of migrations across the Zimbabwe Plateau landscapes, with communities searching for vital resources, such as salt, gold, ivory, game, pasture, and water in other regions (Abraham 1962). The traditions gleaned by Abraham (1962) about a movement from Guruhuswa to the Zambezi lowlands in search of salt need to be utilized with caution, as they have been interpreted to mean that Great Zimbabwe was abandoned due to a shortage of the commodity. However, it is not unusual to find salt being traded in the northern, northwestern, and even western Zimbabwe Plateau and areas beyond, such as the Makgadikgadi Pans (Pikirayi 2001). Karanga expansion northwards during the 15th century must have been triggered by the discovery of more lucrative goldfields in the region that they tried to control and that may have affected Great Zimbabwe in terms of population depletion. In other regions such as the southwest, control of the lucrative goldfields seems to have fallen under the Torwa dynasty, which was clearly a rival of the Mutapa State and successor to Great Zimbabwe.

Further contributing to the "silence" of Great Zimbabwe is the rise of another polity in the southwestern regions of the Zimbabwe Plateau. The rise of the Torwa and the State of Butua is another poorly understood development in the 15th and subsequent centuries…but the general assumption until most recently is that they were a direct successor to Great Zimbabwe (Beach 1980; Pikirayi 2001). [...] According to Huffman (2007) it controlled gold and other resources, which affected the wealth that was once channeled through Great Zimbabwe to the Indian Ocean coast. Khami was therefore the capital of the Torwa State, which the Portuguese found wrestling for control of the northern trade routes through the Zambezi Valley. Its destruction in the 1640s by the Portuguese further confirms the dominance of the Torwa in the southwest (Pikirayi 2001).

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JSTOR is a digital library of academic journals, books, and primary sources.

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Reading Guide Questions (The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence)

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Reading Guide Questions (The Mutapa Dynasty: A Comparison of Documentary and Traditional Evidence)

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1. Considering that Mutapa ruled as an absolute monarchy, what can we infer about Zimbabwe's political system?

2. In what ways did Zimbabwean culture influence Mutapa's culture?

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“Tremendous stone houses were constructed by the peasants for their kings. Sophisticated workplaces were designed for conducting trades such as blacksmithing…The remains of its outer wall measure over 800 feet long and up to 32 feet high…First, remnants of exotic items from overseas were found within the enclosure. Second, no evidence of cooking was found within the walled area…Third, evidence of only 100-200 residents is shown, while many thousands occupied the city.”

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The word "Zimbabwe" is thought to be derived from a Shona phrase meaning "stone enclosure" or "house of rock."

The House of Rock.

It's not the name of a dance club or a new band. It's actually a translation of the Shona word, "Zimbabwe." Though not the best illustration of the modern African nation, this phrase is a perfect description of the ancient city within its borders known as Great Zimbabwe. Sixty acres of immense stone ruins comprise the city and tell the story of the people who created and resided in it some 900 years ago.

For a long time, many Westerners argued that such amazing structures could not have been crafted in Africa without European influence or assistance. These notions reflect ethnocentrism, or the tendency to view one's own culture as the best and others as inferior. With the help of modern dating techniques, today's archaeologists have been able to disprove these arguments and expose the truth. Africans, and Africans alone, were responsible for building this astounding and complex city.

Shona Settlement

The first inhabitants of Great Zimbabwe were Shona-speaking peoples who likely settled in the region as early as 400 C.E. Back then, the land was full of possibilities: plains of fertile soil to support farming and herding, and mineral rich territories to provide gold, iron, copper, and tin for trading and crafting. It was fine place for the Shona to call home.

Over the years, descendants of the Shona made transitions from simple farming communities to more complex, stratified societies. By 1000 C.E., the population of Great Zimbabwe was divided and ranked by status - from elite leaders and their cattle to the peasants who did all the work. Cattle were very desirable and actually more valuable than most of the workers.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

In response to the changing social, political, and economic landscape, new buildings were gradually built. Tremendous stone houses were constructed by the peasants for their kings. Sophisticated workplaces were designed for conducting trades such as blacksmithing.

The buildings were made of heavy granite blocks, stacked tightly together. Stones were arranged carefully, and no mortar was used to seal them together. The largest and most impressive building was an elliptical structure known today as the Great or Western Enclosure. The remains of its outer wall measure over 800 feet long and up to 32 feet high. The wall enclosed several huts and a tall, cone-shaped tower. Archaeologists and anthropologists believe that the enclosure was the city's center and was occupied only by the elite. It was the dividing line between the rich and the rest.

Several clues led to this theory. First, remnants of exotic items from overseas were found within the enclosure. Second, no evidence of cooking was found within the walled area. Most likely, this means that food was prepared elsewhere by servants and delivered to the wealthy inhabitants upon demand. And third, evidence of only 100-200 residents is shown, while many thousands occupied the city.

Where did everyone else live? They lived in mud huts surrounding the enclosure. Although the huts were not quite as glamorous as the granite "palaces," they were well constructed.

Long Live Rock

By 1200 C.E., the city had grown strong, and was well known as an important religious and trading center. Some believe that religion triggered the city's rise to power, and that the tall tower was used for worship. The people of Great Zimbabwe most likely worshipped Mwari, the supreme god in the Shona religion.

Long looted by treasure hunters, thrill-seekers, and lay archaeologists, it has been only in past two decades that the ruins of the stone city of Great Zimbabwe have begun to reveal their secrets of past African culture and history.

Discoveries of Chinese porcelain, engraved glass from the Middle East, and metal ornaments from West Africa provide evidence that Great Zimbabwe participated in a comprehensive trade network during the 13th and 14th centuries. Gold was probably its chief export and East African cities - especially those along the coast that had overseas connections - were most likely its primary trading partners.

Zimbabwe's prosperity continued until the mid-15th century. At this time, the city's trade activity declined and the people began to migrate elsewhere. The exact cause of the evacuation remains a puzzle, but many scientists agree that a decline in soil quality and fertility was probably a major factor. The Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe has declined, but the House of Rock still stands.

Riddle of Great Zimbabwe
Archaeology magazine reports on some of the mysteries archaeologists are having trouble solving about Great Zimbabwe. The main riddles revolve around the location of the city and the time period in which it was founded - why then and why there?

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Lost Tribes of Israel: Mystery of Great Zimbabwe
Racism and legends of the Lost Tribes of Israel led European explorers and colonial rulers to believe any number of groups other than local Africans built the city now called Great Zimbabwe. Although little evidence remains of the original civilization that built the complex, modern archeologists know it to be of African descent.

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The word "Zimbabwe" is thought to be derived from a Shona phrase meaning "stone enclosure" or "house of rock." The House of Rock. It's not the name of a dance club or a new band. It's actually a translation of the Shona word, "Zimbabwe."

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe in Historical Archaeology: Reconceptualizing Decline, Abandonment, and Reoccupation of an Ancient Polity, A.D. 1450-1900)

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe in Historical Archaeology: Reconceptualizing Decline, Abandonment, and Reoccupation of an Ancient Polity, A.D. 1450-1900)

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1. How does the search for salt possibly explain the abandonment of Great Zimbabwe?
2. To what extent does the Karanga expansion in the 15th century led Great Zimbabwe to be abandoned?
3. Considering the rise of Torwa and the State of Butua, what is its significance in causing the desertion of Great Zimbabwe?

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“The chiefs also served as religious leaders, perhaps explaining why the area's first elaborate structure was atop a hill. Dewey cites a tradition of housing leaders near the sky. In high places, the leaders could be near eagles, often seen as messengers from ancestor spirits or chiefs, says Thomas Huffman, a South African archeologist.”

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When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures. Surely, the Europeans contended, the Shona farmers and herders who lived in mud and thatch huts in the area were incapable of constructing such an extraordinary edifice as a stone enclave measuring 262 feet by 180 feet and surrounded by 36-foot walls with a conical tower at one end. A 16th century Portuguese explorer wrote that the ruins were from the "land of Ophir," a biblical site reputed to be the source of King Solomon's gold. Later historians and archaeologists speculated on equally exotic sources of the spectacular ruins: the queen of Sheba, Phoenicians, the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John. They reached for almost any theory as long as it did not attribute great architectural feats to black Africans. In fact, as carbon dating and decades of modern archaeology proved without a doubt in the 1950s, ancestors of today's Shona built the stone walls. They are the dramatic remnants of a great farming and trading civilization that peaked at about 18,000 residents and controlled much of the gold and ivory trade in southern Africa. That society and the fortresses it built between 1200 and 1450 represent one of the most impressive ancient cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and remain a potent symbol in the modern world. The ruins lie within the former British colony called Rhodesia. When blacks finally won control of Rhodesia in 1980, they renamed it Zimbabwe, the word derived from one of two Shona phrases long used to describe the ruins: dzimba dza mabwe (houses of stone) and dzimba woye (venerated houses), according to anthropologist Brian Fagan. The largest set of ruins, covering more than 1,779 acres, and the society that built it are known as Great Zimbabwe to distinguish them from the country at large and from the dozens of other stone ruins, also called zimbabwes. Little is known about daily life in Great Zimbabwe, scholars say. The main reason is racism. European scholars who had first crack at the site were so focused on proving that an "alien" civilization built the stone walls that they threw away manyrelics found among the ruins because they clearly were African-made. British antiquarian Theodore Bent saved several carved soapstone birds from his 1891 excavations because he thought them non-African. About a decade later, author Richard Hall wrote that he removed nearly 12 feet of dirt and all of the artifacts it contained because he thought of the material as "the filth and decadence of the {African} occupation" of an ancient, foreign-built site. "The early archeologists were crude fortune-hunters, and they were destructive in their digging," says Robert Rotberg, a professor at Harvard University's Institute for International Development. "A lot has been lost." Oral history also is sketchy, according to David Beach, a scholar at the University of Zimbabwe, because in the 18th century, a Shona group from the northwest overran the area and displaced another Shona group who were direct descendants of the builders. Still, scholars say, some facts are known. The Africans who built Great Zimbabwe primarily were farmers and herders, although the elite also controlled long distance trade. Some people made pottery, mined gold or worked with metal during the dry season of May to October, when other labor was little in demand.

Debris around the sites shows that people who lived within and around the stone walls grew and ate millet and sorghum, grains that they tilled with hand-held hoes of wood or iron. Peter Garlake, a Zimbabwean expert on the ruins, writes in his book Great Zimbabwe that residents of Great Zimbabwe often ate beef. As in much of Africa before the European conquest, land was plentiful, but labor was relatively scarce. That made polygamy an important part of the social structure. A man with several wives and many children to help could till more soil, harvest more crops and accumulate more wealth.

Men often concentrated on cattle herding, while most women farmed, a division of labor that persisted among the Shona and many other traditional African societies into the 20th century.

People tended to invest extra resources in cattle because plants were vulnerable to the weather, and the market for extra grain was weak. Everyone grew grain and seldom needed to buy more.

Cattle were much easier to trade -- no need to wait for harvest time, and the goods transported themselves. Richer farmers could accumulate large herds and trade livestock for luxury goods such as gold and ivory. As in many parts of Africa, a family's wealth often was measured by the size of its herds.

The Great Zimbabwe plateau probably attracted people because its climate is milder than that of the hotter lowlands and free of the tsetse fly, which carries sleeping sickness, which kills cattle.

As a result, herds could stay in the area all year, rather than having to be moved during tsetse fly season. As a result, Rotberg says, people built permanent homes on the plateau and invested the extra labor and wealth in more elaborate construction projects in town centers.

Residents lived in thatch-roofed houses made of dakha, gravel mixed with clay, often in rich red and yellow. Measuring as much as 10 yards wide, these houses often were decorated with elaborate moldings and abstract designs and ranged in height to 20 feet, according to Garlake.

In addition to a climate that invited permanent residence, the region boasted another attribute rare in other parts of Africa -- easy access to granite, an excellent building stone.

As a result, ancient Zimbabweans built huge stone walls, as much as 17 feet thick, in and around houses, dividing the settlement into specialized areas for different purposes.

The walls were not for defense because the tallest are atop a cliff, while areas more easily attacked are much less protected. Rather, the walls were a form of urban zoning, separating areas and, through sheerly extravagant design, demonstrating the wealth and power of Shona chiefs who controlled the area.

Scholars believe that the ancient Shona used an ingenious method for cutting naturally occurring granite into almost square blocks 3 to 7 inches thick. When fires are set near local rock faces, they fracture into long rectangles, Fagan says.

Sometimes, the builders used another kind of local stone as a hammer and shaped the blocks into more standard pieces. Then they stacked the blocks, without mortar, to form irregular curving walls.

Some of the walls include storm drains, and steps and buttresses are next to important entrances. Later walls are more evenly shaped, and some are topped with decorative, chevron-shaped designs. One enclosure has a 30-foot tower that some experts think is a symbolic representation of traditional baskets used by Shona to store grain. Though the tower was not used for grain, it may have been shaped this way to symbolize the wealth of Shona chiefs.

The walls were built over several hundred years. The oldest part is atop a hill, and the stone work flowed down onto the plains during the reigns of several chiefs, says William J. Dewey, an art historian at the University of Iowa.

The most imposing structure is the Great Enclosure, which includes the tower and the highest and thickest walls. It is one of the later buildings, probably the residence of chiefs and their families, Fagan says.

Historians agree that slaves did not build Great Zimbabwe. The walls may have been erected as a community effort or by people paying some sort of tax with their labor.

The leaders, usually called chiefs or lords, maintained authority through marriage and kinship ties and by distributing wealth, particularly gold, ivory and other valuables acquired through long distance trade, Fagan says.

This form of leadership, as opposed to that of European-style kings who maintained power through violence and control of farmland, is common where land is abundant and the population relatively small. People who don't like the leader can easily move away, historians note.

Great Zimbabwe's chiefs gained much of their power by controlling long-distance trade. They traded within their territory for gold, ivory and beads, and they traded with Asia and the Islamic world for manufactured goods.

Archeological excavations at Great Zimbabwe have found 14th century Chinese celadon pottery, Persian bowls and Islamic glass, Garlake wrote. Such exotic goods were extremely rare in southern Africa, and their presence at the ruins suggests that Great Zimbabwe dominated overseas trade during its heyday.

Most of the traded goods were small because southern Africans did not use the wheel or pack animals. Everything had to be transported by canoe or on people's backs, Fagan says. Great Zimbabwe would have attracted traders because it included what then was an extremely large city and relatively wealthy people. It also was located between coastal tribes, who dealt with Asian merchants, and the sources of gold and ivory attractive to foreign traders.

The chiefs also served as religious leaders, perhaps explaining why the area's first elaborate structure was atop a hill. Dewey cites a tradition of housing leaders near the sky. In high places, the leaders could be near eagles, often seen as messengers from ancestor spirits or chiefs, says Thomas Huffman, a South African archeologist.

The soapstone bird statues found on the Zimbabwean plains were African-made, despite the European archeologists' initial assumptions, and they are unparalleled in southern Africa. Bearing humanoid features, several were found atop pillar-like rocks. Dewey says they may represent the spirits of the natural world -- earth, fire, water, sky -- and Huffman speculates that they may have honored specific chiefs.

Huffman also has a controversial theory that the Great Zimbabwe enclosures were divided into areas for men and women, with part reserved for female initiation rites, perhaps including female circumcision. Other historians say that is unlikely because today's Shona do not perform such rites.

The experts also disagree about what happened to the people who lived at Great Zimbabwe, in part because no written records exist. Some scholars believe that the Shona split into two societies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries -- Mutapa to the north and Torwa to the southwest near the present-day Bulawayo.

Others say the decline of Great Zimbabwe and the rise of the two new societies were simultaneous but not linked. The key question, according to Beach, is whether the society "imploded" as it became too small or "exploded," disintegrating because people migrated away in successive waves.

Dozens of smaller stone ruins exist in the region, extending from roughly the Indian Ocean to the Kalahari Desert, and these probably were built by migrants who wanted to emulate their ancestral home.

In the 15th century, Portuguese encountered the rulers of Mutapa, and the visitors written descriptions cite a society similar to what historians believe Great Zimbabwe was like, although the Mutapa did not build stone walls. Garlake suggests that is because Dande, site of the Mutapa society's main capital, lacked suitable building stone.

Another theory about Great Zimbabwe's decline is that the large concentration of people exhausted the soil, gold and wood in the area. Some historians also think that the civilization may have run out of salt, used to preserve food in hot weather.

While Great Zimbabwe may never be fully explained, its ruins remain one of southern Africa's most impressive sites and a powerful symbol of African pride in present-day Zimbabwe.

"Everyone is trying to appropriate" the ruins, Dewey says. "It's in commercial material, and political parties use it in their ads."

To many, the ruins symbolize how much the Zimbabwean people accomplished before Europeans arrived.

The ruins are "a powerful symbol of national identity and unity," Fagan says. "The ruins have served this purpose since the days of nationalist rebellion against white rule. To many Shona people ... Zimbabwe is still a sacred place, built by revered ancestors.

"To the world as a whole, the ruins are a major archaeological site, a stunning example of ancient African achievement and a vital part of our common cultural heritage as human beings." TO LEARN MORE: Read Great Zimbabwe, by archaeologist P.S. Garlake, published by Thames and Hudson, 1973. Visit the Great Zimbabwe site on the Internet's World Wide Web at http://wn.apc.org/mediatech/VRZ10011.HTM. CAPTION: This spectacular conical tower, 33 feet tall, inside Great Zimbabwe's "Great Enclosure" complex, is filled with stone and once had a patterned frieze at the top. Detail at left is in the complex's outer wall. CAPTION: At left, stone walls remain on the "hill ruin" (indicated on map below), a possible religious site overlooking the town center. Above, one of the many soapstone birds found at the site. CAPTION: Another view of the conical tower inside the "Great Enclosure." The compound, containing 15 smaller enclosures and several platforms, may have been the residence of Great Zimbabwe's ruling families.

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When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures.

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“Some scholars believe that the Shona split into two societies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries -- Mutapa to the north and Torwa to the southwest near the present-day Bulawayo…Others say the decline of Great Zimbabwe and the rise of the two new societies were simultaneous but not linked. The key question, according to Beach, is whether the society "imploded" as it became too small or "exploded," disintegrating because people migrated away in successive waves…Another theory about Great Zimbabwe's decline is that the large concentration of people exhausted the soil, gold and wood in the area. Some historians also think that the civilization may have run out of salt, used to preserve food in hot weather.”

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures. Surely, the Europeans contended, the Shona farmers and herders who lived in mud and thatch huts in the area were incapable of constructing such an extraordinary edifice as a stone enclave measuring 262 feet by 180 feet and surrounded by 36-foot walls with a conical tower at one end. A 16th century Portuguese explorer wrote that the ruins were from the "land of Ophir," a biblical site reputed to be the source of King Solomon's gold. Later historians and archaeologists speculated on equally exotic sources of the spectacular ruins: the queen of Sheba, Phoenicians, the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John. They reached for almost any theory as long as it did not attribute great architectural feats to black Africans. In fact, as carbon dating and decades of modern archaeology proved without a doubt in the 1950s, ancestors of today's Shona built the stone walls. They are the dramatic remnants of a great farming and trading civilization that peaked at about 18,000 residents and controlled much of the gold and ivory trade in southern Africa. That society and the fortresses it built between 1200 and 1450 represent one of the most impressive ancient cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and remain a potent symbol in the modern world. The ruins lie within the former British colony called Rhodesia. When blacks finally won control of Rhodesia in 1980, they renamed it Zimbabwe, the word derived from one of two Shona phrases long used to describe the ruins: dzimba dza mabwe (houses of stone) and dzimba woye (venerated houses), according to anthropologist Brian Fagan. The largest set of ruins, covering more than 1,779 acres, and the society that built it are known as Great Zimbabwe to distinguish them from the country at large and from the dozens of other stone ruins, also called zimbabwes. Little is known about daily life in Great Zimbabwe, scholars say. The main reason is racism. European scholars who had first crack at the site were so focused on proving that an "alien" civilization built the stone walls that they threw away manyrelics found among the ruins because they clearly were African-made. British antiquarian Theodore Bent saved several carved soapstone birds from his 1891 excavations because he thought them non-African. About a decade later, author Richard Hall wrote that he removed nearly 12 feet of dirt and all of the artifacts it contained because he thought of the material as "the filth and decadence of the {African} occupation" of an ancient, foreign-built site. "The early archeologists were crude fortune-hunters, and they were destructive in their digging," says Robert Rotberg, a professor at Harvard University's Institute for International Development. "A lot has been lost." Oral history also is sketchy, according to David Beach, a scholar at the University of Zimbabwe, because in the 18th century, a Shona group from the northwest overran the area and displaced another Shona group who were direct descendants of the builders. Still, scholars say, some facts are known. The Africans who built Great Zimbabwe primarily were farmers and herders, although the elite also controlled long distance trade. Some people made pottery, mined gold or worked with metal during the dry season of May to October, when other labor was little in demand.

Debris around the sites shows that people who lived within and around the stone walls grew and ate millet and sorghum, grains that they tilled with hand-held hoes of wood or iron. Peter Garlake, a Zimbabwean expert on the ruins, writes in his book Great Zimbabwe that residents of Great Zimbabwe often ate beef. As in much of Africa before the European conquest, land was plentiful, but labor was relatively scarce. That made polygamy an important part of the social structure. A man with several wives and many children to help could till more soil, harvest more crops and accumulate more wealth.

Men often concentrated on cattle herding, while most women farmed, a division of labor that persisted among the Shona and many other traditional African societies into the 20th century.

People tended to invest extra resources in cattle because plants were vulnerable to the weather, and the market for extra grain was weak. Everyone grew grain and seldom needed to buy more.

Cattle were much easier to trade -- no need to wait for harvest time, and the goods transported themselves. Richer farmers could accumulate large herds and trade livestock for luxury goods such as gold and ivory. As in many parts of Africa, a family's wealth often was measured by the size of its herds.

The Great Zimbabwe plateau probably attracted people because its climate is milder than that of the hotter lowlands and free of the tsetse fly, which carries sleeping sickness, which kills cattle.

As a result, herds could stay in the area all year, rather than having to be moved during tsetse fly season. As a result, Rotberg says, people built permanent homes on the plateau and invested the extra labor and wealth in more elaborate construction projects in town centers.

Residents lived in thatch-roofed houses made of dakha, gravel mixed with clay, often in rich red and yellow. Measuring as much as 10 yards wide, these houses often were decorated with elaborate moldings and abstract designs and ranged in height to 20 feet, according to Garlake.

In addition to a climate that invited permanent residence, the region boasted another attribute rare in other parts of Africa -- easy access to granite, an excellent building stone.

As a result, ancient Zimbabweans built huge stone walls, as much as 17 feet thick, in and around houses, dividing the settlement into specialized areas for different purposes.

The walls were not for defense because the tallest are atop a cliff, while areas more easily attacked are much less protected. Rather, the walls were a form of urban zoning, separating areas and, through sheerly extravagant design, demonstrating the wealth and power of Shona chiefs who controlled the area.

Scholars believe that the ancient Shona used an ingenious method for cutting naturally occurring granite into almost square blocks 3 to 7 inches thick. When fires are set near local rock faces, they fracture into long rectangles, Fagan says.

Sometimes, the builders used another kind of local stone as a hammer and shaped the blocks into more standard pieces. Then they stacked the blocks, without mortar, to form irregular curving walls.

Some of the walls include storm drains, and steps and buttresses are next to important entrances. Later walls are more evenly shaped, and some are topped with decorative, chevron-shaped designs. One enclosure has a 30-foot tower that some experts think is a symbolic representation of traditional baskets used by Shona to store grain. Though the tower was not used for grain, it may have been shaped this way to symbolize the wealth of Shona chiefs.

The walls were built over several hundred years. The oldest part is atop a hill, and the stone work flowed down onto the plains during the reigns of several chiefs, says William J. Dewey, an art historian at the University of Iowa.

The most imposing structure is the Great Enclosure, which includes the tower and the highest and thickest walls. It is one of the later buildings, probably the residence of chiefs and their families, Fagan says.

Historians agree that slaves did not build Great Zimbabwe. The walls may have been erected as a community effort or by people paying some sort of tax with their labor.

The leaders, usually called chiefs or lords, maintained authority through marriage and kinship ties and by distributing wealth, particularly gold, ivory and other valuables acquired through long distance trade, Fagan says.

This form of leadership, as opposed to that of European-style kings who maintained power through violence and control of farmland, is common where land is abundant and the population relatively small. People who don't like the leader can easily move away, historians note.

Great Zimbabwe's chiefs gained much of their power by controlling long-distance trade. They traded within their territory for gold, ivory and beads, and they traded with Asia and the Islamic world for manufactured goods.

Archeological excavations at Great Zimbabwe have found 14th century Chinese celadon pottery, Persian bowls and Islamic glass, Garlake wrote. Such exotic goods were extremely rare in southern Africa, and their presence at the ruins suggests that Great Zimbabwe dominated overseas trade during its heyday.

Most of the traded goods were small because southern Africans did not use the wheel or pack animals. Everything had to be transported by canoe or on people's backs, Fagan says. Great Zimbabwe would have attracted traders because it included what then was an extremely large city and relatively wealthy people. It also was located between coastal tribes, who dealt with Asian merchants, and the sources of gold and ivory attractive to foreign traders.

The chiefs also served as religious leaders, perhaps explaining why the area's first elaborate structure was atop a hill. Dewey cites a tradition of housing leaders near the sky. In high places, the leaders could be near eagles, often seen as messengers from ancestor spirits or chiefs, says Thomas Huffman, a South African archeologist.

The soapstone bird statues found on the Zimbabwean plains were African-made, despite the European archeologists' initial assumptions, and they are unparalleled in southern Africa. Bearing humanoid features, several were found atop pillar-like rocks. Dewey says they may represent the spirits of the natural world -- earth, fire, water, sky -- and Huffman speculates that they may have honored specific chiefs.

Huffman also has a controversial theory that the Great Zimbabwe enclosures were divided into areas for men and women, with part reserved for female initiation rites, perhaps including female circumcision. Other historians say that is unlikely because today's Shona do not perform such rites.

The experts also disagree about what happened to the people who lived at Great Zimbabwe, in part because no written records exist. Some scholars believe that the Shona split into two societies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries -- Mutapa to the north and Torwa to the southwest near the present-day Bulawayo.

Others say the decline of Great Zimbabwe and the rise of the two new societies were simultaneous but not linked. The key question, according to Beach, is whether the society "imploded" as it became too small or "exploded," disintegrating because people migrated away in successive waves.

Dozens of smaller stone ruins exist in the region, extending from roughly the Indian Ocean to the Kalahari Desert, and these probably were built by migrants who wanted to emulate their ancestral home.

In the 15th century, Portuguese encountered the rulers of Mutapa, and the visitors written descriptions cite a society similar to what historians believe Great Zimbabwe was like, although the Mutapa did not build stone walls. Garlake suggests that is because Dande, site of the Mutapa society's main capital, lacked suitable building stone.

Another theory about Great Zimbabwe's decline is that the large concentration of people exhausted the soil, gold and wood in the area. Some historians also think that the civilization may have run out of salt, used to preserve food in hot weather.

While Great Zimbabwe may never be fully explained, its ruins remain one of southern Africa's most impressive sites and a powerful symbol of African pride in present-day Zimbabwe.

"Everyone is trying to appropriate" the ruins, Dewey says. "It's in commercial material, and political parties use it in their ads."

To many, the ruins symbolize how much the Zimbabwean people accomplished before Europeans arrived.

The ruins are "a powerful symbol of national identity and unity," Fagan says. "The ruins have served this purpose since the days of nationalist rebellion against white rule. To many Shona people ... Zimbabwe is still a sacred place, built by revered ancestors.

"To the world as a whole, the ruins are a major archaeological site, a stunning example of ancient African achievement and a vital part of our common cultural heritage as human beings." TO LEARN MORE: Read Great Zimbabwe, by archaeologist P.S. Garlake, published by Thames and Hudson, 1973. Visit the Great Zimbabwe site on the Internet's World Wide Web at http://wn.apc.org/mediatech/VRZ10011.HTM. CAPTION: This spectacular conical tower, 33 feet tall, inside Great Zimbabwe's "Great Enclosure" complex, is filled with stone and once had a patterned frieze at the top. Detail at left is in the complex's outer wall. CAPTION: At left, stone walls remain on the "hill ruin" (indicated on map below), a possible religious site overlooking the town center. Above, one of the many soapstone birds found at the site. CAPTION: Another view of the conical tower inside the "Great Enclosure." The compound, containing 15 smaller enclosures and several platforms, may have been the residence of Great Zimbabwe's ruling families.

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When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures.

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Reading Guide Questions (US History - Great Zimbabwe)

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Reading Guide Questions (US History - Great Zimbabwe)

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1. Who can be assumed to have lived in the stone enclosure?

2. Considering Zimbabwe had a hierarchical class system, what role did the elite class play in the economy, in comparison to the commoners?

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“...land was plentiful, but labor was relatively scarce. That made polygamy an important part of the social structure. A man with several wives and many children to help could till more soil, harvest more crops and accumulate more wealth…The leaders, usually called chiefs or lords, maintained authority through marriage and kinship ties and by distributing wealth, particularly gold, ivory and other valuables acquired through long distance trade…This form of leadership, as opposed to that of European-style kings who maintained power through violence and control of farmland, is common where land is abundant and the population relatively small. People who don't like the leader can easily move away, historians note.”

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When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures. Surely, the Europeans contended, the Shona farmers and herders who lived in mud and thatch huts in the area were incapable of constructing such an extraordinary edifice as a stone enclave measuring 262 feet by 180 feet and surrounded by 36-foot walls with a conical tower at one end. A 16th century Portuguese explorer wrote that the ruins were from the "land of Ophir," a biblical site reputed to be the source of King Solomon's gold. Later historians and archaeologists speculated on equally exotic sources of the spectacular ruins: the queen of Sheba, Phoenicians, the legendary Christian kingdom of Prester John. They reached for almost any theory as long as it did not attribute great architectural feats to black Africans. In fact, as carbon dating and decades of modern archaeology proved without a doubt in the 1950s, ancestors of today's Shona built the stone walls. They are the dramatic remnants of a great farming and trading civilization that peaked at about 18,000 residents and controlled much of the gold and ivory trade in southern Africa. That society and the fortresses it built between 1200 and 1450 represent one of the most impressive ancient cultures in sub-Saharan Africa and remain a potent symbol in the modern world. The ruins lie within the former British colony called Rhodesia. When blacks finally won control of Rhodesia in 1980, they renamed it Zimbabwe, the word derived from one of two Shona phrases long used to describe the ruins: dzimba dza mabwe (houses of stone) and dzimba woye (venerated houses), according to anthropologist Brian Fagan. The largest set of ruins, covering more than 1,779 acres, and the society that built it are known as Great Zimbabwe to distinguish them from the country at large and from the dozens of other stone ruins, also called zimbabwes. Little is known about daily life in Great Zimbabwe, scholars say. The main reason is racism. European scholars who had first crack at the site were so focused on proving that an "alien" civilization built the stone walls that they threw away manyrelics found among the ruins because they clearly were African-made. British antiquarian Theodore Bent saved several carved soapstone birds from his 1891 excavations because he thought them non-African. About a decade later, author Richard Hall wrote that he removed nearly 12 feet of dirt and all of the artifacts it contained because he thought of the material as "the filth and decadence of the {African} occupation" of an ancient, foreign-built site. "The early archeologists were crude fortune-hunters, and they were destructive in their digging," says Robert Rotberg, a professor at Harvard University's Institute for International Development. "A lot has been lost." Oral history also is sketchy, according to David Beach, a scholar at the University of Zimbabwe, because in the 18th century, a Shona group from the northwest overran the area and displaced another Shona group who were direct descendants of the builders. Still, scholars say, some facts are known. The Africans who built Great Zimbabwe primarily were farmers and herders, although the elite also controlled long distance trade. Some people made pottery, mined gold or worked with metal during the dry season of May to October, when other labor was little in demand.

Debris around the sites shows that people who lived within and around the stone walls grew and ate millet and sorghum, grains that they tilled with hand-held hoes of wood or iron. Peter Garlake, a Zimbabwean expert on the ruins, writes in his book Great Zimbabwe that residents of Great Zimbabwe often ate beef. As in much of Africa before the European conquest, land was plentiful, but labor was relatively scarce. That made polygamy an important part of the social structure. A man with several wives and many children to help could till more soil, harvest more crops and accumulate more wealth.

Men often concentrated on cattle herding, while most women farmed, a division of labor that persisted among the Shona and many other traditional African societies into the 20th century.

People tended to invest extra resources in cattle because plants were vulnerable to the weather, and the market for extra grain was weak. Everyone grew grain and seldom needed to buy more.

Cattle were much easier to trade -- no need to wait for harvest time, and the goods transported themselves. Richer farmers could accumulate large herds and trade livestock for luxury goods such as gold and ivory. As in many parts of Africa, a family's wealth often was measured by the size of its herds.

The Great Zimbabwe plateau probably attracted people because its climate is milder than that of the hotter lowlands and free of the tsetse fly, which carries sleeping sickness, which kills cattle.

As a result, herds could stay in the area all year, rather than having to be moved during tsetse fly season. As a result, Rotberg says, people built permanent homes on the plateau and invested the extra labor and wealth in more elaborate construction projects in town centers.

Residents lived in thatch-roofed houses made of dakha, gravel mixed with clay, often in rich red and yellow. Measuring as much as 10 yards wide, these houses often were decorated with elaborate moldings and abstract designs and ranged in height to 20 feet, according to Garlake.

In addition to a climate that invited permanent residence, the region boasted another attribute rare in other parts of Africa -- easy access to granite, an excellent building stone.

As a result, ancient Zimbabweans built huge stone walls, as much as 17 feet thick, in and around houses, dividing the settlement into specialized areas for different purposes.

The walls were not for defense because the tallest are atop a cliff, while areas more easily attacked are much less protected. Rather, the walls were a form of urban zoning, separating areas and, through sheerly extravagant design, demonstrating the wealth and power of Shona chiefs who controlled the area.

Scholars believe that the ancient Shona used an ingenious method for cutting naturally occurring granite into almost square blocks 3 to 7 inches thick. When fires are set near local rock faces, they fracture into long rectangles, Fagan says.

Sometimes, the builders used another kind of local stone as a hammer and shaped the blocks into more standard pieces. Then they stacked the blocks, without mortar, to form irregular curving walls.

Some of the walls include storm drains, and steps and buttresses are next to important entrances. Later walls are more evenly shaped, and some are topped with decorative, chevron-shaped designs. One enclosure has a 30-foot tower that some experts think is a symbolic representation of traditional baskets used by Shona to store grain. Though the tower was not used for grain, it may have been shaped this way to symbolize the wealth of Shona chiefs.

The walls were built over several hundred years. The oldest part is atop a hill, and the stone work flowed down onto the plains during the reigns of several chiefs, says William J. Dewey, an art historian at the University of Iowa.

The most imposing structure is the Great Enclosure, which includes the tower and the highest and thickest walls. It is one of the later buildings, probably the residence of chiefs and their families, Fagan says.

Historians agree that slaves did not build Great Zimbabwe. The walls may have been erected as a community effort or by people paying some sort of tax with their labor.

The leaders, usually called chiefs or lords, maintained authority through marriage and kinship ties and by distributing wealth, particularly gold, ivory and other valuables acquired through long distance trade, Fagan says.

This form of leadership, as opposed to that of European-style kings who maintained power through violence and control of farmland, is common where land is abundant and the population relatively small. People who don't like the leader can easily move away, historians note.

Great Zimbabwe's chiefs gained much of their power by controlling long-distance trade. They traded within their territory for gold, ivory and beads, and they traded with Asia and the Islamic world for manufactured goods.

Archeological excavations at Great Zimbabwe have found 14th century Chinese celadon pottery, Persian bowls and Islamic glass, Garlake wrote. Such exotic goods were extremely rare in southern Africa, and their presence at the ruins suggests that Great Zimbabwe dominated overseas trade during its heyday.

Most of the traded goods were small because southern Africans did not use the wheel or pack animals. Everything had to be transported by canoe or on people's backs, Fagan says. Great Zimbabwe would have attracted traders because it included what then was an extremely large city and relatively wealthy people. It also was located between coastal tribes, who dealt with Asian merchants, and the sources of gold and ivory attractive to foreign traders.

The chiefs also served as religious leaders, perhaps explaining why the area's first elaborate structure was atop a hill. Dewey cites a tradition of housing leaders near the sky. In high places, the leaders could be near eagles, often seen as messengers from ancestor spirits or chiefs, says Thomas Huffman, a South African archeologist.

The soapstone bird statues found on the Zimbabwean plains were African-made, despite the European archeologists' initial assumptions, and they are unparalleled in southern Africa. Bearing humanoid features, several were found atop pillar-like rocks. Dewey says they may represent the spirits of the natural world -- earth, fire, water, sky -- and Huffman speculates that they may have honored specific chiefs.

Huffman also has a controversial theory that the Great Zimbabwe enclosures were divided into areas for men and women, with part reserved for female initiation rites, perhaps including female circumcision. Other historians say that is unlikely because today's Shona do not perform such rites.

The experts also disagree about what happened to the people who lived at Great Zimbabwe, in part because no written records exist. Some scholars believe that the Shona split into two societies in the late 15th and early 16th centuries -- Mutapa to the north and Torwa to the southwest near the present-day Bulawayo.

Others say the decline of Great Zimbabwe and the rise of the two new societies were simultaneous but not linked. The key question, according to Beach, is whether the society "imploded" as it became too small or "exploded," disintegrating because people migrated away in successive waves.

Dozens of smaller stone ruins exist in the region, extending from roughly the Indian Ocean to the Kalahari Desert, and these probably were built by migrants who wanted to emulate their ancestral home.

In the 15th century, Portuguese encountered the rulers of Mutapa, and the visitors written descriptions cite a society similar to what historians believe Great Zimbabwe was like, although the Mutapa did not build stone walls. Garlake suggests that is because Dande, site of the Mutapa society's main capital, lacked suitable building stone.

Another theory about Great Zimbabwe's decline is that the large concentration of people exhausted the soil, gold and wood in the area. Some historians also think that the civilization may have run out of salt, used to preserve food in hot weather.

While Great Zimbabwe may never be fully explained, its ruins remain one of southern Africa's most impressive sites and a powerful symbol of African pride in present-day Zimbabwe.

"Everyone is trying to appropriate" the ruins, Dewey says. "It's in commercial material, and political parties use it in their ads."

To many, the ruins symbolize how much the Zimbabwean people accomplished before Europeans arrived.

The ruins are "a powerful symbol of national identity and unity," Fagan says. "The ruins have served this purpose since the days of nationalist rebellion against white rule. To many Shona people ... Zimbabwe is still a sacred place, built by revered ancestors.

"To the world as a whole, the ruins are a major archaeological site, a stunning example of ancient African achievement and a vital part of our common cultural heritage as human beings." TO LEARN MORE: Read Great Zimbabwe, by archaeologist P.S. Garlake, published by Thames and Hudson, 1973. Visit the Great Zimbabwe site on the Internet's World Wide Web at http://wn.apc.org/mediatech/VRZ10011.HTM. CAPTION: This spectacular conical tower, 33 feet tall, inside Great Zimbabwe's "Great Enclosure" complex, is filled with stone and once had a patterned frieze at the top. Detail at left is in the complex's outer wall. CAPTION: At left, stone walls remain on the "hill ruin" (indicated on map below), a possible religious site overlooking the town center. Above, one of the many soapstone birds found at the site. CAPTION: Another view of the conical tower inside the "Great Enclosure." The compound, containing 15 smaller enclosures and several platforms, may have been the residence of Great Zimbabwe's ruling families.

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When whites first came to southern Africa in the 16th century, they were amazed to find the ruins of great stone towers and long, curving walls. They immediately concluded that black Africans could not have built the structures.

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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1. What societal values are reflected in ancient Zimbabwe’s governmental system?
2. What can you conclude served a powerful part of the organization and decisions of the government?

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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1. Why might Zimbabwe have possibly split into two civilizations?

2. What could have caused the possible overpopulation of Zimbabwe?

3. What does the possible overuse of farmland indicate about Zimbabwe’s economy?

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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Reading Guide Questions (Great Zimbabwe)

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1. What can you conclude about the role of women and men in regards to their contributions to the community?

2. What can you infer about the disparity of power between the lower and upper classes?

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1. What can you conclude about the extent of organization and reach of ancient Zimbabwe’s trading systems?

2. Considering the location of the remains of the beads, what can you assume about the disparity between the higher and lower classes?

3. Considering the taxation system, what can you infer about the wealth of Zimbabwe?

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Watch Video (00:00:15-00:04:47)

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Who built Great Zimbabwe? And why? - Breeanna Elliott

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1. What can you conclude was the main economy of ancient Zimbabwe?

2. What can you assume was the general social structure?

3. Considering the possible reasons as to why ancient Zimbabwe dispersed, what can you conclude about the stability of the state?