Great Zimbabwe

Great Zimbabwe is the name given to the remains, sometimes referred to as the Great Zimbabwe Ruins, of an ancient Southern African city, located at 20°16′S 30°54′E / 20.267°S 30.900°E / -20.267; 30.900 in present-day Zimbabwe which was once the centre of a vast empire known as the Munhumutapa Empire (also called Monomotapa Empire). This empire ruled territory now falling within the modern states of Zimbabwe (which took its name from this city) and Mozambique.

Great Zimbabwe is modern Zimbabwe's national shrine, where the Zimbabwe Bird (a national symbol of Zimbabwe) was found. It is currently an archaeological site.

Name

Great Zimbabwe is the name given to hundreds of great stone ruins spread out over a 200 square mile area within the modern day country of Zimbabwe, which itself is named after the ruins. The origin of the word Zimbabwe is not known, but there are two schools of thought. It could be short form for "ziimba remabwe", a Shona (dialect: chiKaranga) term, which means "the great or big house built of stones". A second theory is that Zimbabwe is a contracted form of "dzimba woye" which means "venerated houses," a term usually reserved for chiefs' houses or graves. Most of the original architecture has been destroyed by age and to a large extent by excavations done in the belief that the complex had some hidden mineral wealth.

Description

An artist impression of how the Great Zimbabwe ruins may have once looked.

Built consistently throughout the period from the 11th century to the 15th century [1], the ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and largest structures located in Sub-Saharan Africa. At its peak, estimates are that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe had as many as 18,000 inhabitants. Built entirely of stone (those parts that survive), the ruins span 1,800 acres (7 km²) and cover a radius of 100 to 200 miles (160 to 320 km).

In 1531, Viçente Pegado, Captain of the Portuguese Garrison of Sofala, described Zimbabwe thus:

Among the gold mines of the inland plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers there is a fortress built of stones of marvelous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them.... This edifice is almost surrounded by hills, upon which are others resembling it in the fashioning of stone and the absence of mortar, and one of them is a tower more than 12 fathoms [22 m] high. The natives of the country call these edifices Symbaoe, which according to their language signifies court.

The ruins can be broken down into three distinct architectural groups. They are known as the Hill Complex, the Valley Complex and the famous Great Enclosure. Over 300 structures have been located so far in the Great Enclosure. The type of stone structures found on the site give an indication of the status of the citizenry. Structures that were more elaborate were built for the kings and situated further away from the center of the city. It is thought that this was done in order to escape sleeping sickness.

What little evidence exists suggests that Great Zimbabwe also became a centre for trading, with artifacts suggesting that the city formed part of a trade network extending as far as China.

Nobody knows for sure why the site was eventually abandoned. Perhaps it was due to drought, perhaps due to disease or it simply could be that the decline in the gold trade forced the people who inhabited Great Zimbabwe to look for greener pastures.

European interpretations

Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to visit the remains of the ancient city in the early 16th century. In the 19th century, the ruins were found by Adam Renders in 1868 and reported on by Karl Mauch in 1871. They became well known to English readers from J. Theodore Bent's season at Zimbabwe, under Rhodes' patronage.

Bent, whose archaeological experience had all been in Greece and Asia Minor, stated in The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) that the ruins revealed the Phoenicians as builders. Mauch favoured a legend that the structures were built by the Queen of Sheba. Other theories as to their origin abounded among white settlers and academics, with one element in common: they could not have been built by black people; they must have had some Mediterranean or other non-sub-Saharan-African connection. This can be explained by prominent sociopolitical views at the time. African cultures were viewed as devoid of civilization by the European colonizers; the idea of Great Zimbabwe originating from a primarily black African culture went against this racist view.

The first scientific archaeological excavations at the site were undertaken in by David Randall-MacIver in 1905-1906. During the late 1920s, Gertrude Caton-Thompson proved conclusively the site was indeed of African origin. Since then artifacts and radiocarbon dating have proved that the oldest remains date back to the 1200s. Nowadays archaeologists agree that the builders were probably one of the Shona-speaking peoples; the Lemba, a Shona-speaking tribe (who claim ancient Jewish descent) living along the border between Zimbabwe and South Africa, claim Great Zimbabwe and other stone cities in east Africa as part of their legacy. Some have postulated that Zimbabwe was the work of the Gokomere people, who gave rise to both the waRozwi tribe, whose modern descendants are called baRotse, and the maShona people. Certain features of Swahili architecture on the East Coast resemble those at Zimbabwe, in particular the great tower.

Effect on the political climate

Despite this evidence, the official line in colonial Rhodesia was that the structures were built by non-blacks. According to Paul Sinclair, interviewed for None But Ourselves:^[1]

I was the archaeologist stationed at Great Zimbabwe. I was told by the then-director of the Museums and Monuments organization to be extremely careful about talking to the press about the origins of the [Great] Zimbabwe state. I was told that the museum service was in a difficult situation, that the government was pressurizing them to withhold the correct information. Censorship of guidebooks, museum displays, school textbooks, radio programmes, newspapers and films was a daily occurrence. Once a member of the Museum Board of Trustees threatened me with losing my job if I said publicly that blacks had built Zimbabwe. He said it was okay to say the yellow people had built it, but I wasn't allowed to mention radio carbon dates... It was the first time since Germany in the thirties that archaeology has been so directly censored.

To black anti-colonialist groups, Great Zimbabwe became an important symbol of achievement by black Africans. Reclaiming its history was a major aim for those wanting independence. In 1980 the newly independent country was renamed for the site, and its famous soapstone bird carvings became a national symbol, depicted in the country's flag.

Some of the carvings had been taken from Great Zimbabwe around 1890 and sold to Cecil Rhodes, who was intrigued and had copies made which he gave to friends. Most of the carvings have now been returned to Zimbabwe, but one remains at Rhodes' old home, Groote Schuur, in Cape Town.

The Great Zimbabwe has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986.

Image gallery

The conical tower inside the Great Enclosure.
The Hill Complex.

Footnotes

^1 Frederikse, Julie (1990) [1982]. "chap. 1 Before the war". None But Ourselves. Biddy Partridge (photographer). Harare: Oral Traditions Association of Zimbabwe with Anvil Press. pp. pp 10–11. ISBN 0-7974-0961-0. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |accessyear=, |origmonth=, |accessmonth=, |month=, |chapterurl=, |origdate=, and |coauthors= (help)

References

Ndoro, Webber (November 1997). ""Great Zimbabwe"". Scientific American: –.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: year (link)

External links

Great Zimbabwe entry on the UNESCO World Heritage site
Ampim, Manu. "Great Zimbabwe: A History Almost Forgotten". Retrieved 18 April 2006.
Tyson, Peter. "Mystery of Great Zimbabwe". Retrieved 18 April 2006.

^ Frederikse

[1] Frederikse

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