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The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are found
in sub-Saharan Africa. According to legend, Great
Zimbabwe was the capital of the Queen of Sheba's
empire. Archaeological evidence indicates that the
medieval city was inhabited from approximately the
11th to the 15th or 16th centuries, most likely by
a Bantu speaking civilization of the Shona
people (the same ethnic group that resides there today),
although the identity of the original inhabitants
is still hotly debated.
Many present-day African tribes have claimed direct
ancestral lineage to the first people of Great Zimbabwe.
Another possibility is that the first rulers of this
great city may have been the Karanga, a branch
of the Shona-speaking people. Karanga pottery is similar
to some of the pottery found at Great Zimbabwe.
There is also a theory that the people of Great Zimbabwe
may have descended from a community that lived on
the site of Leopards Kopje, less than a hundred
and sixty kilometres away from Great Zimbabwe. One
of the reasons it is so difficult to declare with
any degree of certainty who the first inhabitants
were is due to the fact that no written records from
the site have ever been found.
The earliest habitation of the site was probably
around AD 400, but the civilization that built the
great monument settled in the area in approximately
AD 1200, beginning construction around that time as
well. As a religious and secular capital, and a major
trading centre, the city reached a population of 10,000
to 20,000 people at its peak. The city's rulers probably
dominated a realm that stretched across eastern Zimbabwe
into Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa. Evidence
of the empire's extensive trade routes includes Ming
dynasty pottery (AD 1368-1644) from China found at
the site. Other items found at Great Zimbabwe lending
credence to this theory are a glazed Persian bowl
from the 13th or 14th century, Chinese dishes, shards
from a Chinese stoneware vessel, and fragments of
engraved and painted Near Eastern glass.
The site consists of three complexes: the Acropolis,
the Valley Enclosures and most importantly,
the Great Enclosure. Most archaeologists agree
that the structures were built as status symbols for
the elite, and the most accepted theory is that Great
Zimbabwe was a royal compound. The ruins were first
discovered by Europeans in the 1870s. Impressed by
its architectural sophistication, these Europeans
simply could not accept the theory that "savage"
Africans were capable of such advanced technology.
The ruins were therefore labelled a mystery; a great
monument built by a mysterious white race, or perhaps
by the ancient Phoenicians, Romans, Arabs, or Hebrew,
but certainly not Africans. Adventurers, treasure
hunters and amateur archaeologists began to ravage
Great Zimbabwe, digging deeper and deeper into the
ground in search of that final layer of ruins proving
the existence of a Western origin. That layer was
never found, and in the process the diggers irreparably
destroyed thousands of artefacts in their futile quest.
It has only been since Zimbabwe claimed independence
in 1980 that archaeologists have seriously studied
the site and have appreciated it for what it truly
is; a medieval African city with a dynamic social,
economic and political culture completely African
in origin.
There are several theories explaining the decline
of Great Zimbabwe. The first is environmental: a combination
of over-grazing and drought depleted the soil on the
Zimbabwe Plateau of it minerals. This, in turn, may
have led to a great famine. Another theory sites the
decline of the lucrative gold trade in the region.
The inhabitants of Great Zimbabwe had to move in order
to maintain trade relations. By AD 1600 the site of
Great Zimbabwe was abandoned, its people having moved
both northwards, establishing the Mutapa state, and
southwards, founding the Torwa state.
ARCHITECTURE
Covering an area of 720 hectares, the Great
Zimbabwe National Monument is the most important historical
site in Southern Africa, and the Great Enclosure is
the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara.
The elliptical building has a circumference of 255
metres; the walls are 10 metres high and in some places
have a thickness of 5 metres, although they taper
nearer the top. It is estimated that nearly a million
granite blocks were used in the construction of this
building. The inside was probably reserved for the
king or a ruler, as large quantities of gold and ceremonial
battle-axes were found within the enclosure. The rest
of the population lived around the building in mud
huts. The walls of the Great Enclosure are extremely
straight and entirely uniform and, remarkably, no
mortar was used in their construction. The granite
blocks were evenly cut and fitted perfectly with each
other. The only openings in the walls were for the
entrance and several drainage ditches.
The most curious structure on the site and the one
that still remains a mystery is the so-called Conical
Tower. Two high walls forming a narrow passage, 54
metres long, allow direct access to the Tower. The
Tower is 10 metres high and almost 5 metres in diameter
at the base, tapering to 2 metres at the top. It is
built of granite and rests directly on the ground,
with no sub-chamber, indicating that it was not used
as a burial mound but most likely for religious purposes.
Also on the site were the remains of a shrine and
what is thought to be a gold workshop.
CONSERVATION
The Great Zimbabwe National Monument was inscribed
as a UNESCO World Heritage Monument in 1986. The committee
has recommended an upgrading of the restoration and
maintenance program on the site. The Monument suffers
from collapsing walls.
LOCATION
The Great Zimbabwe National Monument is located
on the Harare Plateau in the Shashe-Limpopo basin,
1,100 kilometres above sea level. Situated to the
east of the Kalahari desert, between the Zambezi and
Limpopo rivers, the site is surrounded by huge plains
which once supported both the agriculture and animal
herding needed to sustain the people of Great Zimbabwe.
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