This paper examines the Great Zimbabwe, a monumental stone complex in southern Africa built by the Shona-speaking peoples between approximately 1100 and 1450 AD. The paper discusses the site's architectural achievements — notably its mortar-free stone walls — as well as the colonial-era controversies that denied indigenous authorship of the ruins. It also explores the site's dual function as a royal residence and regional trade center, the artifacts recovered there, and the enduring cultural pride the site inspires among the modern people of Zimbabwe. The paper concludes by noting the site's status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and its foundational importance to African history and archaeology.
The paper effectively uses the strategy of presenting a prevailing misconception and then systematically dismantling it with historical and archaeological evidence. By detailing the claims of Mauch, Rhodes, and other colonial figures before explaining what modern excavations have established, the paper models a compare-and-contrast approach to historical revision that is common in African studies and archaeology writing.
The paper opens with a vivid description of the site before moving chronologically through European contact, colonial misattribution, and the modern archaeological consensus. It then examines the site's physical layout and dual function as palace and trade hub, reviews the artifacts found, and closes with the site's cultural legacy and UNESCO recognition. The structure is largely chronological with thematic sections woven in around trade and identity.
Within the landscape of southern Africa stands a palace that has been in place for more than seven centuries. This complex of walls and buildings features, in the words of one observer, "beautifully coursed walls [that] curved and undulated sinuously over the landscape, blending into the boulder-strewn terrain as if having arisen there naturally" (Tyson). Of course, this was not a naturally occurring site, but the identity of its builders was a subject of controversy for many years because archaeologists and others refused to believe that it could have been constructed by indigenous African peoples. The site is called the Great Zimbabwe because it is the largest of more than 200 such zimbabwes that exist across different southern African nations. It is believed to have served as a palace and trade center from which kings and spiritual leaders controlled a great expanse of surrounding land. This paper examines the history of the site and the importance and function of this royal residence.
There is a great deal of conjecture regarding who originally constructed the buildings and walls, but there is no doubt that whoever built them were masters of stonework. Many of the walls — especially those forming the outer wall of the Great Enclosure — are more than 30 feet high and constructed of massive stones (Tyson). Yet the height and the size of the stones are not the most remarkable aspect of the find. All of the stones were laid without mortar, fitted together with extraordinary precision. Every stone across the entire site is laid in precisely the same manner, and the walls have held together throughout all of those centuries. This is widely regarded as a marvel of structural engineering.
The site is believed to have first been encountered by Europeans in the late 1500s, when Portuguese traders from the nearby West African coast heard rumors from local tribespeople of a great city in the interior (Ampim). However, the first recorded European sighting of the ruins was made by Carl Mauch in 1871 (Tyson). He was led to the site after meeting a German settler who had trapped in the area and claimed that the city could not have been built by native Africans (Tyson). Mauch was eventually taken to the ruins by Karanga tribesmen (Tyson), who did not know the full history of the place. Despite this, Mauch found evidence that he believed confirmed the settler's claim. One piece of evidence was a lintel above a doorway made of a reddish, aromatic wood (Tyson). Although this wood would later prove to be local sandalwood, which grows abundantly in the region, Mauch and many others believed it to be cedar from Lebanon.
Because the Phoenicians had been accomplished seafarers for many centuries, Mauch and others concluded that they must have built the city (Tyson), or that Arabs or another supposedly more advanced civilization had constructed it. This conclusion was not supported by evidence, but it was widely accepted in colonial intellectual circles for decades.
The greatest proponent of this theory was Cecil Rhodes of Great Britain. Rhodes wanted Africa to be a continent civilized and dominated by the British (Ampim). He believed fervently in the sovereignty of the British Crown and devoted much of his short life to bringing the continent into the British colonial fold. Although he succeeded on a limited scale, he died relatively young without completing his ultimate objective. He did, however, convince many people that the ruins at Great Zimbabwe could not have been constructed by sub-Saharan African peoples (Tyson). He advanced the theory that Great Zimbabwe had been built by the Queen of Sheba and that it was from this site that she had obtained the gold she later gave to Solomon to build the Israelite temple. Although all of this has since been proven false by modern archaeological investigation, it is a telling chapter in the history of Britain's effort to remove indigenous peoples from the historical record.
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