Great Zimbabwe
The Great Zimbabwe ruins are the largest collection of ruins in Africa south of the Sahara. Located in the heart of
southern Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, they are testament to a culture of great wealth and great
architectural skill. Built between the 11th and 15th centuries, Great Zimbabwe was home to a cattle-herding people who
also became adept at metal-working. The ruins are the largest of their kind on the Zimbabwe Plateau, but they are by no
means unique. Other, smaller sites were ransacked by European treasure-hunters in the 19th century. These smaller
ruins are called zimbabwes and can be found as far as Mozambique. Out of all these, the ruins of Great Zimbabwe are
the largest.
The granite walls - embellished with turrets, towers,
platforms and elegantly sculpted stairways - seem to have
had no defensive function. But, in the words of archeologist
Peter Garlake, they display "an architecture that is
unparalleled elsewhere in Africa or beyond."
Although inexpertly restored in many places, the ruins at
Great Zimbabwe are still by a good margin the most
impressive ancient structures in sub-Saharan Africa. They
are also the source of considerable pride for present-day
Zimbabweans. After all, the huge chiseled walls of the Great
Enclosure, with its soaring stone tower and complex
chevron patterns, are a work of high engineering skill.
Much about Great Zimbabwe is still a mystery, owing in
large measure to frenzied plundering of the site around
1902, but it can be stated with certainty that the Queen of
Sheba never drew breath here. Instead, at any given time
during Great Zimbabwe's heyday, anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 black Africans did.
By the thirteenth century, they dwelt at the epicenter of an
industrious southern African empire, with trading links stretching
as far away as India, Persia and China.
In a small museum that stands near the site nowadays, you can
inspect shards of Persian pottery, a Chinese writing set and brass
ornaments from Assam in India, all unearthed amid or near the
ruins and all extremely old.
Outside the splendid stone buildings, however, the mass of
people lived in conditions resembling a modern slum. By the 16th
century, when the Portuguese arrived in southern Africa, Great
Zimbabwe had fallen into obscurity. No one is certain why.
Structure
Atop a granite outcropping, walls merge with enormous boulders to form the fortified Acropolis. In the valley below sits
the Great Enclosure with almost a million granite blocks in its outer walls. The stonework, entirely without mortar,
gradually improves until the newest walls stand double the height and width of the oldest structures. A second wall, a
meter inside the enclosure, forms a long, forbidding passage. At some points the walls are 11 meters high and extend for
over 800 meters.
Soapstone birds
The soapstone birds are one of Zimbabwe’s symbols. There are eight birds carved in soapstone that were found in the
ruins of Great Zimbabwe. These eight sculptures combine both human and bird elements. For instance, the bird’s beak is
substituted by lips while its claws are changed to feet. It is unsure what the birds symbolized. The most prevalent theory
is that they were the emblems of the royalty. Today, the soapstone birds can be found on Zimbabwe’s flag.
Great Zimbabwe's construction started in the 11th century and continued to be expanded for the next 300 years. It was
a center of trade; objects found inside the ruins suggest that the city had trading links with China and the Arab world. It
is most likely that the local population exported ivory and gold which was abundant in the plateau. Europeans didn't
stumble on Great Zimbabwe until 1868, but reports of a city of stone located in southern Africa had appeared in
Portuguese writings almost 400 years earlier.
"An inscription is cut in the stone over the entrance, so ancient that no one understands what it means," wrote one
Portuguese historian who, no doubt, got his information from bits of coastal gossip that filtered back to Portugal.
Though the inscription was never found, stories like these were enough to link the ruins forever to distant and exotic
cultures. Maybe Egyptians had built the city, went the speculation. Or Phoenicians. Maybe it was the location of the
biblical King Solomon's mines.
"There was scarcely a people of antiquity whose influence was thought to be absent," one researcher wryly noted.
The first European explorers and prospectors arrived expecting to find great riches. Instead, they found local tribes using
the walls of the Acropolis and the Great Enclosure as cattle pens. They ransacked the place anyway searching for
treasure.
That made the work of the archeologists who followed more difficult. With the help of radio-carbon dating, they now
conclude that Great Zimbabwe was at its height in the 13th and 14th centuries and home to the most powerful ruler in
the area. Though Great Zimbabwe is the largest and most intact, at least 150 other such sites have been found in
Zimbabwe.
The elite held power through control of the area's gold and copper trade. Foreign merchants brought goods from
afar. The Indian beads, Chinese porcelain and Arab glassware retrieved from Zimbabwe can be seen at the on-site
museum. The 17th-century records of Portuguese royal secretary Luiz de Figuerido Falcao shed some light on how
extensive this trade was. In his accounting of Portuguese imperial wealth in 1607, he reports that the captaincy of
Sofala, the nearest port to Great Zimbabwe, was the most lucrative of all Portuguese ports on the Indian Ocean.
http://www.greatzimbabweruins.com/
Outstanding Universal Value
Brief synthesis
Scientific research has proved that Great Zimbabwe was founded
in the 11th century on a site which had been sparsely inhabited in
the prehistoric period, by a Bantu population of the Iron Age, the
Shona. In the 14th century, it was the principal city of a major state
extending over the gold-rich plateau; its population exceeded
10,000 inhabitants. About 1450, the capital was abandoned
because the surrounding areas could no longer furnish food for
the overpopulated city and because of deforestation. The
resulting migration benefited Khami, which became the most
influential city in the region, but signaled waning political power.
When in 1505 the Portuguese settled in Sofala, the region was
divided between the rival powers of the kingdoms of Torwa and
Mwene-Mutapa.
Archaeological excavations have revealed glass beads and porcelain from China and Persia, and gold and Arab coins from
Kilwa which testify to the extent of long-standing trade with the outer world. Other evidence, including potsherds and
ironware, gives a further insight to the property’s socio-economic complexity and about farming and pastoral activities. A
monumental granite cross, located at a traditionally revered and sacred spiritual site, also illustrates community contact
with Christian missionaries.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364
Stone Ruins
The ruins of this complex of massive stone walls undulate across almost 1,800 acres of present-day southeastern
Zimbabwe. Begun during the eleventh century A.D. by Bantu-speaking ancestors of the Shona, Great Zimbabwe was
constructed and expanded for more than 300 years in a local style that eschewed straight lines for flowing curves.
Neither the first nor the last of some 300 similar complexes located on the Zimbabwean plateau, Great Zimbabwe is
set apart by the terrific scale of its structure. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great
Enclosure, has walls as high as 36 feet extending approximately 820 feet, making it the largest ancient structure
south of the Sahara Desert. In the 1800s, European travelers and English colonizers, stunned by Great Zimbabwe's
grandeur and its cunning workmanship, attributed the architecture to foreign powers. Such attributions were
dismissed when archaeological investigations conducted during the first decades of the twentieth century confirmed
both the antiquity of the site and its African origins.
Great Zimbabwe's most enduring and impressive remains are its stone walls.
These walls were constructed from granite blocks gathered from the exposed
rock of the surrounding hills. Since this rock naturally splits into even slabs and
can be broken into portable sizes, it provided a convenient and readily available
building resource. All of Great Zimbabwe's walls were fitted without the use of
mortar by laying stones one on top of the other, each layer slightly more
recessed than the last to produce a stabilizing inward slope. Early examples
were coarsely fitted using rough blocks and incorporated features of the
landscape such as boulders into the walls. Over the years the technique was
refined, and later walls were fitted together closely and evenly over long,
serpentine courses to produce remarkably finished surfaces.
Great Zimbabwe's Inhabitants
Little is known about the Bantu-speaking people who built Great Zimbabwe
or how their society was organized. The ruling elite appears to have controlled wealth through the management of
cattle, which were the staple diet at Great Zimbabwe. At its height, Great Zimbabwe is estimated to have had a
population greater than 10,000, although the majority lived at some distance from the large stone buildings. Only
200 to 300 members of the elite classes are thought to have lived within Great Zimbabwe's massive edifices.
The enormous walls are the best-preserved testaments of Great Zimbabwe's past and the largest example of an
architectural type seen in archaeological sites throughout the region. The function of these stone walls, however, has
often been misinterpreted. At first glance, these massive nonsupportive walls appear purely defensive. But scholars
doubt they ever served a martial purpose and have argued instead that cattle and people were valued above land,
which was in any event too abundant to be hoarded. The walls are thought to have been a symbolic show of
authority, designed to preserve the privacy of royal families and set them apart from and above commoners. It is also
important to note that the walls surrounded and later adjoined huts made of daga (mud and thatch), linked with
them to form a series of courtyards. Daga was also used to form raised seats in particularly significant courtyards,
and was painted to enrich its artistic effect. Since Great Zimbabwe's dagaelements have long since eroded, the
remaining stone walls provide only partial evidence of the architecture's original appearance.
Soapstone Birds
In addition to architecture, Great Zimbabwe's most famous works of art are the eight birds carved of soapstone that
were found in its ruins. The birds surmount columns more than a yard tall and are themselves on average sixteen
inches tall. The sculptures combine both human and avian elements, substituting human features like lips for a beak
and five-toed feet for claws. Excavated at the turn of the century, it is known that six of the sculptures came from the
Eastern Enclosure of the Hill complex, but unfortunately their precise arrangement can only be surmised. Scholars
have suggested that the birds served as emblems of royal authority, perhaps representing the ancestors of Great
Zimbabwe's rulers. Although their precise significance is still unknown, these sculptures remain powerful symbols of
rule in the modern era, adorning the flag of Zimbabwe as national emblems.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/zimb/hd_zimb.htm
The first whispered reports of a fabulous stone palace in the heart of southern Africa began dribbling into the coastal
trading ports of Mozambique in the 16th century. In his 1552 Da Asia, the most complete chronicle of the Portuguese
conquests, Joí£o de Barros wrote of "a square fortress, masonry within and without, built of stones of marvelous size,
and there appears to be no mortar joining them."
De Barros thought the edifice, which he never saw, was Axum, one of the cities of the Queen of Sheba. Other
Portuguese chroniclers of the day linked the rumored fortress with the region's gold trade and decided it must be the
biblical Ophir, from which the Queen of Sheba procured gold for the Temple of Solomon.
"VENERATED HOUSES"
Many believe that "Zimbabwe" is a contraction of the Shona phrase dzimba dza mabwe, "houses of stone." (The Shona
are Bantu people of Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique.) Other historians feel the word more likely derives
from dzimba woye, "venerated houses," a term usually reserved for chiefs' houses or graves.
Either way, archeological investigation has shown that the edifice's monumental walls did once enclose houses. Great
Zimbabwe was a city, home in its heyday to some 12,000 to 20,000 people. To this day, daga, a clayey conglomerate of
gravel that is Africa's most common indigenous building material, still stains the soil within Great Zimbabwe a robust red
color.
While few traces of the mud houses remain, the towering stone walls stand in mute testimony to the city's former
greatness. Quarried from the nearby granite hills, the rock used in the walls' construction easily split along fracture
planes, giving the stones a cuboidal shape that lent itself to stacking without need of mortar. Ranging from four to 17
feet thick, Great Zimbabwe's walls are about twice as high as they are wide. This results in a very sturdy structure, which
spreads its pressure evenly over the ground and adjusts well to subsidence. When two walls meet, they abut each other
with unbroken vertical joints; there are no interlocking stones. In the finest walls, workers knapped and dressed the
stones so well that the coursing is as smooth as a modern brick wall.
The Great Enclosure is the largest single prehistoric structure south of the Sahara. Looking from the air like a giant gray
bracelet, its elliptical Outer Wall is more than 800 feet long and contains an estimated 182,000 cubic feet of stone, more
than in all the site's other ruins combined. Garlake believes the Great Enclosure, which encircles a series of smaller stone
walls and a Conical Tower shaped like a stone beehive, was likely a royal residence.
RISE AND FALL
While the site was occupied in ancient times—iron was in use there by the third century A.D.—its rise to prominence,
and the advent of the finest walls, occurred in the 14th and 15th centuries during a florescence in trade. Great
Zimbabwe happened to lie right on the route between the region's gold-producing regions and ports such as Sofala on
the Mozambique coast, where merchants traded African gold and ivory for beads, cloth, and other goods from Arabia
and farther east. The site may also have been a religious center, as evidenced by stone monoliths and "altars" found
throughout the site, along with enigmatic soapstone birds and figures that, says Garlake, "point to the important role of
ritual and symbol in the art and architecture of Great Zimbabwe."
By the mid-15th century, however, the balance of trade had shifted to the north. Local resources had also apparently
dwindled to dangerously low levels from overuse, and salt was scarce. Whatever the cause, Great Zimbabwe's people
abandoned their once-glorious stone city, leaving the site a ruin that Mauch found 400 years later inhabited by local
Karanga people who had no idea of its history.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/mysteries-of-great-zimbabwe.html