Despite the traditional image we have of Sub-Saharan Africa prior to colonization, not all were shack villages.
In reality, there are numerous sites of ancient cities built with materials that are not so perennial, such as brick and stone. Perhaps the most prominent of all is Great Zimbabwe , for two reasons:firstly it is one of the oldest (the second after the South African Mapungubwe), and secondly it is the largest pre-colonial stone structure erected on the continent south of the equator.
What remains of it is located about 39 kilometers from Masvingo, southeast of the current country of Zimbabwe (which precisely means great stone houses ) and at an altitude of 1,140 meters. At that altitude it was a natural protection against sleeping sickness , since the tsetse fly lives in lower areas.
Archeology places the foundation of the settlement in the 4th century, while the stone city whose remains can be seen today would date from the 11th century AD, with construction work extending up to the 14th century.
The identity of those who raised it is not exactly known. There are several hypotheses, the most popular being the one that attributes it to the modern Shona, a group of Bantu peoples related to the ancient kingdom of Monomotapa or Mutapa. Its stony ruins are spread over an area of about 7 square kilometers and, at its height, Great Zimbabwe once had about 18,000 inhabitants.
Vicente Pegado, the captain of the Portuguese garrison of nearby Sofala, described it thus in 1531:
The city is made up of three areas which are known as the Hill Ensemble, the Valley Ensemble, and the Great Fence. Of all of them, the Hill Complex is the oldest, for which archeology shows a record of occupation from the 9th to the 13th century. This is where the East Fence is located. , the place where the eight Birds of Zimbabwe, the sculpture of the bird that is now the country's national emblem, were found. These were originally carved into the tops of large stone monoliths, some of which are still visible today. Its walls reach 5 meters high.
The Valley Complex would have been occupied between the 14th and 16th centuries, and shows numerous remains of minor constructions. The Great Wall was inhabited between the 13th and 15th centuries and consists of two walled rings, the interior being the oldest. The exterior reaches 11 meters in height and 250 in length. Between the two is the Conical Tower , which rose up to 9 meters high by 5 and a half in diameter. Within the Great Fence, more than 300 structures have been found so far.
Some researchers believe that the three areas are the result of the works carried out by successive kings, who gradually moved the center of power from the hills to the valley. Others think that each one had a different function:the Hill Complex would be a religious complex, the Valley Complex the residential place for the citizens, and the Great Fence the royal palace.
The city was abandoned around the year 1450 , although the exact reason is not known. It could be due to the decline in trade and the movement of centers of exchange further north, the depletion of gold, or perhaps political instability and food and water shortages due to climate changes.
According to tradition, Nyatsimba Mutota had been sent north in search of resources. He would be the one who founded the kingdom of Monomotapa around 1430, a state that prospered as a commercial center until the beginning of the 17th century, based on the extraction of gold from the rivers. Until it ran out again and the Portuguese arrived in 1629.
The first news that appears in European sources about Great Zimbabwe is a letter addressed by the explorer Diogo de Alcáçova to the King of Portugal in 1506. In 1538 Joao de Barros mentions a description of the place obtained from Arab merchants who traded in the area. By then the place was already uninhabited and the Portuguese would ignore it for decades due to its low value.
The ruins were rediscovered in 1867 by the hunter Adam Render who, four years later, would show them to Karl Mauch, a German explorer and geographer who thought he saw in them a replica of the Queen of Sheba's palace in Jerusalem.
The first investigations at the site were carried out by J. Theodore Bent with funding from Cecil Rhodes and the British Royal Geographical Society. Bent concluded that the city was the work of Phoenicians or some Semitic tribe of Arab origin.
It would not be until the archaeological excavations of 1905 carried out by David Randall-MacIver that the theory of Bantu origin began to take shape. Gertrude Caton-Thompson in 1929 would confirm the hypothesis although pointing out a possible Arab influence in the towers. In the 1960s and 1970s, the government of Rhodesia (the precursor colonial state of today's Zimbabwe) censured any attempt to attribute construction to non-white people . Today the latest research has confirmed the authorship of the constructions by the ancestors of the Shona people.
Moreover, from the remains found in the excavations (Chinese pottery, Arab coins, glass objects and beads) it is argued that the city could have been part of a network of commercial exchanges that extended to China.
Great Zimbabwe is considered the country's national sanctuary.