Great Zimbabwe

After watching another time life video on lost civilizations in my history class, I have decided to look more into the ruins and history of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe, located somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. This website says researchers though Great Zimbabwe to be built roughly 600-1000 years ago by local natives. Both this website and the video say it was thought for a very long period of time it was originally built by a "mysterious white race" - which was, as the movie pointed out, people who were hard pressed to believe Africans were capable of such things.

Great Zimbabwe is practically a fortress. With a radius of 100- 200 miles, (the website says its diameter is about the size of France), and it's made of stones with no cement. If my memory serves me correct, and I believe it does because this fact struck me as impressive, the outer walls alone were 16 feet thick and the website says about 10 meters high, with smaller structures and walls inside. The same website mentioned earlier also states:

"it is now generally accepted that the ruins of Great Zimbabwe reflect the Shona people, a Bantu speaking ethnic group, who reside in the region today."
Apparently the word Zimbabwe comes from the Shona people, and when translated means "houses of stone"

Just for an idea of how long the building might take, think about this. During the film, they touched on the rebuilding of the structure, and how it's done today like it was when it was first built. Large chunks of stone -(Again, if my memory is correct, I think they might have used granite, which is what one or two of the websites mentions as well)- are heated over a fire until extremely hot. Then, water is poured (with buckets, not with hoses or anything fancy) which causes the rock to crack. The smaller pieces ,or more manageable ones, are taken and hand chiseled down into large bricks, so the building of the structure took many, many generations.
In further reading of the website I posted in a link earlier, I read that the population of the civilization was estimated to be around 1,000, until the outer dwellings were taken into account, and was then re-estimated to be roughly 18,000 people.

In continuing my investigation and research, Wikipedia also stated that the complex was broken into three basic places:

"Hill Complex, the Valley Complex and the Great Enclosure. The Hill Complex was used as a temple, the Valley complex was for the citizens, and the Great Enclosure was used by the king."

Also, Wikipedia and both other sources touch on the trading of the civilization. Archeologists found shards of glass, and other artifacts from places like China, Persia and India, suggesting that our lost civilization was also a large trading community as well.
Wikipedia also says that:

"The site was not abandoned but rather the court of the king moved further north as his empire declined in order to gain more direct access to trade revenues. The Great Zimbabwe was left in the care of a local tribe."

I have yet to find this in any of my other sources, nor do I remember it being said during the film, so the truth of this statement can be debated.

Sadly, the ignorance of earlier treasure hunters has almost completely destroyed the ruins. In an attempt to prove the existence of the "mysterious white race", many layers of African artifacts were trashed in the attempt to reach the bottom layer which was assumed to hold proof that this "white race" had an early influence in Southern Africa (They found no such evidence).
Also, in a rabid thirst for gold, many treasure hunters tore apart the remains, destroying monuments erected for kings. It is thought the city had power which "derives from controlling the trade in gold." (Which would explain the destruction of the city in order to find gold, something I just put together).

From researching various websites, there seems to be very little exact information on the ruins and civilizations of Great Zimbabwe, but there is a basic idea which I outlined in my post. From the pictures (in the links below) you can see that it was once a majestic place.

Aerial shot of the ruins

Inside the ruins

Closer up aerial shot

In case you wanted to read for yourself here's the websites I used:

Geocites

History world

Wikipedia