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

Partially thanks to all of my history courses that I am taking this semester at Grand Valley, one of my favorite pass times is to play a video game called Civilization Revolution. It is a game where you, as the player, can choose which empire you wish to control. You have the opportunity to start at around 3,000 BCE and build an empire. There are multiple ways that you can win the game, but one of the neatest things about this particular game is that it actually uses concepts from the actual nations as they existed in history. One of those nations is the Zulu of Africa, which I knew very little about. After playing the game, and learning about sub-sahara Africa in class, I became interested in trying to understand just a little bit more about the culture.

Once I started to search around, I learned that "Zulu" is a fairly recent tribe by historical means, in the fact that they weren't considered Zulu (at least, as the warrior tribe that we know them as today) until around the 16th or 17th centuries. While this does not directly pertain to history before 1500, their origins are considered well before that time. According to this website,

The Zulus believe that they are descendents of a Congo chief whom during the 16th century migrated to the South.

After discovering this fact, I wanted to do some research to find more relevance to the earliest history of the Zulu people. As I did some searching around, I learned that the Zulu nation is formed because of several different Nguni nations that were forced together by the Shaka Zulu ruler. This website describes the fact that the Nguni peoples, like many other cultures of sub-sahara Africa, passed down their history orally. There is very little written record of ancient African history. What we can tell, however, is the fact that the Nguni people, around some 3,000 years ago, were one of the pastoral tribes that migrated from Egypt down into Africa herding a specific breed of cattle.

It is particularly interesting how this pastoral tribe became part of a larger society that, in years to come, would dominate the majority of the African culture and become known world wide as an infamous warrior tribe. It is interesting how the events in history can shape and change the way that the world works, as we are slowly coming to understand even in today's multicultural society of America.

The Question of Race in Regardes to History.

Truly I must be naive, for the color of skin is not something I see past its color. Racism, however, is a powerful force with which to be reckoned, to be sure. We can see this entity permeate several aspects of our life and history. Historical accounts of racism are many, yet what of those not accounted?

A question posed in class only two days ago caught my attention and I have been dwelling on it since: Why is such emphasis given to Egyptian culture yet not to sub-Saharan Africa?
This has three, closely linked answers.

First, racism plain and simple. Africa, we know, is the cradle of civilization, our birth place as a spaces. Yet as Africa was over taken via colonization the thought that blacks were mere sauvages was prevelant. There was a complete disregard for their own complex social structure, laws, spritirual beliefes, and so on. These developments were not new, rather a product of centures of cultivation. I truly do believe the hostile whites thought this way because the natives did not have the same things they themselves had, this this was the basis for their superiority complex (as well as their own religious zeal). The natives simply live from the land, natuarally, more as we all once did, and yet should.

Second, we see the Egytpian comparison. It is because Egypt was developed into an imperial-like state they were seen to be developed on the whole. They had a strong government, were more often prosperous, were a stong military power, and had more dealings with other states, powers, and languages and commerce. Thus, they were and are yet seen as beinig developed; perhaps seen as more European in a way. Let us not forget that Eurocentrisicm also plays a part in obscurinig sub-Saharan history. Thus Egypt is decidedly "more interesting," regardless of the long and rich (yet lost) history of their counterpart.

Finally, we coemt o the sad fact that, because of colonization, death, inter-tribal war, and a faulty oral tradition, the true history of sub-Saharan Africa is lost to time itself, Whatever was know is not lost int eh grasslands and dune sands, the rocky mountains and costal lines of Africa.

Maybe this too is another reason Egyptian facination is so strong: there is simply more we know about Egypt in comparison to sub-Saharan Africa.