An inner wall runs along part of the outer wall, creating a narrow, 180-foot-long passageway. (Karanga is the most common dialect of Shona and is spoken by the inhabitants of south-central Zimbabwe.) The enclosing wall is 800 feet long and stands 32 feet high at some places an estimated one million blocks were used in its construction. Called Imbahuru, meaning "the house of the great woman" or "the great house," by the Karanga-speaking people who lived there during the 19th century, the Great Enclosure was built at the height of Great Zimbabwe's power. Inside the walls, as inside all the other enclosures, stand daga houses, curved, hutlike structures made of Africas most common building material: dried earth, mud and gravel.īelow the Hill Complex sits the most stunning of Great Zimbabwes structures, the Great Enclosure, or Elliptical Building. The outer wall, which stands nearly 37 feet high, would also have afforded good protection. From its position on the rocky, 262-foot-high hill, the Hill Complex's oval enclosure-about 328 feet long and 148 feet wide-would have allowed its inhabitants to see potential invaders. The Hill Complex, dubbed the Acropolis by Europeans, forms the oldest part of the site evidence hints that farmers or hunters may have encamped there as early as the fifth century. Great Zimbabwe covers 1,779 acres, and the central area comprises three main built-up areas: the Hill Complex, the Great Enclosure and the smaller Valley Ruins. Because it is situated on the shortest route between the northern gold fields, where inland rivers were panned for the precious metal, and the Indian Ocean, the rulers of Great Zimbabwe most likely regulated the thriving medieval gold trade. Its scale is far larger than that of similar regional sites-including Danamombe, Khami and Naletale (in Zimbabwe), Domboshaba and Majande (in Botswana), Manikweni (in Mozambique) and Thulamela (in northern South Africa)-suggesting that Great Zimbabwe was the areas economic and political center. Because whereas the story of Great Zimbabwe is ultimately that of early Shona culture and the African Iron Age, it is also a tale of colonialism and of often shoddy, politically motivated archaeology.ĬONSTRUCTED BETWEEN 11, Great Zimbabwe seems not to have been designed around a central plan but rather to have been altered to fit its changing role and population. The fable is, in large part, the reason so many archaeological mysteries remain about the site. This powerful myth of the city of Ophir, populated by Semitic people, shaped the later cultural and historical interpretations of Great Zimbabwe. In Paradise Lost, John Milton situates Ophir somewhere near the Congo and Angola. Their descriptions offered many Europeans the promise of King Solomons mines, for according to the Bible, Solomon would send to Ophir for his gold. In the 1500s Portuguese traders visiting Angola and Mozambique-where they established colonies-wrote of a kingdom in the interior of Africa. Like many ancient cities, Great Zimbabwe has been shrouded by legend. The country of Zimbabwe-formerly Rhodesia, until its independence from England in 1980-was named for this site. Its unique architecture and sculpture-particularly the enigmatic birds carved from soapstone-bespeak a rich history, one that archaeologists continue to piece together today. With its high conical tower, its long, curved stone walls and its cosmopolitan artifacts, Great Zimbabwe attests to the existence of a thriving city that may have dominated trade and culture throughout southern Africa sometime between the 12th and 17th centuries. p.34.On the southern edge of the Zimbabwe plateau in the watershed between the Zambezi and the Limpopo rivers sits the largest and loveliest archaeological site in sub-Saharan Africa. The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. New Brunswick: Transaction, p 354, 365–66 Religious rejections of the world and their directions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Osterhammel (Eds.), Max Weber and his contemporaries. The selected writings of Sir Edward Coke. How the west grew rich: The economic transformation of the Industrial World. The rise of the Western World: A new economic history. Pongratz-Leisten (Ed.), Reconsidering the concept of revolutionary monotheism (pp. How Gods die, biblically and otherwise: A problem of cosmic restructuring. The wealth and poverty of nations: Why some are so rich and some so poor. Atra-hasīs: The Babylonian story of the flood. The European miracle: Environments, economics and geopolitics in the history of Europe and Asia. The origins and diversity of axial Age civilizations. Chicago: University of Chicago.Įisenstadt, S. Oxford: Oxford University.ĭe Tocqueville, A. Thomas Hobbes’ writings on common Law and hereditary right. Law and revolution II: The impact of the protestant reformation on the western legal tradition. Law and revolution: The formation of the western legal tradition.
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