The Great Zimbabwe by: T.S

The Great Zimbabwe

Location: Africa
Religions(s): the Shona Religion
Climate: tropical
Civilization: the great Zimbabwe
Capital: Harare



I looked at what I believed to be out-buildings and found an object that was of iron. Its use was a complete riddle to me, but it proves most clearly that a civilized nation must once have lived here. . . . No further information about the 'when' and 'how' could be obtained."
These ruins cover a huge area, around 1800 acres, and include large stone enclosures and buildings. The Great Enclosure is extremely impressive. It is constructed from approximately 900,000 stone blocks and the walls stand eleven metres high. From the size of the site some archaeologists have suggested that the city might have had a population of around eighteen thousand people.

Research has suggested that the Shona people built the structures at Great Zimbabwe from A.D.1270 onwards and that the site was abandoned at some time between A.D.1420 and A.D.1450. During this time Great Zimbabwe was an important link in the East African coastal trading. Finds at Great Zimbabwe have shown that a trading network exported goods such as gold, ivory and iron and imported glass beads, cotton, glazed pottery and silk cloth which had been brought along the Silk Road.
Great Zimbabwe has become a symbol of the national pride of Zimbabwe. The word Dzimbabwe is the Shona word for the house or grave of a chief and the country Zimbabwe takes its name from the numerous Dzimbabwes in this part of Africa.


The civilization of Great Zimbabwe was one of the most significant civilizations in the world during the Medieval period. But it was all destroyed. The British people stole their recourses. Their culture is destroyed!!!




Many thousands of prehistoric gold-workings are scattered round the former territory of Southern Rhodesia - over an area, in fact, similar to that containing the ruins10. Some calculations indicate that more than 20 million ounces were extracted11. Exploiters of such riches often prefer not to disclose their source, so it is quite credible that most of it ended up in the northern hemisphere12. In fact, in the sixth century AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes of Alexandria13 referred to gold acquired by trade with southeast Africa (where "winter occurred during northern hemisphere summer"); so did Masudi and Ibn Al Wardy in the tenth century - when it was apparently being exported from an Arab trading post at Sofala (on the coast, east of the Zimbabwe Ruins: the modern resort there still carries the old name). That gold could easily have been first detected in alluvial mud at the mouth of the Zambezi river, and perhaps also in the Sabi.
These people were very rich people.




















Location: Africa
Religions(s): the Shona Religion
Climate: tropical
Civilization: the great Zimbabwe
Capital: Harare



I looked at what I believed to be out-buildings and found an object that was of iron. Its use was a complete riddle to me, but it proves most clearly that a civilized nation must once have lived here. . . . No further information about the 'when' and 'how' could be obtained."
These ruins cover a huge area, around 1800 acres, and include large stone enclosures and buildings. The Great Enclosure is extremely impressive. It is constructed from approximately 900,000 stone blocks and the walls stand eleven metres high. From the size of the site some archaeologists have suggested that the city might have had a population of around eighteen thousand people.

Research has suggested that the Shona people built the structures at Great Zimbabwe from A.D.1270 onwards and that the site was abandoned at some time between A.D.1420 and A.D.1450. During this time Great Zimbabwe was an important link in the East African coastal trading. Finds at Great Zimbabwe have shown that a trading network exported goods such as gold, ivory and iron and imported glass beads, cotton, glazed pottery and silk cloth which had been brought along the Silk Road.
Great Zimbabwe has become a symbol of the national pride of Zimbabwe. The word Dzimbabwe is the Shona word for the house or grave of a chief and the country Zimbabwe takes its name from the numerous Dzimbabwes in this part of Africa.


The civilization of Great Zimbabwe was one of the most significant civilizations in the world during the Medieval period. But it was all destroyed. The British people stole their recourses. Their culture is destroyed!!!




Many thousands of prehistoric gold-workings are scattered round the former territory of Southern Rhodesia - over an area, in fact, similar to that containing the ruins10. Some calculations indicate that more than 20 million ounces were extracted11. Exploiters of such riches often prefer not to disclose their source, so it is quite credible that most of it ended up in the northern hemisphere12. In fact, in the sixth century AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes of Alexandria13 referred to gold acquired by trade with southeast Africa (where "winter occurred during northern hemisphere summer"); so did Masudi and Ibn Al Wardy in the tenth century - when it was apparently being exported from an Arab trading post at Sofala (on the coast, east of the Zimbabwe Ruins: the modern resort there still carries the old name). That gold could easily have been first detected in alluvial mud at the mouth of the Zambezi river, and perhaps also in the Sabi.
These people were very rich people.