Walking up to the towering walls of Great Zimbabwe was a humbling experience. The closer I got, the more they shrunk me – and yet there was something inviting about the archaeological site. It didn’t look like an abandoned fortress or castle you might see in Europe: Great Zimbabwe was a place where people lived and worked, a place they came to worship – and still do. It was alive.
Great Zimbabwe is the name of the extensive stone remains of an ancient city built between 1100 and 1450 CE near present-day Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Considered the work of the Shona (who now make up the majority of Zimbabwe’s population) and possibly other societies that migrated to the region, the city was large and powerful, housing a population comparable to London at that time. era – somewhere around 20,000 at its peak. Great Zimbabwe was part of a sophisticated trading network (Arab, Indian and Chinese trade goods have all been found at the site), and its architectural design was stunning: made of huge unmortared stone walls and towers, whose most are still standing.
However, for nearly a century, European colonizers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries attributed construction to foreigners and explorers, rather than to Africans themselves.
Indeed, the author of the first European written document on Great Zimbabwe seemed astounded by the very idea that it could have been built. The Portuguese explorer Joao de Barros wrote in 1552 that “there is masonry inside and out, built with stones of a marvelous size, and there does not seem to be any mortar which connect.”
Visitors who come to Great Zimbabwe today can still explore three sections: the ruins of the hill (the oldest, with an acropolis believed to be a royal city); the Great Enclosure (surrounded by a large and high wall and containing an 11 m conical tower); and the Valley Ruins (a collection of mud-brick houses where the majority of the ancient population lived). Cynthia Marangwanda, a writer, poet and heritage scholar who writes about Zimbabwean national identity, explained that “some want to call it ‘the ruins of Great Zimbabwe’, but I disagree with that: given the type of European interference he has suffered, he has held up very well.”
