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Great Zimbabwe Great Zimbabwe is the name of the stone ruins of an ancient city near modern day Masvingo, Zimbabwe. People lived in Great Zimbabwe beginning around 1100 C.E. but abandoned it in the 15th century. The city was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, which was a Shona (Bantu) trading empire. Zimbabwe means “stone houses” in Shona. Archaeologists have found pottery from China and Persia, as well as Arab coins in the ruins there. The elite of the Zimbabwe Empire controlled trade up and down the east African coast. The archaeological site at Great Zimbabwe consists tvmucho.com of several sections. The Hill Complex. This is generally believed to have been the religious center of the site. The Hill Complex is the oldest part of Great Zimbabwe, and shows signs of construction that date to around 900 C.E. The Great Enclosure is a walled, circular area below the Hill Complex dating to the 14th century. The walls are over 9.7 meters (32 feet) high in places, and the enclosure’s circumference is 250 meters (820 feet). The walls were built without mortar, relying on carefully shaped rocks to hold the wall’s shape on their own. Inside the enclosure is a second set of walls, following the same curve as the outside walls, which end in a stone tower 10 meters (33 feet) high. It is one of the largest existing structures from ancient sub-Saharan Africa. The Valley Ruins consist of a significant number of houses made mostly of mud-brick (daga) near the Great Enclosure. The distribution and number of houses suggests that Great Zimbabwe boasted a large population, between 10,000–20,000 people. The ruins of Great Zimbabwe were designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site in 1986. The legacy of Great Zimbabwe lives on as one of the largest and most culturally important archaeological sites of its kind in Africa.
Resource Vault 102
July-August 2020
DAWN
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