HomeOld_PostsThe mysteries of Great Zimbabwe: Part Two

The mysteries of Great Zimbabwe: Part Two

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THE first inhabitants of the Great Zimbabwe, who arrived in about AD 300, left little more than a scattering of clay pot heads behind.
According to history and legend the Shona were migrants from the north who had begun to dominate the eastern part of the plateau by about the 900s. (Professor Sheunesu Mpepereki had an interesting account of the origins of the Shona in previous issues of The Patriot).
The people who settled at Great Zimbabwe were members of the branch of the Shona called the Karanga, the direct ancestors of the present day inhabitants of the Great Zimbabwe area.
The Karanga farmed millet and sorghum and herded cattle, goats and sheep.
At first, perhaps no more than a dozen families lived at the Great Zimbabwe site, as archeologists found remains of the foundations of the huts they built, both on the hill and in the valley below.
The huts were almost certainly like the huts common among the Shona today.
By late 100s, however, they had begun constructing the first of the many stone enclosures whose ruins dot the site today.
Historians say the first stone walls were built to reinforce the walls of the more substantial mud huts being constructed in the Hill Ruin.
Eventually, stone walls connected most of the boulders on the summit of the hill, creating many passageways and small enclosures.
Between 1100s and 1300s, Great Zimbabwe grew in size and importance.
At that time it was one of several such developing settlements on the eastern edge of the plateau.
These settlements reaped the many benefits of their location.
One of them was being beyond the range of the dreaded tsetse fly, which lives at lower altitudes and carries the parasites that cause sleeping sickness in both people and cattle.
In addition, compared with the lowlands, the plateau had a milder climate, more abundant water, and more fertile soil.
It was also rich in game and minerals.
The settlements were also near the Save River Valley, a major pathway to the Indian Ocean coast.
Like other Shona settlements, the Great Zimbabwe was most certainly ruled by a headman or Chief (Mambo).
Such chiefs were believed to have powers that enabled them to communicate with dead tribal ancestors, whom the Shona revered.
This link with the spirit world was the source of the chiefs’ power.
It enabled them to exact tribute from their people and to control the two pillars on which the settlement’s political economic power rested- cattle and trade.
Today this spiritual realm is still revered; during the First Chimurenga, the spirit of guardians Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi were invoked to help wage a war against white colonial settlers.
Until the late 1800s, cattle were the foundation of the Shona economy as well as a source of prestige and social influence.
It was this wealth -on -the hoof that enabled the chiefs to gain and maintain control of their territory.
According to archeological records, imported glass beads and other exotic baubles first appeared at Great Zimbabwe sometime before 1100.
They are a sign that the tentacles of the Indian Ocean gold and ivory trade had finally reached the interior of south central Africa.
This trade was founded on the demand for African gold and ivory in Arabia and India, and on the monsoon winds that enabled a ship to sail from India to Africa and back within a year.
The African bound ships carried cheap cotton cloth, strings of glass beads,
Chinese and Indian porcelain, glass and other baubles.
These goods were exchanged for gold or copper ingots, ivory, iron and other commodities.
The chiefs of Great Zimbabwe almost certainly maintained a monopoly over gold trade in their territory.
Archeologists believe this gold was mined in the hill country southwest of the settlement by other groups of the Shona.
The miners extracted gold by digging small shafts along mineral veins with picks and hoes.
Then smiths turned the gold into beads or stored gold dust in porcupine quills for easy transport.
Evidently, the chiefs at Great Zimbabwe acted as middlemen in the system.
By the 1400s, Great Zimbabwe may have been the most powerful of 10 or so regional chiefdoms.
Based on the spacing of the ruins of various settlements, historians believe each chief controlled a territory about 160 kilometres in diameter, ample land to allow large-scale seasonal movements of cattle.
Great Zimbabwe reached the height of its power in the late1400s, judging from the abundance of trade goods found in layers dated to this period.
At that time, it was an imposing place.
The frequent mists and rain that blew- and still blow up the valley today from the Indian Ocean kept the countryside around the settlement green for much of the year.
Then as today, the enormous weathered boulders on the Hill Ruin were frequently mantled in swirls of grey clouds.
From the valley, the most noticeable feature of the Hill Ruin would have been the stout granite retaining wall that protected the western end of the hill.
It is believed some people lived there in a large enclosure, now called the Western Enclosure, behind this wall.
According to curators at the Great Zimbabwe the most commonly accepted theory is that the Hill Ruin was an intensely sacred place where spirit mediums or priests lived.
If so these priests, like Shona priests in historical times, probably presided over rainmaking ceremonies and rites honouring tribal ancestors.
One reason for believing in the Hill Ruin’s spiritual importance is the discovery of eight mysterious soapstone birds in the Western Enclosure.
Each bird is part of a column about 1,5 metres high.
The columns bear different symbols, such as the chevron patterns.
The column of the most elaborately carved bird has a crocodile crawling upward. The birds which have become national symbols were associated with the Hungwe and Ngwena totems among the Shona.
The final clue is the attitude of the Shona toward the Hill Ruin in historical times. The Shona revered the site for its associations with ancestral spirits.
Archeologists have also speculated that the Shona elite, such as chiefs and priests were buried in the Hill Ruin.
To modern visitors, the most visible mark of power at Great Zimbabwe is the Great Enclosure.
The Shona started work on the Great Enclosure in about 1450, by this time they were expert stone workers and could take full advantage of the special properties of the local granite.
They would search for natural granite out-crops, where the rock fractured naturally into rectangular blocks that needed little trimming.
Experiments have shown that setting fires against the rock fractures it, producing dozens of suitable blocks with fairly little effort.
The builders’ finest work is evident in the outer wall, which is more than 240 metres long.
There they enclosed a central core of untrimmed blocks in neat outer skins of evenly laid stonework.

l To be continued

2 COMMENTS

  1. Shona and Maragoli in Kenya are one and same people. Maragoli have the same history and buildings structures in Kenya. And claim they came from North, Midiani and Tsuba to be precise.

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