|
|
|
David Randall-MacIver, the first archeologist to
study Great Zimbabwe, declared it unequivocably of
African origin, with its heyday in medieval times.
|
Mystery of Great Zimbabwe
Part 2 |
Back to Part 1
Contrite, the BSA hired archeologist David Randall-MacIver,
protégé of the great Egyptologist Flinders
Petrie, to investigate the site. Hall's polar opposite in
almost every way, Randall-MacIver quickly concluded that
former mud dwellings within the stone enclosures "are
unquestionably African in every detail and belong to a period
which is fixed by foreign imports as, in general,
medieval."
While MacIver's careful work set the stage for the sound
archeological inquiry of Great Zimbabwe, racial prejudice
surrounded the monument until quite recently. In the 1960s and
1970s, as the edifice grew into a potent symbol of the African
Nationalist movement, the white government of Rhodesia set
about suppressing the findings of prehistorians who claimed
that Africans had built Great Zimbabwe. (Garlake, for one, was
forced out of the country.) But those problems went away when
Zimbabwe, as the country is known today, achieved majority
rule two decades ago, and now we can look at Great Zimbabwe
free of racial overtones.
"Venerated houses"
Many believe that "Zimbabwe" is a contraction of the Shona
phrase dzimba dza mabwe, "houses of stone." (The Shona
are Bantu people of Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique.)
Garlake, for his part, feels the word more likely derives from
dzimba woye, "venerated houses," a term usually
reserved for chiefs' houses or graves.
Either way, archeological investigation has shown that the
edifice's monumental walls did once enclose houses. Great
Zimbabwe was a city, home at its heyday to some 12,000 to
20,000 people. To this day, daga, a clayey conglomerate
of gravel that is Africa's most common indigenous building
material, still stains the soil within Great Zimbabwe a robust
red color.
While few traces of the mud houses remain, the towering stone
walls stand in mute testimony to the city's former greatness.
Quarried from the nearby granite hills, the rock used in the
walls' construction easily split along fracture planes, giving
the stones a cuboidal shape that lent itself to stacking
without need of mortar. Ranging from four to 17 feet thick,
Great Zimbabwe's walls are about twice as high as they are
wide. This results in a very sturdy structure, which spreads
its pressure evenly over the ground and adjusts well to
subsidence. When two walls meet, they abut eachother with
unbroken vertical joints; there are no interlocking stones. In
the finest walls, workers knapped and dressed the stones so
well that the coursing is as smooth as a modern brick wall.
Archeologists have determined that the Conical Tower
is completely solid; its purpose remains unknown.
|
|
The Great Enclosure is the largest single prehistoric
structure south of the Sahara. Looking from the air like a
giant gray bracelet, its elliptical Outer Wall is more than
800 feet long and contains an estimated 182,000 cubic feet of
stone, more than in all the site's other ruins combined.
Garlake believes the Great Enclosure, which encircles a series
of smaller stone walls and a Conical Tower shaped like a stone
beehive, was "almost certainly a royal residence."
While the site was occupied in ancient times—iron was in
use there by the third century A.D.—its rise to
prominence, and the advent of the finest walls, occurred in
the 14th and 15th
centuries during a great increase in trade. Great Zimbabwe
happened to lie right on the route between the region's
gold-producing regions and ports such as Sofala on the
Mozambique coast, where merchants traded African gold and
ivory for beads, cloth, and other goods from Arabia and
farther east. The site may also have been a religious center,
as evidenced by stone monoliths and "altars" found throughout
the site, along with enigmatic soapstone birds and figures
that, says Garlake, "point to the important role of ritual and
symbol in the art and architecture of Great Zimbabwe."
By the mid-15th century, however, the balance of
trade had shifted to the north. Local resources had also
apparently dwindled to dangerously low levels from overuse,
and salt was scarce. Whatever the cause, Great Zimbabwe's
people abandoned their once-glorious stone city, leaving the
site a ruin that Mauch found 400 years later inhabited by
local Karanga people who had no idea of its history.
Mysteries
Despite decades of study, mysteries still cling to Great
Zimbabwe like ivy. How did its residents manage to monopolize
trade in the area? To what degree was it a religious center?
Why was it abandoned? Even the question that, as Garlake said
about the site itself, "has given rise to such strong,
widespread, and often bizarre emotional responses"—who
built it?—has been only partly answered.
|
The Lemba, including Professor Mathiva, the tribe's
spiritual leader (above), believe that their ancestors
built Great Zimbabwe.
|
To wit: Which Africans built it? Many tribes, including the
Shona and Venda, maintain that their ancestors were
responsible for Great Zimbabwe, but the Lemba are
"particularly insistent," says
Tudor Parfitt.
"They claim that one of their clans, the Tovakare, were the
actual builders of Zimbabwe," he says. "They even call them
Tovakare Muzimbabwe, which means `the ones that built
Zimbabwe.'" Certain evidence appears to support the Lemba
claim. For instance, unlike other Bantu tribes, who bury their
dead in a crouched posture, the Lemba bury theirs in an
extended position, as did the ancient Zimbabweans. One of the
strongest pieces of evidence concerns trade, Parfitt says.
"Great Zimbabwe was a civilization that was constructed very
largely on wealth generated from cattle and trade. And given
that for hundreds of years we know the Lemba were the great
traders of southern Africa, it seems almost certain that their
ancestors would have been involved in this trading nexus
between Great Zimbabwe and the Indian Ocean."
If the Lemba contention is true, does this mean
that outsiders—that is, not native Africans—built
Great Zimbabwe? After all, the Lemba have Semitic origins (see
Tudor Parfitt's Remarkable Journey). The answer is no, because by the time Great Zimbabwe was
built in medieval times, the Lemba had become decidedly
African, having so thoroughly intermixed with Bantu Africans
over many hundreds of years that today, among other African
traits, the Lemba have dark skin and speak a Bantu language.
Indeed, the more contentious part of that question
"who built it" has finally been put to rest almost 450 years
after João de Barros and others first propounded it.
Whites did not build Great Zimbabwe, blacks did, and this fact
only deepens the sense of mystery enveloping the site. As
archeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson declared back in 1931:
Examination of all the existing evidence, gathered from
every quarter, still can produce not one single item that
is not in accordance with the claim of Bantu origin and
medieval date. The interest in Zimbabwe and the allied
ruins should, on this account, to all educated people be
enhanced a hundred-fold; it enriches, not impoverishes,
our wonderment at their remarkable achievement ... for the
mystery of Zimbabwe is the mystery which lies in the still
pulsating heart of native Africa.
Peter Tyson is Online Producer of NOVA.
Photos: Cicada Films
Where are the Ten Lost Tribes?
|
Tudor Parfitt's Remarkable Journey
Mystery of Great Zimbabwe
|
Build a Family Tree
| Resources
Teacher's Guide
|
Transcript
| Site Map |
Lost Tribes of Israel Home
Editor's Picks
|
Previous Sites
|
Join Us/E-mail
|
TV/Web Schedule
About NOVA |
Teachers |
Site Map |
Shop |
Jobs |
Search |
To print
PBS Online |
NOVA Online |
WGBH
©
| Updated November 2000
|
|
|