Great Zimbabwe Zimbabwe

Bantu, the name of a large category of African languages diverse as Indo-European languages, is used as a general label for over four hundred ethnic groups in modern Sub-Saharan Africa, from Cameroon across Central Africa and Eastern Africa to Southern Africa.

These peoples share a common language family subgroup, the Bantu languages, and broad ancestral cultural traditions.

Bantu-speaking communities from Western Africa had reached the great Central African rain forest by thirty-five hundred years ago, and by twenty-five hundred years ago pioneering groups had emerged into the savannas to the south, in what are now the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Zambia.

Another stream of migration, moving east, was by three thousand years ago creating a major new population center near the Great Lakes of East Africa, where a rich environment supported a dense population.

Movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region were more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, due to comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas further from water.

Pioneering groups had reached modern KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa by CE 300 along the coast, and the modern Northern Province (formerly called the Transvaal) by CE 500.

Relatively powerful Bantu-speaking states on a scale larger than local chiefdoms begin to emerge in the thirteenth century in the Great Lakes region, in the savanna south of the Central African rain forest, and on the Zambezi river where the Monomatapa kings build the famous Great Zimbabwe complex.

An iron-using farming and trading people, indigenous to southern Africa, occupies a low, boulder-covered hill at the future site of what is known today as the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.

The indigenous iron-using people at the site of Great Zimbabwe begin to prosper in about 330 through  farming and trading.

The Karanga, a clan of the Shona people, settle on the low, boulder-covered hill called the Acropolis at the site of Great Zimbabwe, and begin developing a trading center here around 950.

Indigenous people of the fourth century had occupied a valley site located on the vast plateau between the Limpopo and Zambesi Rivers.

Between the fourth and the seventh centuries, communities now identified as Gokomere or Ziwa culture farmed the valley, mine and worked iron, but built no stone structures.

These are the earliest iron age settlements in the area identified from archaeological diggings.

Construction of the stone buildings started in the eleventh century and continues for over three hundred years.

The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and largest structures located in Southern Africa, and are the second oldest after nearby Mapungubwe in South Africa.

Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as thirty-six feet (eleven meters) extending approximately eight hundred and twenty feet (two hundred and fifty meters), making it the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert.

David Beach believes that the city and its state, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, flourished from 1200 to 1500, although a somewhat earlier date for its demise is implied by a description transmitted in the early 1500s to João de Barros.

Its growth has been linked to the decline of Mapungubwe from around 1300, due to climatic change or the greater availability of gold in the hinterland of Great Zimbabwe.

At its peak, estimates are that Great Zimbabwe had as many as eighteen thousand inhabitants.

The ruins that survive are built entirely of stone.

The ruins span eighteen hundred acres (seven square kilometers) and cover a radius of one hundred to two hundred miles miles (one hundred and sixty to three hundred and twenty kilometers).

The Karanga chiefs of Great Zimbabwe erect in the valley below the Acropolis the immense elliptical structure known as the Great Enclosure, a freestanding outer wall of granite blocks, more than eight hundred feet (two hundred and forty-four meters) long and up to thirty-two feet (nine point eight meters) high, making it the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert.

The wall encloses large huts, compounds, and a conical tower (the purpose of which remains a mystery).

Carved soapstone birds, perched on pillars at the site of Great Zimbabwe, probably have ritual significance, as may female fertility figurines (later found here by archaeologists).

The Karanga chiefs of Great Zimbabwe erect in the valley below the Acropolis the immense elliptical structure known as the Great Enclosure, a freestanding outer wall of granite blocks, more than eight hundred feet (two hundred and forty-four meters) long and up to thirty-two feet (nine point eight meters) high.

The wall encloses large huts, compounds, and a mysterious conical tower.

Carved soapstone birds, perched on pillars at the site of Great Zimbabwe, probably have ritual significance, as may female fertility figurines later found here by archaeologists.

…the site of Great Zimbabwe, where they build rainmaking shrines and a large circular, stone walled chiefly enclosure.

The Mutapa rulers control many head of cattle, also the gold, copper, and ivory trade over a wide area between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers.

The Karanga rulers of Great Zimbabwe barter ivory, as well as copper and gold from mines under their control, with traders from the east African coast, trading in such goods as fine metal ornaments of African manufacture as well as imported glass beads and Chinese porcelain.

Khoi and San hunter-gatherers are the earliest known modern human inhabitants of the area of present Angola and northern Namibia.

They are largely absorbed or replaced by Bantu peoples during the Bantu migrations, though small numbers remain in parts of southern Angola to the present day.

The Bantu come from the north, probably from somewhere near the present-day Republic of Cameroon.

During this time, the Bantu establish a number of political units ("kingdoms", "empires") in most parts of what today is Angola.

The best known of these is the Kingdom of the Kongo that has its center in the northwest of contemporary Angola, but includes important regions in the west of present-day Democratic Republic and Republic of Congo and in southern Gabon.

It establishes trade routes with other trading cities and civilizations up and down the coast of southwestern and West Africa and even with the Great Zimbabwe Mutapa Empire, but engages in little or no transoceanic trade.

To its south lies the Kingdom of Ndongo, from which the area of the later Portuguese colony will sometimes be known as Dongo.

Relatively powerful Bantu-speaking states on a scale larger than local chiefdoms had begun to emerge between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in the Great Lakes region, in the savanna south of the Central African rainforest, and on the Zambezi river where the Monomatapa kings have built the famous Great Zimbabwe complex.

The site of Great Zimbabwe declines after 1450.

Causes for the decline and ultimate abandonment of the site have been suggested as due to a decline in trade compared to sites further north, political instability and famine and water shortages induced by climatic change.