The wealth of Africa

Great Zimbabwe
Presentation

Supported by

The CarAf Centre

www.britishmuseum.org
What can we learn about
Great Zimbabwe?

Front cover image: Female gure made of soapstone, Great Zimbabwe,

possibly a modern reproduction, British Museum.
WHAT WAS GREAT ZIMBABWE?

Source 1: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) banknote, 1955

British Museum
WHAT WAS GREAT ZIMBABWE?

What might this be?

Source 1: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) banknote, 1955

British Museum
WHAT WAS GREAT ZIMBABWE?

What does the fact that it appears

on a banknote tell you about its
importance?

What might this be?

Source 1: Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) banknote, 1955

British Museum
WHERE IS GREAT ZIMBABWE?
(For information about Sofala, see the section Century AD

on Kilwa and the Swahili Coast)

300 start of Iron Age occupation of site

Why might Sofala be so important

to Great Zimbabwe?

12th

13th 1250 Rise of Great Zimbabwe

14th

1400 Completion of stone buildings

15th 1450 Decline of Great Zimbabwe

16th

1600 Great Zimbabwe abandoned

17th

All dates are approximate

and heavily disputed
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Great enclosure

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Who might have built them?

Great enclosure

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Who might have built them?

Why might they have been built?

Great enclosure

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

Who might have built them?

Why might they have been built?
What could they tell us?

Great enclosure

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
HOW IMPRESSIVE WAS GREAT
ZIMBABWE?

Source 3
The Great Enclosure is the largest single ancient
structure in sub-Saharan Africa. Its outer wall
is some 250 metres in circumference, with a
maximum height of 11 metres. It is estimated that
the central ruins and surrounding valley supported
a population of 10,000 to 20,000.
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2010

How impressive was Great

Zimbabwe in terms of size?

Source 6: Plan of the site

Lynda DAmico
HOW IMPRESSIVE WAS GREAT
ZIMBABWE?

Source 3
The Great Enclosure is the largest single ancient
structure in sub-Saharan Africa. Its outer wall
is some 250 metres in circumference, with a
maximum height of 11 metres. It is estimated that
the central ruins and surrounding valley supported
a population of 10,000 to 20,000.
Encyclopaedia Britannica 2010

How impressive was Great

Zimbabwe in terms of size?
Source 4
Great Zimbabwe was large enough to be called a
town, or even a city, but this was urban living at its
most basic and unhealthy. The huts were so close
together that their eaves (roofs) nearly touched.
Reader 1997: 314

Source 5
The effect of having so many people on a single
site may easily be imagined. A great deal of the
valley must have been trampled bare. The noise
must have been tremendous. In certain weather
conditions the smoke from hundreds if not
thousands of cooking res would have created
conditions approaching that of smog.
Beach 1980: 46

What would it have been like

to live in? Source 6: Plan of the site
Lynda DAmico
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Beads

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Beads

Ivory

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Beads

Ivory

Cloth

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Beads

Ivory

Cloth

Gold

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
WHAT WAS LIFE LIKE IN
GREAT ZIMBABWE?
Some of these traders have come from the
Swahili Coast of eastern Africa..

Which items would they be buying?

Beads

Ivory

Cloth

Gold

Pottery

Source 7:
Illustration by Tayo Fatunla
HOW WAS SOCIETY ORGANISED
AT GREAT ZIMBABWE?

Source 8
Shona rulers had many wives. Oral traditions say that
the wives at Great Zimbabwe lived below the hill.
Huffman 1981: 135

Source 9
Cattle were more than food they also served as a
form of wealth and a sign of status. The bones from
the best cuts of meat have only been found within
the larger, stone enclosures. It appears that the
ordinary folk did not eat the best cattle but rather
turned them over to the elites the powerful and
privileged classes.
Hall and Stefoff 2006: 2728

Source 10
Walls were used to enclose or screen the huts of the
rulers from the gaze of ordinary people, and these
social differences were echoed in the pottery styles
in that a special class of pottery was developed for
the rulers to keep liquids in almost certainly beer.
Beach 1980: 42

Source 11
There were other signs of their wealth. There were
relatively few huts within the buildings so that the
rulers had far more living space than the ordinary Source 12: Great Zimbabwe ruins
people, and an astonishing variety of imported goods... How could you tell a powerful Richard Pluck
Including the nest silks and embroidered materials. from an ordinary person at
Beach 1980: 43 Great Zimbabwe?
HOW DID GREAT ZIMBABWE
BECOME WEALTHY?

Do these items, found at the site,

give you a clue?

Source 13: Gold wire

British Museum

Source 14: Gold beads

British Museum
HOW DID GREAT ZIMBABWE
BECOME WEALTHY?
Historians cannot agree on why this site should
have been so much larger than the other stone
towns (zimbabwes) in the region. Here are some
of their views.

Source 15
Zimbabwe possesses the most extensive ancient
gold-workings known to the world. It is most
probable that Great Zimbabwe was the chief
metropolitan centre of the ancient miners.
Hall 1905: 295

Source 16 Source 13: Gold wire

Great Zimbabwe was very probably always a major British Museum
religious centre. Traditions about the founders of the
Shona nation emphasise their religious role and also
seem to place Great Zimbabwe in a central position
at the time this new society was growing to power.
Garlake 1973: 184

Source 17
For the rulers of Zimbabwe to have gained enough
power either to control the gold trade or to control
gold production elsewhere, they must already have
developed their wealth by other means; and in the
Shona economy the only other means was that of
cattle herding.
Source 14: Gold beads
Beach 1980: 37 Which reason(s) do you think British Museum
What different reasons are given are most likely?
for how Great Zimbabwe became Why do historians disagree
wealthy? on this matter?
WHO BUILT GREAT ZIMBABWE?
From 1895 to 1980, the country where the ruins of
Great Zimbabwe are to be found was ruled by white
people, and was called Rhodesia (it is now called
Zimbabwe). These people denied that Africans could
have built Great Zimbabwe.

Source 18: Rhodesian poster, 1938

(the woman standing in the centre of the image is the Queen of Sheba)
Poster Team
WHO BUILT GREAT ZIMBABWE?
From 1895 to 1980, the country where the ruins of
Great Zimbabwe are to be found was ruled by white
people, and was called Rhodesia (it is now called
Zimbabwe). These people denied that Africans could
have built Great Zimbabwe.

Source 19
I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the
ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomons Temple and the
building in the plain a copy of the palace where the
Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon.
An archaeologist writing in 1871, quoted in
Ampim 2004

Source 20 Source 21: 1 cent coin

In 1905, British archaeologist David Randall- British Museum
MacIver became the rst European researcher
of the site to assert that the dwellings were
unquestionably African in every detail.
Ampim 2004

Source 22
In recent years, most Africans have not only claimed
the ruins as the product of an indigenous African
society but have taken pride in them as a reminder
of past glories.
Garlake 1973: 12

Which sources say that Africans

built Great Zimbabwe?
Why did white people say that Source 18: Rhodesian poster, 1938
(the woman standing in the centre of the image is the Queen of Sheba)
Africans couldnt have built it? Poster Team
HOW DOES MODERN ZIMBABWE
REMEMBER ITS PAST?

Source 23: Zimbabwe ten trillion

dollar banknote, 2008
British Museum
HOW DOES MODERN ZIMBABWE
REMEMBER ITS PAST?

Name of country
(from
Great Zimbabwe)

Source 23: Zimbabwe ten trillion

dollar banknote, 2008
British Museum
HOW DOES MODERN ZIMBABWE
REMEMBER ITS PAST?

Name of country
(from
Great Zimbabwe)

Soapstone bird,
Great Zimbabwe

Source 23: Zimbabwe ten trillion

dollar banknote, 2008
British Museum
HOW DOES MODERN ZIMBABWE
REMEMBER ITS PAST?

Name of country
(from
Great Zimbabwe)

Soapstone bird,
Great Zimbabwe

Conical tower from

Great Enclosure,
Great Zimbabwe

Source 23: Zimbabwe ten trillion

dollar banknote, 2008
British Museum
HOW DOES MODERN ZIMBABWE
REMEMBER ITS PAST?

Why might this banknote have

so many of these symbols?

Name of country
(from
Great Zimbabwe)

Soapstone bird,
Great Zimbabwe

Conical tower from

Great Enclosure,
Great Zimbabwe

Source 23: Zimbabwe ten trillion

dollar banknote, 2008
British Museum
THE RUINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE

How many of these questions have

you been able to answer?
Who might have built them?
Why might they have been built?
What could they tell us?

Source 2: Great Zimbabwe ruins

Richard Pluck
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