BACKGROUND TO THE HISTORY OF CENTRAL AFRICA; THE ZIMBABWE PLATEAU INCLUDED
AS P.E.N. Tindall (1983) pointed out that, the history of central Africa is fraught with difficulties. Central Africa, which includes the Zimbabwe Plateau, is unique when compared to Asia and Europe. Infact Africa South of the Sahara has but a short written history. Central Africa in general and the Zimbabwe Plateau in particular, before the 16th century is only referred to in the form of occasional comments in the writings of Arab geographers and travellers. Also, the last four centuries are only sparsely covered by the writings of European travelers and settlers. African oral traditions, the customs of different ethnic groups, and the study of the derivation and growth of African languages provide a guide to the events of the past few hundred years and cast some light on the controversial problem of ethnic or “tribal” movements. However, it is mainly to the archaeologist that we turn to on written history. By implements, pottery, and the bones of human beings and animals found there by archaeologists and gradually building up a picture of the long pre-historic period. Recently, new scientific methods of dating past events have been devised. Nuclear physicists have discovered the rate at which certain radio-active substances disintegrate and they have been able to use this information to date past events. One substance, potassium argon, has been used in American laboratories. Tests have been made to date specimens of certain rocks which are many millions of years old, but this method is of more use to geologists than to prehistorians. It has however, been used to date rocks derived from volvanic lava at Olduvai in East Africa which interesarchaeologists as they are associated with early stone implements and fossil skulls which may be a millit on or more years old. Unfortunately this method is not yet proved to be reliable. Some dates have been published but experts are not agreed on their validity. Another substance, far more important for the prehistorian is carbon 14. This is contained in organic matter such as charcoal and shells. Samples of these materials collected by archaeologists from sites which they have excavated are submitted to laboratory tests and an approximate date is worked out. Carbon 14 dates are not completely reliable, but where a number of tests on material from the same strata provide similar results, we can be confident that they are reasonably correct. The method is most satisfactory for dates during the last 30 000 years; earlier than this they become increasingly unreliable. So it has become possible to give an approximate date for many living sites occupied in the past and build up a roughly dated sequence for the different cultures (ie ways of living )
GENERAL BACKGROUND ON GREAT ZIMBABWE
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that was once the capital of the kingdom of Zimbabwe, which existed from 1100 to 1450 AD during the country’s Late Iron Age period. The monument, which first began to be constructed in the 11th century continued to be built until the 14th century, spanned an area of 722 hectares (1 784 acres) and at its peak could have housed up to 18 000 people. Great Zimbabwe acted as a royal place for the Zimbabwean monarch and would have been used as a city of their political power. One of its most prominent features were its walls, some of which were over five metres high and which were constructed without mortar. Eventually, the city was largely abandoned and fell into ruin, first being encountered by Europeans in the early 16th century. Investigaton of the site first began in the 19th century when the monument caused great controversy amongst the archaeological world, with political pressure being placed upon archaeologists by the-then white supremarcist government of Rhodesia to deny that Great Zimbabwe could have ever been produced by native Zimbabwean. The word “Great” distinguishes the site from the many hundreds of small ruins, known as Zimbabwes or MaDzimbabwe, spread across the Zimbabwe Highveld. There are 200 such sites in southern Africa, such as Bumbusi, Chipadze, Tsindi, Khami in Zimbabwe and Manekweni in Mozambique, with monumental, mortar-less walls and Great Zimbabwe as the largest.
CONSTRUCTON AND GROWTH
Construction of the stone buildings started in the 11th century and continued for another 300 years. Of course it is important to remember that the Great Zimbabwe area had been settled as early as the fourth century. In fact, between the fourth and seventh centuries, communities now identified as Gokomere or Ziwa cultures formed the valley, mined and worked iron, but built no stone structures. These are the earliest iron-age settlements in the area identified from archaeological diggings. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as 11 metres, extending approximately 250 metres, making it the largest ancient structure south of Sahara desert. The city and its state, the kingdom of Zimbabwe, flourished from 1200 to 1500 and its decline has been linked to the decline of Mapungubwe from around 1300; due to climatic change or due to over farming, the population depleting the land resources and a decline in the important gold trade. The settlement was mainly abandoned around 1450.
FEATURES OF THE RUINS
In `1531, Vicente Pegado, Captain of the Portuguese Garrison of Sofala in some of the earliest written records, described Zimbabwe thus; “Among the gold mines of the island plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers there is a fortress build of stones of marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them. This edifice is almost surrounded by hills, upon which are others resembling it in the fashioning of stone and the absence of mortar, and one of them is a tower more than 22 metres high (12 fathoms). The natives of the country call these edifices symbaoe, which according to their languages signifies court”. The ruins form three distinct architectural groups. They are known as the Hill complex, the Valley Complex and the Great Enclosure. The Hill complex is the oldest, and was occupied from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. The Great Enclosure was occupied from the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries and the Valley Complex from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. Notable features of the Hill Complex include the Eastern Enclosure, in which it is thought the Zimbabwe Bird stood, a high balcony enclosure overlooking the Eastern Enclosure and a huge boulder in a shape similar to that of the Zimbabwe bird. The Great Enclosure is composed of an inner wall, encircling a series of structures and a younger outer wall. The conical tower, 18 feet in diameter and 30 feet high, was constructed between the two walls. The Valley Complex is divided into the upper and lower valley ruins, with different periods of occupation. There are different archaeological interpretations of these groupings. It has been suggested that the complexes represent the work of successive kings: some of the new kings/rulers founded a new residence. The focus of power moved from the Hill Complex in the twelfth century to the Great Enclosure, the upper valley and finally the lower valley in the early sixteenth century. The alternative structural interpretation holds that the different complexes had different functions: the Hill Complex as a temple, the Valley Complex was for the citizens and the Great Enclosure was used by the king. It will be indicated later in the chapter as local archaeologists, Pikiraryi and Chirikure have convincingly argued, that the complexes in fact belonged to different time frames and therefore the dating would not support this interpretation. Some researchers claim that the ruins may have housed an astronomy observatory, but no concrete evidence has been found to back these claims.
TRADE
Archaeological evidence as well as written records, especially Portuguese diaries mostly presented by historian David Beach, suggests that Great Zimbabwe became a centre for trading; with arti-facts suggesting that the city formed part of a trade network linked to Kilwa and extending as far as China. This international trade mainly in gold and ivory, was in addition to the local agricultural trade in which cattle were especially important. The large cattle herd that supplied the city moved seasonally and was managed by the court. Chinese pottery shards coins from Arabia, glass beads and other non-local items have been excavated at Zimbabwe. Despite these strong international links there is no evidence to suggest an exchange of architectural concepts between Great Zimbabwe and centres such as Kilwa. The Mutapa state arose in the fifteenth century from the northward expansion of the Great Zimbabwe tradition. Great Zimbabwe also predates the Khami and Nyanga cultures.
THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF GREAT ZIMBABWE: A
The Portuguese traders were the first Europeans to visit the remains of the ancient city in the early 16th century. The ruins wee rediscovered during a hunting trip by Adam Renders in 1867, who then showed the ruins to Karl Mauch, a German geologists in 1871. Mauch refused to believe that indigenous African could have built such an extensive network of monuments made of granite stone. He writes; “I do not think that I am far wrong if I suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon’s temple on Mount Moriah and the building in the plain a copy of the place where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon”. Mauch stated, later that, “a civilized (white) nation must once have lived there”. In 1890, British imperialist and coloniser Cecil John Rhodes (1853 – 1902) conquered a large portion of southern Africa and renamed the region after him self. Rhodes equally echoed the theme of Mauch as he argued that the Great Zimbabwe was built by foreigners. To promote his goal of misrepresenting the origins of Zimbabwe, Rhodes established the Ancient Ruins Company and financed men such as James Theodore Bent, who was sent to Zimbabwe by the British Association of science. After his investigation Bent concluded in his book, Ruined Cities of Mashonaland (1892) that items found within the Great Zimbabwe complex “proved” that the civilization was not build by local Africans. In 1902, the British continued with their falsification agenda as British archaeologist Richard Hall was hired to investigate the Great Zimbabwe site. Hall asserted in his book, The Ancient Ruins of Rhodesia (1902) that the civilization was built by “more civilised races”. He argued that the last phase of Great Zimbabwe. Was the transitional and “decadent period”, a time when foreign builders interbred with local Africans. Hall went out of his way to eliminate archaeological evidence which would have proven quite easily that an indigenous African people build Great Zimbabwe. He removed about two metres deep of archaeological remains, which effectively destroyed the evidence that would have established an African origin of the site. This was treasure-hunting and looting at its worst. Nevertheless, in 1905, soon after Hall’s destructive activity, British archaeologist David Randall-Maclver studied the mud dwellings within the stone enclosures, and he became the first European researcher of the site to assert that the dwellings were “unquestioningly African in every detail”. After Maclver’s assertion, which was almost equivalent to blasphemy in those days of British imperialism, archaeologists were banned from the Zimbabwe site from the next 25 years. It was in 1929 that a British archaeologist Getrude Caton-Thompson led the first all female excavation. Caton-Thompson investigated the site and was able to definitely argue in her work, The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins and Reactions (1931) that the ruins were of African origin. She assessed the available archaeological evidence (artifacts, nearby dwellings etc) and the oral tradition of the modern Shona-peaking people and compared them to the ancient sites to determine the African foundation of Great Zimbabwe. Despite Caton-Thompson’s conclusive evidence, the myth of a foreign origin of Great Zimbabwe continued for another half a century until Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. Ian smith was the last major British colonial figure to falsify evidence of Great Zimbabwe’s origin. During his reign archaeologist Peter Garlake was deported for publicly asserting that the Great Zimbabwe was built by non other that Zimbabweans of Shona origin. Peter Garlake wrote thus: “From about the late twelfth century, diversification, expansion, affluence and a concomitant of these, increased social, economic and functional specialization took place in both cultures so that in the end entire settlements could, like areas within sites, be built and used for limited functions by certain groups or clusters of people”. Garlake’s evidence is corroborated by John Lliffe who noted that the expansion of the metal trade and textile production as demonstrated by the increase of spindle whorls, Zimbabwe became a flourishing feudal state from AD 1250 – 1750: stretching over 500 miles from the Zambezi river to Transvaal. (Africa: the History of a Continent, 1995, p.101). Moreover, historian D.J. Niane also affirmed the view that Great Zimbabwe was built by the Shona. He argues, “Most historians agree that gold was not the origin of wealth of Zimbabwe but the considerable development of cattle on the grass plateau which was free of Tsetse fly”. (African from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, ed. D.T. Niane, 1985, p533). Not only that, B.M. Fagan, an archaeologist from the University of California and Oxford reports that, “The architecture of Great Zimbabwe is a logical extension of the large enclosures and chiefs’ quarters which were built of grass, mud and poles in other African states but merely constructed here in stone. The great enclosure itself was divided into a serried of smaller enclosures in which the foundations of substantial poleand-mud houses are to be seen. It was presumably the dwelling place of the rulers of great Zimbabwe, an impressive and politically highly significant structure…. With the exception of the conical tower which is a unique structure of unknown significance, there is nothing in Great Zimbabwe architecture which is alien to African practice”. The Heritage of World Civilisations, a book compiled by Harvard and Yale historians, asserts that the…. “Civilization was a purely African one sited far enough inland never to have felt the impact of Islam”. Historian Basil Davidson wrote the following choosing to compare Great Zimbabwe monuments with similar archaeological and historical developments elsewhere in Africa. He wrote the following passage on Zimbabwe’s place in medieval Africa: “The foundation of Zimbabwe go back to much the same period as the foundations of Ghana. The initial raising of the walls of the “Acropolis and the “elliptical building” was not much later than the time when Mali grew strong, and Timbuletu and Djenne saw their transformation into seats of thought and learning. The miles of careful terracing and the hilltop forts and store-pits and stone dwellings of Niekerk and Inyanga were made while Mohammed Askia and his successors ruled the western Sudan”. It is important to note that the foregoing academic consensus on the origins of Great Zimbabwe indeed served to endorse the findings of local and southern African historians on the topic. Thomas N. Huffman who conducted extensive archaeological research on the monuments and was based in South Africa noted, for instance, that, “we know from oral tradition and written history that, like other centres in the complex, Great Zimbabwe was ruled by Shona Kings. Indeed Shona oral tradition, Shona custom and sixteenth to eighteenth century eyewitness accounts help us reconstruct the spatial organisation of Great Zimbabwe and explain the meaning of its most famous symbols – the Zimbabwe birds”. As already highlighted, Peter Garlake has gone to lengths and breath to move that indeed the great Zimbabwe was built by the Shona. Not to be left out of course, are David Beach, Innocent Pikirayi, Shadreck Chirikure and many others, have convincingly argued that Great Zimbabwe was build by non other than Zimbabweans.
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By: T.Titus Nyakudyara
Twitter: @NyakudyaraTitus
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