Mystery of Great Zimbabwe

The first reports of a fabulous stone palace in Southern Africa did not leave Africa until 1552. It was described by João de Barros in his book Da Asia as "a square fortress, masonry within and without, built of stones of marvelous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them." Portuguese chroniclers of that time believed the stone palace to be the biblical city of Ophir, where the queen of Sheba procured gold for the temple of Solomon. These beliefs persisted until 1871, when Carl Mauch discovered the ruins.

Unfortunately, Mauch was only able to boost the Portuguese theories, and was unsuccessful in proving the origins of the ruins. He concluded that a "civilized [read: white] nation must have once lived there." He tried to prove that the ruins had been built by the Queen of Sheba. He argued that the wood found there was very similar to the cedar of Lebanon, and therefore, had to have been brought over by

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The BSA sent David Randall-Maclver; he was able to prove that the ruins "are unquestionably African in every detail and belong to a period which is fixed by foreign imports as, in general, medieval. " Hall's disastrous investigation prompted the BSA to send a competent archeologist to the site. By the mid-15th century, trade shifted to the north and local resources dwindled to very low levels. In the 14th and 15th centuries, Great Zimbabwe flourished due to trade. "

Maclver's work laid the foundation for the sound archeological inquiry of Great Zimbabwe. Also, we still have to figure out things like how the residents managed to monopolize the area, to what degree it was a religious center, and why it was abandoned. This may have caused the people of Great Zimbabwe to flee the city. Later, archeologists found that the wood that Mauch described was actually African sandalwood, a local hardwood.

Another archeologist named Richard Nicklin Hall followed in Rhode's and Bent's narrow-minded footsteps. We know they were Africans, but we have yet to figure out what tribe it was.

In 1890, Cecil Rhodes with the British South Africa Company (BSA) decided to investigate further into Mauch's findings. This discovery disproves Mauch's conclusions. The ruins of Great Zimbabwe are the largest single prehistoric structure in Sub-Saharan Africa. As recently was the 1960s and 1970s, the white government of Rhodesia suppressed the findings of prehistorians who claimed that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans.

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