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Great Zimbabwe

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A stone-walled capital in the hills of southern Zimbabwe, built by the ancestors of the Shona from about 1100. Its rulers traded gold and ivory through the Swahili coast for glass beads, Persian faience and Chinese porcelain. The city declined from about 1450.

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Key events

  1. People settle at Great Zimbabwe and begin building in stone on the hill and in the valley belowDisputed

    World History Encyclopedia and Scientific American give c. 1100 for the start; The Collector dates the Hill Complex to the 9th to 13th centuries.

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  2. – The Great Enclosure rises: a dry-stone wall about 250 metres around and roughly 10 metres highDisputed

    Sources give the wall height as 9.7 metres (World History Encyclopedia), 32 feet (Scientific American) or 11 metres (EBSCO, Wikipedia). The Collector dates the Great Enclosure to the 13th to 15th centuries.

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  3. – Gold, ivory and copper leave for the Swahili coast, through Kilwa and Sofala; Chinese porcelain and Persian faience arrive

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  4. The city declines from about 1450, and the site is largely abandoned by about 1700Disputed

    Causes are debated. World History Encyclopedia lists rival states, exhausted gold deposits, overpopulation and drought; Scientific American lists exhausted gold, cattle damaging the land, drought and population pressure; The Collector names resource shortages and competition from northern trade networks. Wikipedia says the site was abandoned in the 16th or 17th century.

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  5. The German explorer Karl Mauch visits the ruins and credits their building to Phoenicians or Israelites
  6. David Randall-MacIver's excavation shows the site is medieval and African; Gertrude Caton-Thompson confirms it in 1929
  7. – Rhodesia's government censors information on Great Zimbabwe's African builders, and archaeologist Peter Garlake is forced to leave in 1970

    Scientific American dates the censorship 1965 to 1980 and says Garlake faced imprisonment and deportation; Wikipedia says only that the government opposed his research and he was forced to leave in 1970.