5010 AM · 1250 CE · world history
Great Zimbabwe
In southern Africa rises Great Zimbabwe — a city of dry stone masonry laid without mortar.
Between the Zambezi and the Limpopo a centre of the Shona people takes shape: a fortified hill and a great elliptical enclosure of fitted granite blocks laid without mortar. The city governs a cattle-keeping countryside and the trade in gold and ivory that reaches the Indian Ocean through the ports of Sofala and Kilwa — excavation turns up Persian ceramics and Chinese porcelain. The population is reckoned in thousands. By the fifteenth century the centre declines, and power passes to the neighbouring states.
§Sources
Documents of the period
- archaeology and manuscripts of the region
Scholarship
- studies in African history
Basis: documents and evidence.