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The complex of ruins from which the modern nation of Zimbabwe took its name is one of the country’s greatest historical and cultural attractions. As Paul Tingay’s helpful guide explains, Great Zimbabwe, the largest ruins in Africa, covers almost 1,800 acres.
The ruins of this complex of massive stone walls undulate across almost 1,800 acres of present-day southeastern Zimbabwe. Begun during the eleventh century A.D. by Bantu-speaking ancestors of the Shona, Great Zimbabwe was constructed and expanded for more than 300 years in a local style that eschewed rectilinearly for flowing curves.
Neither the first nor the last of some 300 similar complexes located on the Zimbabwean plateau, Great Zimbabwe is set apart by the terrific scale of its structure. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as 36 feet extending approximately 820 feet, making it the largest ancient structure south of the Sahara Desert. In the 1800s, European travelers and English colonizers, stunned by Great Zimbabwe’s its grandeur and cunning workmanship, attributed the architecture to foreign powers. Such attributions were dismissed when archaeological investigations conducted during the first decades of the twentieth century confirmed both the antiquity of the site and its African origins.Around 850 AD, the Shona people move into the region, displacing earlier Bantu groups, with the Karanga clan living at Great Zimbabwe itself. The Karanga were expert metal workers, and a trade in gold, iron and copper was soon thriving with the Swahili and Arabs on the coast. The Karangas had a superior skill in political organization, and from a single clan, like the Romans, in time came to dominate all the surrounding peoples. In 943, the Arab voyager Al Masudi visits parts of East and South Africa and describes this powerful inland kingdom rich in gold and ivory.

Around 1000AD people began to build large stone buildings for their kings, positioning them away from land. Many believe this move may have occurred to escape the dangerous tsetse fly. About 150 of these great ruins similar to Great Zimbabwe exist today. Many of these have been severely impacted and almost demolished, at least 50, as a result of the hunger for gold by Europeans. The population of Great Zimbabwe, previously estimated at 1,000 before the outside dwelling areas were taken into consideration, is now believed to have been as high as 18,000.

The first whispered reports of a fabulous stone palace in the heart of southern Africa began dribbling into the coastal trading ports of Mozambique in the 16th century. In his 1552AD Asia, the most complete chronicle of the Portuguese conquests, J.Barros wrote of “a square fortress, masonry within and without, built of stones of marvelous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them.”

Great Zimbabwe was an early example of a state in this region of southern Africa with much political, economic, and military power. With its formation, social and political organization became more hierarchical. This involved a move from village level organization to a larger, broader social and political organization resulting in the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe. Aspirant sculptors today use the same soapstone to carve copies of the same birds and this has helped launch a stone carving craft characteristically Zimbabwean.