{"it":{"id":"AFR-003","kind":"site","sub":"Africa outside Egypt","name":"Great Zimbabwe","place":"Zimbabwe","lat":-20.267,"lon":30.933,"date":"It was settled from around 1000 AD, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Great…","mat":"clay","nfacts":16,"tags":["Africa"],"sum":"When the explorer Carl Mauch reached Great Zimbabwe in 1871, he compared a splinter from a wooden crossbeam with his pencil and decided the wood was cedar. It must have been brought from abroad, he reasoned, and the ruins must have been built for the Queen of Sheba.\n\nUNESCO dates the city to between 1100 and 1450 AD. It covers almost 800 ha of a plateau some 1,100 m up, about 30 km from Masvingo. In the 14th century more than 10,000 people lived there, and finds include Chinese and Persian porcelain and Arab coins from Kilwa. The elliptical Great Enclosure, also of the 14th century, holds a conical tower.\n\nWebber Ndoro's conservation study, The Preservation of Great Zimbabwe, describes the enclosure's outer wall as 11 m tall at its highest and about 252 m long, the largest single prehistoric structure in sub-Saharan Africa. Its curving walls do not interlock; they abut one another, the result of two centuries of building without a single plan.\n\nMauch's guess found a ready audience. Cecil Rhodes believed Phoenicians had built the site. Theodore Bent, who dug there in 1891, credited Sabean Arabs; he cut a trench at the base of the conical tower and threw away thousands of artefacts. Ndoro writes that the first serious archaeological work, by Caton-Thompson in 1931, confirmed African builders. UNESCO says the city was abandoned around 1450, as food and wood ran short, and that Khami took its place.\n\nNo builder left a written plan. What was the conical tower for?","why":"European writers credited Great Zimbabwe to foreign builders; archaeology traced it to African ones.","src":[323],"nsrc":5,"yt":"What does the denial tell us about who writes history?","rel":["AFR-001","AFR-006"],"hook":"In 1871 Carl Mauch matched a splinter of Great Zimbabwe's wood to his pencil and named the Queen of Sheba."},"S":{"323":["Wikipedia: Great Zimbabwe","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe"]},"rec":{"id":"AFR-003","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"REF3 The stone city spans an area of","a":"area","v":"7.22","u":"km2","o":"REF3 The stone city spans an area of 7.22 km2.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0577"},{"f":"The Great Enclosure with its","a":"height","v":"11","u":"m","o":"The Great Enclosure, with its 11 m (36 ft) high dry stone walls (constructed without mortar), was built during the 13th and 14th centuries, and likely served as the royal residence, with demarcated public spaces for rituals.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0578"},{"f":"The Great Enclosure with its 11 nbsp m","a":"height","v":"36","u":"ft","o":"The Great Enclosure, with its 11 m (36 ft) high dry stone walls (constructed without mortar), was built during the 13th and 14th centuries, and likely served as the royal residence, with demarcated public spaces for rituals.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0579"},{"f":"walls as high as 11 m extending approximately","a":"dimension (unspecified)","v":"250","u":"m","o":"Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as 11 m extending approximately 250 m.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0580"},{"f":"The Conical Tower","a":"diameter","v":"18","u":"ft","o":"The Conical Tower, 18 ft in diameter and 30 ft high, was constructed between the two walls.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0581"},{"f":"The Conical Tower 18 ft in diameter and","a":"height","v":"30","u":"ft","o":"The Conical Tower, 18 ft in diameter and 30 ft high, was constructed between the two walls.","unc":"","by":"per cited source (see citation)","yr":"","m":"documentary: verbatim sentence auto-extracted from Wikipedia revision","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary); unit/attribute classified by keyword - check context in value_original","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M0582"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"REF78 REF79 Artefacts and radiocarbon dating indicate settlement in at","u":"","o":"REF78 REF79 Artefacts and radiocarbon dating indicate settlement in at least the 5th century, with continuous settlement of Great Zimbabwe between the 12th and 15th centuries REF80 and the bulk of the finds from the 15th century.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M0583"},{"f":"site chronology","a":"dating (as stated)","v":"The radiocarbon evidence is a suite of 28 measurements, for which all but the first four, from the ea","u":"","o":"The radiocarbon evidence is a suite of 28 measurements, for which all but the first four, from the early days of the use of that method and since viewed as inaccurate, support the 12th-to-15th-centuries chronology.","unc":"","by":"per cited source","yr":"","m":"documentary: auto-extracted sentence","c":"no inline ref in article","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"auto-extracted, Wikipedia rev 1381423922 (tertiary)","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M0584"},{"f":"Great Enclosure outer wall","a":"length / height / base thickness","v":"~250 / 11 / 6 (top ~4)","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Metropolitan Museum essay","yr":"","m":"as stated","c":"Metropolitan Museum essay","pg":"","url":"https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/great-zimbabwe","b":"S","bb":"museum essay","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"dry-stone dressed granite","id":"M2703"},{"f":"Conical Tower","a":"height / base diameter","v":"~9 / 5.5","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","yr":"","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2704"},{"f":"Great Enclosure outer wall","a":"max height","v":"11","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"ICCROM (citing Summers 1971, Garlake 1973, Hall 1987) ; Wikipedia","yr":"2019","m":"as stated","c":"ICCROM (citing Summers 1971, Garlake 1973, Hall 1987) ; Wikipedia","pg":"","url":"https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019-11/iccrom_ics04_zimbabwe_en.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe","b":"V","bb":"two sources agree; ICCROM cites three separate surveyors","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M2711"},{"f":"Great Enclosure outer wall","a":"length","v":"~252","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"ICCROM (Summers, Garlake, Hall)","yr":"2019","m":"as stated","c":"ICCROM (Summers, Garlake, Hall)","pg":"","url":"https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019-11/iccrom_ics04_zimbabwe_en.pdf","b":"S","bb":"ICCROM conservation study","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"Wikipedia ~250 m: agrees within rounding, but kept SINGLE_SOURCE (rounded value)","id":"M2712"},{"f":"Great Enclosure","a":"wall height","v":"11","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"dry stone, no mortar","id":"M3462"},{"f":"Great Enclosure","a":"wall length","v":"~250","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3463"},{"f":"Conical Tower","a":"diameter / height","v":"5.5 / 9","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3464"},{"f":"Great Enclosure","a":"built","v":"13th c onward","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","yr":"2026","m":"derived","c":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922","b":"S","bb":"","t":"INTERPRETATION","n":"","id":"M3465"}],"lab":[{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"thumb|right|View west from the Eastern Enclosure of the Hill Complex, showing the [[granite boulder that resembles the Zimbabwe Bird and the balcony.]]","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922"},{"k":"Materials","mat":"site material (as stated in article)","m":"documentary mention (Wikipedia, auto-extracted)","v":"These were carved from a micaceous schist (soapstone) on the tops of monoliths the height of a person.","by":"no inline ref in article","b":"S","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922"}],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[],"dat":[],"aa":[],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"It was settled from around 1000 AD, and served as the capital of the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe from the 13th century.","dm":"[see dating_excerpt; method not extracted]","lab":"NO: inference only (style/context/king list/textual)","weak":"no direct lab result on the structure in our records; date from stylistic, contextual or textual inference","unesco":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364","dens":"CENSUS"},"co":{"lat":"-20.26666667","lon":"30.93333333","src":"Wikidata P625 + UNESCO WHC list XML (agree ≤0.05°)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"two independent sources agree; max delta 0.0043 deg (~0.47 km)","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2492683868"},"src":[{"id":"S0306","t":"no inline ref in article","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Zimbabwe&oldid=1381423922"},{"id":null,"t":"Metropolitan Museum essay","u":"https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/great-zimbabwe"},{"id":"S0492","t":"Wikipedia Great Zimbabwe","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe"},{"id":null,"t":"ICCROM (citing Summers 1971, Garlake 1973, Hall 1987) ; Wikipedia","u":"https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019-11/iccrom_ics04_zimbabwe_en.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe"},{"id":null,"t":"ICCROM (Summers, Garlake, Hall)","u":"https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/publications/2019-11/iccrom_ics04_zimbabwe_en.pdf"},{"id":"VAFR-003-6","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Great Zimbabwe National Monument","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/364/"},{"id":"VAFR-003-7","t":"ICCROM case study: Great Zimbabwe (PDF)","u":"https://www.iccrom.org/sites/default/files/ICCROM_CS04_GreatZimbabwe_en.pdf"},{"id":null,"t":"National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, “Southern Region, Masvingo.”","u":"https://www.nmmz.co.zw/southern-region-masvingo/"},{"id":null,"t":"Chirikure, Bandama et al., “A Bayesian chronology for Great Zimbabwe: re-threading the sequence of a vandalised monument,” Antiquity (abstract).","u":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003598x00049516"}],"qs":["Mauch matched a splinter to his pencil and saw the Queen of Sheba. Why did a guess like that last so long?","Bent threw away thousands of finds from the tower's base. What was lost with them?","What was the conical tower for?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Conical_Tower_-_Great_Enclosure_III_%2833736918448%29.jpg/1280px-Conical_Tower_-_Great_Enclosure_III_%2833736918448%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conical_Tower_-_Great_Enclosure_III_(33736918448).jpg","title":"Conical Tower - Great Enclosure III (33736918448).jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0","by":"Andrew Moore from Johannesburg, South Africa","cap":"Great Zimbabwe"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/ASC_Leiden_-_Rietveld_Collection_-_East_Africa_1975_-_05_-_037_-_Detail_of_a_Great_Zimbabwe_wall_with_lichen_-_Masvingo%2C_Zimbabwe.jpg/1280px-ASC_Leiden_-_Rietveld_Collection_-_East_Africa_1975_-_05_-_037_-_Detail_of_a_Great_Zimbabwe_wall_with_lichen_-_Masvingo%2C_Zimbabwe.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ASC_Leiden_-_Rietveld_Collection_-_East_Africa_1975_-_05_-_037_-_Detail_of_a_Great_Zimbabwe_wall_with_lichen_-_Masvingo,_Zimbabwe.jpg","title":"ASC Leiden - Rietveld Collection - East Africa 1975 - 05 - 037 - Detail of a Great Zimbabwe wall with lichen - Masvingo, Zimbabwe.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"Aart Rietveld","cap":"Detail of a Great Zimbabwe wall with lichen."},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/98/Alloes-valley-great-zimbabwe.jpg/1280px-Alloes-valley-great-zimbabwe.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alloes-valley-great-zimbabwe.jpg","title":"Alloes-valley-great-zimbabwe.jpg","lic":"CC BY 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0","by":"ctsnow (Flikr user)","cap":"Aloes in the Vallley Complex, Great Zimbabwe"},{"src":"https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Conical_tower.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail_unscaled","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Conical_tower.jpg","title":"Conical tower.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Marius Loots","cap":"Conical tower at Great Zimbabwe"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Eastern-enclosure-great-zimbabwe.jpg/1280px-Eastern-enclosure-great-zimbabwe.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern-enclosure-great-zimbabwe.jpg","title":"Eastern-enclosure-great-zimbabwe.jpg","lic":"CC BY 2.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0","by":"ctsnow (Flikr user)","cap":"View west from the Eastern Enclosure, Great Zimbabwe, showing the granite boulder that resembles the Zimbabwe Bird."}],"sum":"In 1871 a German explorer named Carl Mauch stood among the ruins of a stone city on the high plateau of what is now Zimbabwe and did something small that would echo for a century. He took a splinter from a wooden crossbeam, held it against his pencil, and decided the two were the same wood: cedar. Cedar did not grow here, he reasoned, so it must have come from abroad. And if the wood was foreign, so were the builders. The ruins, Mauch concluded, had been made for the Queen of Sheba.\n\nHe was wrong, and the story of how wrong, and why so many people wanted him to be right, is as remarkable as the city itself.\n\nGreat Zimbabwe lies about 30 kilometres from the modern town of Masvingo, some 1,100 metres up on the plateau. In the Shona language, Zimbabwe means \"the house in stone,\" and the modern nation took both its name and its emblem from this place: the soapstone bird found among the ruins became the national emblem. The ancient town covers nearly 80 hectares, and the protected estate around it about 722, close to 800. UNESCO dates the city to between about 1100 and 1450 AD and says that in the fourteenth century more than 10,000 people lived here, an estimate rather than a count, but a large city by any medieval measure.\n\nIt has three parts. On a granite hill stands the Hill Complex. Below lie the Valley Enclosures. And on the open ground stands the structure everyone comes to see, the Great Enclosure, the largest stone structure in southern Africa. Its outer wall runs for about 250 metres in a great ellipse. It rises to about 11 metres at its highest, the height of a three-storey house, and is 6 metres thick at its widest. Webber Ndoro, in his conservation study of the site, calls it the largest single prehistoric structure in sub-Saharan Africa.\n\nWhat makes the wall astonishing is how it was built. There is no mortar at all. This is dry stone: cut granite blocks laid in regular courses and held in place only by their own weight and the precision of their fit. The curving walls do not even interlock with one another. They abut, one pressed against the next, the result of some two centuries of building without a single master plan. Each generation added to what the last had left.\n\nInside the Great Enclosure, at the end of a narrow passage between the outer wall and an inner one, stands the Conical Tower. It is a cone of fitted stone some 9 to 10 metres high and about 5 to 5.5 metres across at the base, depending on whose measurement you take. You walk down a slot between two towering walls, the sky a strip above you, and arrive at a stone shape that seems to have been built to be looked at and nothing else.\n\nOn the hill, archaeologists found six soapstone posts topped with carved birds in the eastern enclosure, the area thought to have served a ritual purpose. The birds were carved from micaceous schist on the tops of monoliths about the height of a person.\n\nThe mainstream account of who built all this is clear and well supported. UNESCO links the city to the Shona, a Bantu-speaking people of the Iron Age, and says it was founded in the eleventh century on a sparsely settled spot. By the fourteenth century it was the principal city of a major state that ruled the gold-rich plateaux. Its reach was long. Excavations found glass beads and porcelain from China and Persia, and gold and Arab coins from Kilwa on the East African coast, alongside potsherds and ironwork that point to farming and herding. A Bayesian study of the radiocarbon dates, which combines them with the order of the soil layers and with datable imports, puts the start of stone walling at the end of the twelfth or the start of the thirteenth century, peaking in the fourteenth and fifteenth. UNESCO calls the work \"unquestionably of Bantu origin.\"\n\nSo why did Mauch's guess survive? Because it was useful. It found a ready audience among the men who were then taking the land. Cecil Rhodes believed Phoenicians had built the site. Theodore Bent, who dug there in 1891, credited Sabean Arabs. Bent cut a trench at the base of the Conical Tower and threw away thousands of artefacts, destroying exactly the layers that might have told us what the tower was for. A ruin that proved Africans had built a great state was an inconvenient ruin for a colonial power, and so for decades the stones were given to anyone but the people whose ancestors had raised them. It was not until 1931 that Caton-Thompson's excavations, the first serious archaeological work there in Ndoro's account, confirmed African builders. Power has always understood that whoever owns the past owns a claim on the present.\n\nThe end of the city is debated more gently. UNESCO says the capital was abandoned around 1450, when the land could no longer feed the crowded city and the woods were gone, and that power shifted to Khami. The Bayesian study finds people still living there into the sixteenth and probably the seventeenth century. Both can be true: the court moved on and ordinary people stayed. The same study shows that Great Zimbabwe overlapped with Mapungubwe, so several centres of power stood in the region at once.\n\nAnd yet, when the colonial myths are cleared away, the honest questions remaining are sharp. No builder left a written plan. No source gives the Conical Tower's purpose. The early diggers destroyed so much key evidence that the city's chronology has had to be rebuilt statistically, from what they left behind. The sequence of walls was planned by no single mind, yet the result is one of the most coherent stone spaces on the continent.\n\nStand in that passage, between walls of 11 metres laid without a drop of mortar, and walk toward the tower at its end. It was built by people who knew stone the way a weaver knows thread. They left no words to say what the cone stood for, or whom it was meant to address. What were they saying, and to whom, with a tower that seems built only to be seen?"},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"11","u":"m","h":"Dry-stone walls with no mortar, built in the 13th–14th centuries","s":[76]},{"v":"1000 AD","h":"It was settled from around 1000 AD","s":[76]},{"v":"Clay","h":"Made of","s":[76]}],"hs":{"76":["Wikipedia: Great Zimbabwe (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Zimbabwe"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/AFR-003.webp","w":1280,"h":853,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d4/Conical_Tower_-_Great_Enclosure_III_%2833736918448%29.jpg/1280px-Conical_Tower_-_Great_Enclosure_III_%2833736918448%29.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}