' 1570 map
Africae Tabula Nova, rendered "Simbaoe".There has historically been much debate around the origins of Great Zimbabwe, termed the "
Zimbabwe controversy". Mired in racial prejudice, Rhodesians found it inconceivable that the structures could have been built by indigenous Africans, stipulating that archaeological discoveries of Persian bowls and Chinese celadon were the result of pre-Bantu settlement. The colonial government pressured archaeologists to deny that the structure was built by indigenous Africans, because acknowledging it would have dismantled their "
civilising mission" rationale. The refutation of various fantastical and dehumanising theories ascribing the construction to Jews, Arabs, Phoenicians, and anyone but the Shona, along with other activities of the antiquarians, dominated the historiography of Great Zimbabwe throughout the 20th century. Its African origin only became consensus by the 1950s.
From Portuguese traders to Karl Mauch The first European visit may have been made by the Portuguese traveler António Fernandes in 1513–1515, who crossed twice and reported in detail the region of present-day Zimbabwe (including the Shona kingdoms) and also fortified centers in stone without mortar. However, passing
en route a few kilometres north, and about south of the site, he did not make a reference to Great Zimbabwe. Portuguese traders heard about the remains of the medieval city in the early 16th century, and records survive of interviews and notes made by some of them, linking Great Zimbabwe to gold production and long-distance trade. In 1506, the explorer Diogo de Alcáçova described the edifices in a letter to
Manuel I of Portugal, writing that they were part of the larger kingdom of Ucalanga (presumably Karanga, a dialect of the
Shona people spoken mainly in Masvingo and Midlands provinces of Zimbabwe).
João de Barros left another such description of Great Zimbabwe in 1538, as recounted to him by
Moorish traders who had visited the area and possessed knowledge of the hinterland. He indicates that the edifices were locally known as
Symbaoe, which meant "royal court" in the vernacular. As to the actual identity of the builders of Great Zimbabwe, de Barros writes: Additionally, with regard to the purpose of the Great Zimbabwe ruins, de Barros asserted that: "in the opinion of the Moors who saw it [Great Zimbabwe] it is very ancient and was built to keep possessions of the mines, which are very old, and no gold has been extracted from them for years, because of the wars … it would seem that some prince who has possession of these mines ordered it to be built as a sign thereof, which he afterwards lost in the course of time and through their being so remote from his kingdom". who had been living with a local tribe. In 1871 showed the ruins to
Karl Mauch, a German explorer and geographer of Africa. Karl Mauch recorded the ruins and immediately discounted any possibility of native construction and claimed a wooden lintel at the site must be
Lebanese cedar, brought by
Phoenicians. The Sheba legend, as promoted by Mauch, became so pervasive in the white settler community as to cause the later scholar
James Theodore Bent to say,
Looting and Early Destruction of the Site A series of looters followed Mauch's visit to the ruins, some employed by W.G. Neal who famously operated the Ancient Ruins Company. The first looter who found his way to the site, Willi Posselt, removed a native-made soapstone bird and managed to conceal others to retrieve at a later date. Over the following several years Neal and his company plundered the ruins, stripping it of anything of value and destroying what they presumably could not take to sell, including structures. It is unclear how much pottery, figurines and other artefacts were lost or stolen. Johann Heinrich Schäfer later appraised the statuette, and argued that it belonged to a well-known group of forgeries. After having received the ushabti,
Felix von Luschan suggested that it was of more recent origin than the New Kingdom. He asserted that the figurine instead appeared to date to the subsequent
Ptolemaic era (c. 323–30 BC), when
Alexandria-based Greek merchants would export Egyptian antiquities and pseudo-antiquities to southern Africa.
J. Theodore Bent, with his wife
Mabel, undertook a season at Zimbabwe with
Cecil Rhodes's patronage and funding from the Royal Geographical Society and the British Association for the Advancement of Science. This, and other excavations undertaken for Rhodes, resulted in a book publication that introduced the ruins to English readers. Bent had no formal archaeological training, but by 1891 he had travelled widely in
Greece and
Asia Minor and had excavated (1889) the Mounds of
A'ali, Bahrain. This lack of training likely contributed to his decision to recklessly dig in the conical tower of the Great Enclosure, which would subsequently ruin the stratigraphy of the environment. that the ruins revealed either the
Phoenicians or the
Arabs as builders, and he favoured the possibility of great antiquity for the fortress. In the Preface to his second edition (1893) he was more specific, with his primary theory being "a Semitic race and of Arabian origin" of "strongly commercial" traders living within a client African city.
The Lemba The construction of Great Zimbabwe is also claimed by the
Lemba, as documented by William Bolts in 1777 (to the Austrian Habsburg authorities), and by an A. A. Anderson (writing about his travels north of the
Limpopo River in the 19th century). Lemba speak the
Bantu languages spoken by their geographic neighbours, but they have some religious practices and beliefs similar to those in
Judaism and
Islam, which they claim were transmitted by oral tradition.
First Scientific Excavations The first scientific
archaeological excavations at the site were undertaken by
David Randall-MacIver for the British Association in 1905–1906. In
Medieval Rhodesia, he rejected the claims made by
Adam Render,
Carl Peters and
Karl Mauch, and instead wrote of the existence in the site of objects that were of Bantu origin. Randall-MacIver concluded that all available evidence led him to believe that the Zimbabwe structures were constructed by the ancestors of the Shona people. More importantly he suggested a wholly medieval date for the walled fortifications and temple. This claim was not immediately accepted, partly due to the relatively short and undermanned period of excavation he was able to undertake.
Archaeological Confirmation of African Origins In mid-1929,
Gertrude Caton Thompson concluded, after a twelve-day visit of a three-person team and the digging of several trenches, that the site was indeed created by Bantu. She had first sunk three test pits into what had been refuse heaps on the upper terraces of the hill complex, producing a mix of unremarkable pottery and ironwork. She then moved to the Conical Tower and tried to dig under the tower, arguing that the ground there would be undisturbed, but nothing was revealed. Some further test trenches were then put down outside the lower Great Enclosure and in the Valley Ruins, which unearthed domestic ironwork, glass beads, and a gold bracelet. Caton Thompson immediately announced her Bantu origin theory to a meeting of the British Association in Johannesburg. Caton Thompson's claim was not immediately favoured, although it had strong support among some scientific archaeologists due to her modern methods. Her most important contribution was in helping to confirm the theory of a medieval origin for the masonry work of the 14th and 15th centuries. By 1931, she had modified her Bantu theory somewhat, allowing for a possible Arabian influence for the towers through the imitation of buildings or art seen at coastal Arabian trading cities.
Modern Archaeological Consensus and Dating Evidence Since the 1950s, there has been consensus among archaeologists as to the African origins of Great Zimbabwe. Artefacts and
radiocarbon dating indicate settlement in at least the 5th century, with continuous settlement of Great Zimbabwe between the 12th and 15th centuries and the bulk of the finds from the 15th century. In the 1970s, a beam that produced some of the anomalous dates in 1952 was reanalysed and gave a 14th-century date. Dated finds such as Chinese, Persian and Syrian artefacts also support the 12th- and 15th-century dates.
Gokomere Archaeologists generally agree that the builders spoke one of the
Shona languages, based upon evidence of pottery, oral traditions and anthropology and recent scholarship supports the construction of Great Zimbabwe (and the origin of its culture) by Shona and Venda peoples, who were probably descended from the
Gokomere culture. The Gokomere culture likely gave rise to both the modern
Mashona people, an ethnic cluster comprising distinct sub-ethnic groups such as the local Karanga clan and the
Rozwi culture, which originated as several
Shona states. Gokomere peoples were probably also related to certain nearby early Bantu groups like the
Mapungubwe civilisation of neighbouring North eastern South Africa, which is believed to have been an early Venda-speaking culture, and to the nearby Sotho.
Recent research More recent archaeological work has been carried out by
Peter Garlake, who has produced the comprehensive descriptions of the site,
David Beach and
Thomas Huffman, who have worked on the chronology and development of Great Zimbabwe and
Gilbert Pwiti, who has published extensively on trade links. Today, the most recent consensus attributes the construction of Great Zimbabwe to the Shona people (a
Bantu group). More extensive damage was caused by the mining of some of the ruins for gold. A continuing source of damage to the ruins has been visitation, with many cases of people climbing the walls, walking over archaeological deposits, and overusing paths, all of which have significantly affected structures at the site. This anthropogenic damage has combined with that from natural causes including erosion, settling of foundations, and damage from plant growth. ==Political implications==