Great Zimbabwe

In Wednesday's class we watched a very interesting movie about the Great Zimbabwe Empire. Great Zimbabwe was an empire located in southern Africa where the modern-day country of Zimbabwe is located. It is famous for its beautiful stone-building structures; the name "Great Zimbabwe" actually means "stone buildings."

With the exception of Egypt, most people do not know much about African empires prior to 1500. Great Zimbabwe was on of the world's greatest and most unique empires in history yet it is often overlooked. The Africans of the Zimbabwe Empire used dry-stone techniques to build great walls, temples, towers and buildings. The Empire traded with the Middle East and India along the Swahili coast of Africa. Zimbabwe traded gold and cattle for Arab porcelain and cloth.

In the early 1900's white settlers and explorers could not believe that Africans were capable of creating such amazing stone structures. For a long time researchers believed there must be an Ancient white city beneath the stone structures. Over time white people destroyed Great Zimbabwe by excavating it all in hopes of finding evidence of the ancient white city. Hardly any traces of the great Zimbabwe empire remain, which is a major reason why it is overlooked and unknown by most people.

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It is really unfortunate that great African empires like Great Zimbabwe are overlooked so much in history. Everyone knows about the Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. But most people could not tell you anything about Sub-Saharan African empires, even though they played just as an important role in history as other great civilizations. Africa has played a huge role in world trade and introduced many great ideas, yet most people only know it for its history of slavery.

All information was taken from the video documentary seen in Wednesday's class.