Mystery of Great Zimbabwe

A detailed Summary of Mystery of Great Zimbabwe

The first reports of a fabulous stone palace in Southern Africa did not leave Africa until 1552. It was described by João de Barros in his book Da Asia as "a square fortress, masonry within and without, built of stones of marvelous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them." Portuguese chroniclers of that time believed the stone palace to be the biblical city of Ophir, where the queen of Sheba procured gold for the temple of Solomon. These beliefs persisted until 1871, when Carl Mauch discovered the ruins.

Unfortunately, Mauch was only able to boost the Portuguese theories, and was unsuccessful in proving the origins of the ruins. He concluded that a "civilized [read: white] nation must have once lived there." He tried to prove that the ruins had been built by the Queen of Sheba. He argued that the wood found there was very similar to the cedar of Lebanon, and therefore, had to have been brought over by

Maclver's work laid the foundation for the sound archeological inquiry of Great Zimbabwe. As recently was the 1960s and 1970s, the white government of Rhodesia suppressed the findings of prehistorians who claimed that Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans. Thankfully, today Great Zimbabwe is free of racial overtones.

Another archeologist named Richard Nicklin Hall followed in Rhode's and Bent's narrow-minded footsteps. Hall claimed that his investigation was removing the "filth and decadence of the Kaffir occupation." In reality, he discarded three to twelve feet of stratified archeological deposits in search of signs of white builders. An archeologist called Hall's fieldwork "reckless blundering...worse than anything I have ever seen." Hall's disastrous investigation prompted the BSA to send a competent archeologist to the site. The BSA sent David Randall-Maclver; he was able to prove that the ruins "are unquest

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Approximate Word count = 623
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Foreign

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