Great Zimbabwe
Today, historians know little about Great Zimbabwe. Much of this ignorance stems from the refusal of Europeans of the time to believe that Africans could build anything as architecturally sophisticated as the ruins there. Racist assumptions led Europeans to claim that Arabs, Phoenicians, or even a lost tribe of Israel built Great Zimbabwe.
Today, scholars have determined that the Shona people built Great Zimbabwe between 900 and 1350. During the 1400's, a branch of the Shona, called the Karanga, established the Mwanamutapa Empire. This empire included most of what is now Zimbabwe. At eastern African ports, the Karanga traded ivory, gold, and copper for porcelain from China and cloth and beads from India and Indonesia.
The Rozwi, a southern Karanga group, rebelled in the late 1400's and founded the Changamire Empire. This empire became stronger than the Mwanamutapa Empire, and the Rozwi took over the city of Zimbabwe. The Rozwi built the city's largest structures. The Changamire Empire was prosperous and peaceful until Nguni people from the south defeated much of the empire in the 1830's. The city was abandoned after the fall of the Changamire Empire. By the late 1800's, all that was left were ruins and oral traditions. However, the Shona people reasserted their proud heritage when they named their country Zimbabwe after it gained its independence in 1979.
Excerpt adapted from the "Zimbabwe" article, The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999