Sheep magazine Archive 2: issues 10-17

GREAT ZIMBABWE
Adapted form ‘Lost cities #9: racism and ruins – the plundering of Great
Zimbabwe’ which appeared in The Guardian
In the 19th century, European visitors to this abandoned medieval city
refused to believe that indigenous Africans could have built such an
extensive network of monuments. Such ignorance was disastrous for the
remains of Great Zimbabwe
In the early 16th century, rumours of a mysterious fortress with
gargantuan walls, abandoned in the African jungle, spread around
Europe. Surrounded by goldmines and sitting on a 900-metre-high
hill, the city was thought to represent the summit of a unique African
civilisation which had traded with distant Asian countries, including China
and Persia.
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A Portuguese sea captain, Viçente Pegado, was one of the first foreigners
to encounter the site, in 1531. He wrote: “Among the goldmines of the
inland plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers [is a] fortress built
of stones of marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining
them … This edifice is almost surrounded by hills, upon which are others
resembling it in the fashioning of stone and the absence of mortar, and
one of them is a tower more than 12 fathoms high.”
SEPTEMBER 2016