13. Great Zimbabwe: The contentious ancient Saharan city whose unknown builders caused a racial debate.
Great Zimbabwe is a ruined city that constitutes some of the oldest and largest ruins in southern Africa. So impressive are the ruins that they gave their Shona name “Dzimba Daz Babwe” or “houses of the Ruler or Chief” to the country they now occupy. Once Great Zimbabwe was thought to be the legendary city of the Queen of Sheba. However, archaeologists have now dated the city to between the 11thand 15thcenturies. However, even for this later period, Great Zimbabwe was an engineering marvel.
At its peak, Great Zimbabwe was home to around 18,000 people. The city consisted of numerous oval-shaped buildings contained within 5-meter high city walls. These walls were held together without mortar and built from precisely cut, blocks of stone- unlike the city walls of many of its European contemporaries. Inside them, the city’s largest building known as the Elliptical Building was similarly impressive. Constructed from identical stone blocks, which formed a double wall, the Elliptical Building also contained a solid conical tower and several other buildings.
The sophistication of the building techniques used to create Great Zimbabwe has created a racial debate as to the identity of its builders. For the former white government of Rhodesia was unwilling to acknowledge that the ancestors of the local Shona tribe who are amongst the potential candidates as its builders could have constructed the city.