Talk:Great Zimbabwe

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T'would be neat to have an image of Great Zimbabwe...

Contrasting Point of View from an anon contributor:

• Ancient Zimbabwean Civilization [[1]]

Contents 1 Point of correction 2 copyright questions regarding last edit 3 Bantu 4 Adding politicisation of the site 5 Damage to the Great Zimbabwe by exploration 6 Uncertain reverts 7 Further reading 8 Qs about recent edit 9 Correction using period source 10 Origin and Meaning of "Zimbabwe" 11 graveyards at Zimbabwe

[edit] Point of correction

Contribution moved here for discussion and source identification. It does sound like article may need to be corrected. WBardwin 05:33, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[Point of correction it is the Ndebele who moved into the country in the 1800 the shona people lived there since the bantu migration.]

[edit] copyright questions regarding last edit

The last edit[2] seems to come from here[3] At the bottom of which says "Text copyright 1996-1999 by David W. Koeller. All rights reserved." I'm reverting this until the copyright questions are all sorted out. Mr. Know-It-All 23:35, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Bantu

I've removed the reference to Bantu, since the use of this unqualified term has uncomfortable resonances for many southern Africans. Also removed the POV reference to Lemba construction, since this is by no means proved, and reference to the Lemba people being a group of the Shona - some Lemba people would probably dispute this. Humansdorpie 22:33, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Doesn't this lead to a loss of info? I'm completely ignorant about the Lemba people, but could there be some work-around like "possibly the Lemba people", especially with the change to "Shona-speaking", rather than "Shona peoples"?Also there's a definite loss of the ref to other stone cities in southern Africa (us ignorant northerners have usually only heard of Great Zim), so I'll restore that unless you deleted it for a reason? Cheers, JackyR 00:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

PS Are there any archaelogists who believe Great Zim was not built by black people? Because the current phrasing introduces some ambiguity re that. Fix? JackyR 00:11, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Very sensible points - thank you. I've reinstated the Lemba info but qualified it. In the following paragraph there is a reference to Caton Thompson conclusively proving that Gt Zim was built by black people, which is accepted today; there is still some debate around who actually built it and lived there. Humansdorpie 10:14, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

 :-) JackyR 10:59, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Bantu is a valid, scientific term, it is not offensive. I think it is perfectly acceptable to refer to "a Bantu people" or "Bantu languages" etc. The only circumstance in which I think it is inapropriate is when refering to individuals. One would not say "so and so is a Bantu". Booshank 21:42, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

If people are offended by it, then it's offensive - even when no offence was intended. "Bantu" is a real problem, as it has a neutral linguistic meaning and ethnic meaning within the construct of race, but it's use in South Africa was highly offensive (including some of its supposedly "scientific" uses). So while I agree with East Africans like User:Ezeu, who self-identifies as bantu, in not bowing to the New South African habit of avoiding the word, I also think we should always be aware that for some readers the word can be deeply offensive. Sensitive writing required, to ensure no one is avoidably hurt!

My personal belief, by the way, is that eventually the term will be reclaimed in South Africa and lose its offensiveness, but that time is not yet. JackyR | Talk 13:19, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

With regards to the Lemba people, might suggest you asking a qualified source that could give you the information. (NitaReads 02:25, 19 December 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Adding politicisation of the site

I've mucked around with the phrasing and organisation to introduce material about the political use of the site. (And to attempt to make it feel less "through the eyes of Europeans", despite the new material...) Several Qs:

• Would new subhead be better as: "Political significance", "Politicisation of the monument", or other?
• The new info does take over the article a bit. It is a major issue wrt Great Zim, but perhaps it would be better in its own article? (But my preference would be to leave it in and expand the whole article if we can.)

Hope I haven't thrown the article too badly out of kilter... JackyR 02:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Damage to the Great Zimbabwe by exploration

My sources are largely from study done in Zimbabwean history and oral tradition. However for a source that can be referenced I have 2 web pages.

http://www.manuampim.com/ZIMBABWE.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/israel/zimbabwe.html

Aha. And looks like these two websites draw on Garlake's book, so maybe that's another one to try. At some point, I shall try to integrate this more fully into the §s lower down about the "archaelogists" in question. Hope that's OK by you (prob won't happen soon - so much Wiki, so little time...) - and of course you may get there first :-) Thanks again for these links. JackyR

[edit] Uncertain reverts

I've reverted some anon edits which were probably good faith but lost lots of info and left half-sentences. I'd guess these were supposed to make the article less Eurocentric, which is good, but because they were so poorly done I can't easily make out what the edits should have been, so just reverted. Apologies to that editor: please do have another go - a bit more carefully!

I also cut the following, as it clearly isn't about Great Zim - and I don't know enough to put Stone Zim in context (what is it?where is it?). Again, please do reinstate, with more explanation! Thanks for your patience, JackyR 23:26, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Another one is Stone Zimbabwe. There is many different stone houses, temples, cemetaries, and stores. It is still active and more stone buildings are being bulit everyday.

[edit] Further reading

New formatting is good, but. I'm not happy about Garlake's book being placed under "References". Very precisely, this book has not been used to write the article – but should be. It is referenced in several of the other sources, and seems to be one of the better publications on the site. To place it under refs is actually misleading, as it may well contradict some of the material in the page. (One day I may even get hold of a copy and revise the article.) So unless I hear otherwise, I shall place it back under "Further reading". JackyR | Talk 22:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

It was me who tried to reorganize things a bit. I always thought that the references section should hold books that are authorative on the subject. Preferably, those sources should be used to write the article, but I (possibly mistakenly) do not consider that a prerequisite. It seemed cleaner to have a references section with two books instead of having one book in the further reading and another in the references. But reading your post I understand your point too. So feel free to move things back. Janderk 08:19, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh absolutely, it'll look hideous to have two sections. But alas I think the above concern over-rides. Nice work on the knocking the formatting into shape, tho: I've come across your good work before. Cheers, JackyR | Talk 15:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Qs about recent edit

Lovely new source, but I have a couple of Qs about the new edits.

1. 200 miles isn't an area, it's a distance. What did you really mean?
2. I wonder if we're becoming muddled between Great Zimbabwe the city and Great Zimbabwe the state it controlled. The "ruins" are of the city. Also there are other stone cities in the region from different states.
3. The new date of 11th century only refers to certain works in the city. There was continuous occupation and work on the site from 400 AD. (This is kinda important when you get nutters saying the city was built by Portuguese slave traders.[4]

Try to fix? Cheers, JackyR | Talk 15:20, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I meant 200 square miles, and it refers to the rough area that remenants of stone structures have been found, the area of influence of the state was much larger (probably about the). The date 11th to 15th centuary refers to the time frame in which the great zimbabwe civilization and culture flourished, and stone structures were built. It is estimated that migrant Bantu speaking farmers have occupied the area starting from 5th century AD. This is similar to saying that the edo period in Japan lasted from 1603 - 1867 though the ethnic Yamato have occupied Japan since the Jomon era.

OK, I'm not really here – wikibreak due to real world stuff - so will have to discuss more when I get back. There are actually stone cities over a much larger area than 200 square miles, so we need to make clear this refers only to this site. And I'm not sure there was a hard line between people occupying the site and huge impressive structures appearing. If we're talking about dates of particular landmark structures, could we make that clear?

Sorry to be so fussy, but unlike the Edo period, which has a written internal history and is probably studied much more by the Japanese than by outsiders, Great Zim has no internal written documents and its history had been appropriated by outsiders and is still on occasion wilfully misrepresented. So the article needs to be written very carefully. JackyR | Talk 19:06, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Correction using period source

In researching this subject, I uncovered that Mauch found the site in the 1700's, predating the claim that it was discovered by Adam Renders in 1868. Gave citation for the edit. Also, the mentioned article, the author clarifies exactly what Mauch thought The Great Zimbabwe was. I updated this in the paragraph following. Stealthound 05:24, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I realized that the source was actually wrong in the date after crossreferencing and corrected accordingly- also added source for Randall-MacIver.Stealthound 06:18, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Origin and Meaning of "Zimbabwe"

I have added a linguistic analysis of the word "Zimbabwe". I am a Shona speaker. The word has a linguistic origin. Its meaning is easily derivable from a linguistic analysis as is the case with most Shona names, e.g., "Togarepi" is a person's name derived from "togara kupi" meaning "where shall we live?", a rhetorical question. Thus "Zimbabwe" is a direct and unambiguous contraction of the two words: "zimba" (huge house/building) and "bwe" (stone/rock boulder). A house or building is "imba", without physical size connotation. To mean "a very huge house/building", use "zi" to have "zi imba" contracted to "zimba", which a a physical size connotation. In a sentence, you must put "of" between the two words to have "zimba rebwe" (huge house/building of stone boulder. "re" means "of" in the strict context of stone and other special cases. To make them many stones or rocks required to build a house, you use the plural form of "bwe", which is "mabwe" (stones or rocks). "ma" indicates plural in the case of stone/rock. So we can say "zimba remabwe" (huge house/building of stone boulders). Hence "Zimbabwe" simply means "ziimba remabwe" meaning "a very huge house/building built from stone boulders". Pure and simple. Kudakwashe (my name which means: "Kuda" (the will) "kwa" (of the) "She" (Lord!" = "the will of the Lord" ).

I find it rather strange that a whole COUNTRY can be named after ONE stone building! If there was such a great "Shona Empire" then why would a single stone structure in the middle of otherwise wild grassland be such a talking point to everyone for hundreds of miles around?! Could it be that it was built by people from somewhere else for whom stone buildings were/are commonplace? Could it be that the Arabic/Islamic artifacts found near the site(and dated to the height of the slave trade) have some significance? Could "Great Zimbabwe"'s abandonment and the invasion and conquest of the Arabian Peninsula by the Ottoman Empire occuring at the same time be more than just coincidence? Nah, couldn't be that, could it? Blacks are the master race who built Egypt, Greece, the Great Wall of China, and the only truly indigenous people in the whole world, while the inferior White, Hamito-Semitic, East Asian, Indian, Native American, Inuit, and Turko-Mongol races are debased sond of the Devil.........1 March 2007

There is nothing strange about naming a country in any way at all. Besides its not ONE stone building as you seem to think. You will be unreasonable to doubt the existence of the Munhumutapa Empire, a "Shona Empire". Clear evidence is that the Shona constitute 80% of Zimbabwe's population and are found to be majorities in the massive province of Manica as well as other provinces in Mozambique. The Shona are also known to inhabit areas in Zambia and Botswana. Such an extensive occupation of a large part of southern africa by one linguistic group could not be explained and could not have happened without the existence of a once huge and powerful Shona empire. The English occupy a large part of the world today mainly because there was a powerful British Empire to make that possible, ditto for the Shona people in Southern Africa. I draw your attention to the origin of the name America and Colombia, which are based on names of "ONE" individual person each, whose natural lifespan is certainly less than that of a building. Isn't that strange? Rhodesia was based on the name of Cecil John Rhodes, ONE person, isn't that even stranger? If Arabs or some other white race built or even existed at Great Zimbabwe city during its hey-days, how do you explain their disappearance without a single trace, even genetic trace, except a few pieces of plates (China-ware)? Even bones of their dead mysteriously disappeared? Is that the strangest occurence ever to take place in our galaxy? You have no choice but to bow down to reason and accept that the black people, the Shona people, built Great Zimbabwe and conducted trade to acquire the China-ware and other artifacts. However, you are free to engage in imaginary fiction of whites inhabiting Great Zimbabwe but this has no place in serious historical analysis based on evidence on the hard ground at Great Zimbabwe. - SHIKU, mwana wevhu, 15 Mar 2007.

Erm, just because a large number of one group of people inhabit an area doesn't prove anything...."black people" constitute the majority population of the Caribbean, does that mean there was a thriving "black Craibbean" empire, or that they built the Maya nnd Aztec buildings/artifacts? A simple fact of life is that people migrate and settle in new areas. What was once the Indo-European Tocharian state is now simply part of China, what was once a key part of Ancient Greece is now part of Bulgaria? Does that mean that the Bulgars built the Hellenic monuments? In the same way the Shona only migrated into "Zimbabwe" long AFTER the buildings, trading centre had been abandoned by their true builders. The true "imaginary fiction" is of "indigenous Southern African blacks". The only indigenous people at that time were the Khoisan, who the "mighty Shona" massacred in waves of racial genocide, just like Mugabe is doing to other non-Shona groups in Zimbabwe today. Also, if the Shona were so great, why is Zimbabwe such a toiletbowl today?......29 march 2007

Also, "America" is named after Amerigo Vespucci, who is NOT indigenous to the land in question. Using "Rhodesia" as an example just proves you evern further wrong. The British took over other people's land and renamed with one of their words. The same for the Shona. All the name "Zimbabwe" proves is that the Shona are the majority population and control the land NOW. 300 years ago there were no Shona in Zimbabwe. The Native Americans built civilisations in the USA, but today the name "America", the language, control of the land, and the majority population of the USA are "white". In the case of Zimbabwe the Shona didn't even have to cross an ocean, merely to migrate southwards along with all the other tribes. They settled in Zimbabwe, they killed the indigenous Khoisan, and they now control the land. How does that "prove" the existence of a once-great Shona Empire, that there are NO records of in any book, note etc prior to the wave of politically correct late 20th century hysteria?......29 March 2007

[edit] graveyards at Zimbabwe

Has anyone discovered ancient graves en masse at Zimbabwe? Surely this would help clarify the origin of the builders and the age of the edifice? El Bab

Of course, graveyards or skeletons were certainly discovered at and around Great Zimbabwe. They were those of black people and discoveries of artefacts in the graves showed beyond doubt that there was no evidence of foreigners or non-Africans. If these graves held proofs of non-African or European or Asian or Islamic origin, the evidence would have been WIDELY PUBLICISED and it would have been common knowledge. This is a case of deliberately hiding the truth about the African origins of Great Zimbabwe. The architecture itself bears witness to African origins and beliefs with nothing to suggest non-African origins. I was at Great Zimbabwe in December 2006 - there is absolutely nothing like is elsewhere. The world or non-Africans should just swallow their supremacist pride and just accept this ancient city's African origin. There is just no choice at all. - Lawford