Велики Зимбабве

Велики Зимбабве

Велики Зимбабве, конична кула

Велики Зимбабве је име дато рушевинама древног града на Југу Афике које се налазе у данашњем Зимбабвеу. Град је био центар империје познате као Мунхумутапа Империја (такође се користи име Мономатапа Империја) које се простирала на територијама данашњих држава Зимбабвеа и Мозамбика. Налази се 27 km југоисточно од Машвинга. Име је изведено од Шона речи dzimba dza mabwe и значи „куће од камена“. Construction on the city began in the 9th century and continued until it was abandoned in the 15th century. The edifices are believed to have been erected by the ancestral Shona. The stone city spans an area of 722 square kilometres (279 square miles) which could have housed up to 18,000 people at its peak, giving it a population density of approximately 2,500 per square kilometre. It is recognised as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Становници Великог Зимбабвеа поштовали су душе преминулих предака, и њима у част су на обредима приносили месо телади у посудама које су постављали на посвећена места на комплексу брежуљка. Археолошки налази указују да је Зимбабве такође имао трговачке везе са средњовековном Кином и Арабијом. Радиокарбонско датирање најстарије артефакте смешта на почетак 13. века. Из данданас непознатих разлога је напуштен 1450. године. Први Европљани који су видели рушевине били су португалски истраживачи на почетку 16. века. Неколико британских експедиција је предузето половицом 19. века када се сматрало да су Зимбабве саградили Феничани или Арапи, односно да је представљао реплику двора Краљице од Сабе. Прва организована ископавања су започела 1905. године, након чега је прихваћен став како су Велики Зимбабве саградили локални Банту народи. Тај је став службено цензурисала расистичка родезијска власт до 1980. године.

The earliest known written mention of the Great Zimbabwe ruins was in 1531 by Vicente Pegado, captain of the Portuguese garrison of Sofala, on the coast of modern-day Mozambique, who recorded it as Symbaoe. The first confirmed visits by Europeans were in the late 19th century, with investigations of the site starting in 1871. Later, studies of the monument were controversial in the archaeological world, with political pressure being put upon archaeologists by the government of Rhodesia to deny its construction by native African people. Great Zimbabwe has since been adopted as a national monument by the Zimbabwean government, and the modern independent state was named after it. The word great distinguishes the site from the many hundreds of small ruins, now known as "zimbabwes", spread across the Zimbabwe Highveld. There are 200 such sites in southern Africa, such as Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and Manyikeni in Mozambique, with monumental, mortarless walls; Great Zimbabwe is the largest of these.

Name

Главни чланак: Name of Zimbabwe

The conical tower inside the Great Enclosure at Great Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe is the Shona name of the ruins, first recorded in 1531 by Vicente Pegado, captain of the Portuguese garrison of Sofala. Pegado noted that "The natives of the country call these edifices Symbaoe, which according to their language signifies 'court'".

The name contains dzimba, the Shona term for "houses". There are two theories for the etymology of the name. The first proposes that the word is derived from Dzimba-dza-mabwe, translated from the Kalanga dialect of Shona as "large houses of stone" (dzimba = plural of imba, "house"; mabwe = plural of bwe, "stone"). A second suggests that Zimbabwe is a contracted form of dzimba-hwe, which means "venerated houses" in the Zezuru dialect of Shona, as usually applied to the houses or graves of chiefs.

Опис

Overview of Great Zimbabwe. The large walled construction is the Great Enclosure. Some remains of the valley complex can be seen in front of it.

Settlement

The majority of scholars believe that it was built by members of the Gokomere culture, who were the ancestors of the modern Shona in Zimbabwe.

The Great Zimbabwe area was settled by the 4th century AD. Between the 4th and the 7th centuries, communities of the Gokomere or Ziwa cultures farmed the valley, and mined and worked iron, but built no stone structures. These are the earliest Iron Age settlements in the area identified from archaeological diggings.

Construction and growth

Aerial view of Great Enclosure and Valley Complex, looking west

Construction of the stone buildings started in the 11th century and continued for over 300 years. The ruins at Great Zimbabwe are some of the oldest and largest structures located in Southern Africa, and are the second oldest after nearby Mapungubwe in South Africa. Its most formidable edifice, commonly referred to as the Great Enclosure, has walls as high as 11 m (36 ft) extending approximately 250 m (820 ft). David Beach believes that the city and its proposed state, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe, flourished from 1200 to 1500, although a somewhat earlier date for its demise is implied by a description transmitted in the early 1500s to João de Barros. Its growth has been linked to the decline of Mapungubwe from around 1300, due to climatic change or the greater availability of gold in the hinterland of Great Zimbabwe.

Traditional estimates are that Great Zimbabwe had as many as 18,000 inhabitants at its peak. However, a more recent survey concluded that the population likely never exceeded 10,000. The ruins that survive are built entirely of stone; they span 730 ha (1.800 acres).

Features of the ruins

Aerial view looking southeast, Hill Complex in foreground

View west from the Eastern Enclosure of the Hill Complex, showing the granite boulder that resembles the Zimbabwe Bird and the balcony.

Detail of the wall with lichen, 1975.

In 1531, Vicente Pegado, Captain of the Portuguese Garrison of Sofala, described Zimbabwe thus:

Among the gold mines of the inland plains between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers there is a fortress built of stones of marvelous 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 [22 m] high. The natives of the country call these edifices Symbaoe, which according to their language signifies court.

— Vicente Pegado

The ruins form three distinct architectural groups. They are known as the Hill Complex, the Valley Complex and the Great Enclosure. The Hill Complex is the oldest, and was occupied from the 9th to 13th centuries. The Great Enclosure was occupied from the 13th to 15th centuries, and the Valley Complex from the 14th to 16th centuries. Notable features of the Hill Complex include the Eastern Enclosure, in which it is thought the Zimbabwe Birds stood, a high balcony enclosure overlooking the Eastern Enclosure, and a huge boulder in a shape similar to that of the Zimbabwe Bird. The Great Enclosure is composed of an inner wall, encircling a series of structures and a younger outer wall. The Conical Tower, 5,5 m (18 ft) in diameter and 9 m (30 ft) high, was constructed between the two walls. The Valley Complex is divided into the Upper and Lower Valley Ruins, with different periods of occupation.

There are different archaeological interpretations of these groupings. It has been suggested that the complexes represent the work of successive kings: some of the new rulers founded a new residence. The focus of power moved from the Hill Complex in the 12th century, to the Great Enclosure, the Upper Valley and finally the Lower Valley in the early 16th century. The alternative "structuralist" interpretation holds that the different complexes had different functions: the Hill Complex as a temple, the Valley complex was for the citizens, and the Great Enclosure was used by the king. Structures that were more elaborate were probably built for the kings, although it has been argued that the dating of finds in the complexes does not support this interpretation.

Види још

• Списак места Светске баштине у Африци

Литература

• Garlake, Peter (1973). Great Zimbabwe: New Aspects of Archaeology. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-8128-1599-3. 
• Garlake, Peter (1982). Great Zimbabwe. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. ISBN 978-0-949932-18-1. 
• Garlake, Peter (2002). Early Art and Architecture of Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-284261-7. 
• Matenga, Edward (2008). Soapstone Birds of Great Zimbabwe: Symbols of a Nation. Harare: African Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-77901-135-0. 
• Pikirayi, Innocent (2001). The Zimbabwe culture: origins and decline of southern Zambezian states. Rowman Altamira. ISBN 978-0-7591-0091-6. 
• Summers, Roger (1970). „The Rhodesian Iron Age”. Ур.: J.D. Fage; Roland Oliver. Papers in African Prehistory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-09566-2. 
• Ucko, Peter J. (1995). Theory in Archaeology: A World Perspective. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-97328-8. 

Спољашње везе

• Great Zimbabwe entry on the УНЕСКО Интернет страница Светске баштине
• Great Zimbabwe Ruins