Zimbabwe ruiner
Zimbabwe Ruiner är det största antika minnesmärket söder om Sahara. Det finns flera ruiner av byggnader som uppfördes i området under en längre tidsperiod mellan ca 1100-talet och 1400-talet. Ingenstans i södra eller centrala Afrika finns något bevarat monument som liknar dessa ruiner, däremot finns rester av äldre stenbyggnader på många andra platser.
Ruinerna är en form av stadskultur, något som ofta skapades av de araber som reste till södra Afrika. De afrikanska stammarna skapade vanligtvis sina byggnader av lera och gräs.
Den här staden växte fram som ett centrum för handel med guld, elfenben och slavar. Guldet och de övriga varorna transporterades från Zimbabwe till staden Sofala (som grundades av araber) på östkusten (i nuvarande Mozambique), där de skeppades vidare. Under utgrävningar i ruinerna har man också funnit föremål som tyder på handel med främmande kulturer och att människor från främmande kulturer kan ha varit bosatta här.
De första européer som såg ruinerna i Zimbabwe var de portugiser som reste i området och ägnade sig åt mission eller handel. Zimbabwe Ruiner, som ligger i Zimbabwe National Park, upptäcktes därefter 1857 av den tyskfödde Adam Render. Han visade ruinerna för vännen Karl Gottlieb Mauch, som blev den förste att göra en ritning av området.
Render hade teorier om att ruinen kunde vara en rest av ett av Kung Salomons fort. Mauch trodde att de uppförts av fenicier under hebreiskt inflytande och att byggnaden var en kopia av Drottning Shabas palats. Många tidiga uppfattningar har kunnat avskrivas i takt med att fler arkeologiska undersökningar gjorts.
En teori, som varit svår att motbevisa, är att arabiska handelsmän byggt platsen och att de administrerat staden. De hade bevisligen grundat städer längs den afrikanska östkusten och trängt in i landet i jakten på guld, handelsvaror eller slavar.
Området sägs ha bebotts av över 10.000 människor och innanför murarna bodde en trolig härskarklass bestående av ca 300 personer. Det finns anledning att anta att härskarna i kulturella eller andra avseenden skiljde sig från det övriga folket så mycket att de måste bo innanför murarna. Kanske var det en plats där man förvarade stora värden, där man bearbetade handelsvaror och där affärerna mellan arabiska köpmän och Karanga gjordes upp. Kanske slavar hölls innanför murarna i väntan på transport.
De första vita bosättarna i Rhodesia hade svårt att tro att förfäder till Shona, som nu bodde i en enkel hyddkultur, kunde ha en åstadkommit ett sådant byggnadsverk. Afrikanerna som bodde i området saknade skriftspråk, de hade ingen valuta och inga sjukhus. De hade inte uppfunnit hjulet och inte heller plogen. Därför uppstod allehanda teorier om varför byggnaderna uppförts och vilka som kunde ha gjort det.
Arkeologen Gertrude Caton–Thompson gjorde utgrävningar i området 1929 och sade sig ha fått stöd för att byggnaderna hade afrikanskt ursprung. Samtidigt förs på olika håll diskussioner om vilka afrikanska stammar som i så fall har uppfört byggnader. Det påstås från en del håll att Bantustammar kan ha gjort det, vissa tecken på möjliga bantuboningar har rapporterats. Vissa andra stammar har redan tagit åt sig äran. Professor Tudor Parfitt hävdar bestämt att Lemba-stammen (en sydafrikansk stam som sägs ha delvis judiska förfäder) kan ha gjort det. (Länk: [1].)
Då så många teorier framförts (av både forskare och författare) har det blivit möjligt för många lekmän att presentera sin uppfattningar. Frågetecknen är fortfarande många, inte minst kring varför platsen upphörde att vara ett kulturellt eller politiskt centrum. För en del är svaret enkel: Det berodde på att de araber som idkat handel längs sträckan flyttat till andra områden som de kunnat exploatera. Forskningen om detta går vidare och sista ordet är inte sagt.
Landet Zimbabwe hette tidigare Rhodesia.
Innehåll
Externa länkar
Citat 1
- Robert Dick-Read, författare till boken ”The Phantom Voyagers":
It would be fair to say that without the input of Indonesians in ancient times, sub-Saharan Africa would be a very different place today. Amongst other things, one wonders, would the world have such magnificent African icons as The Great Zimbabwe or Nigeria's famous bronzes?
Nowhere in the book have I said that INDONESIANS built the Great Zimbabwe, Khami or the Nyanga mountain complex! What I have said is that, centuries ago, the Indonesian mariners who came across the Indian ocean and settled Madagascar (this is not disputed) ALSO settled in AFRICA, and that there grew up a mixed race of Africans and Indonesians — an Afro/Indonesian, or Afro/Malagasy race, if you like. For much of the 1st millennium AD, in 'pre-Swahili' times, these people, many of whom must have been fine seamen, maintained contacts between Africa and Madagascar across the Mozambique Channel . . . .until the Arab/Shirazi expansion down the coast of Africa drove a wedge between the Great Island and the Mainland communities.
There is much evidence to suggest that the people of The Great Zimbabwe — and also the people who once inhabited the Nyanja mountains — were Afro/Malagasy communities. Take one example: the religion of the Shona has much in common with that of many Malagasy people whose tromba cult also may well tell us much about the purpose and function of the many zimbabwes of Central Africa. There are many connections.
I respect Professor George Landow for his work on Dickens, Ruskin, and European arts and design; but let's face it, he is not an Africanist. Furthermore, he is not entirely right in what he says about the great archaeologist of Zimbabwe, Gertrude Caton Thompson (no hyphen). In the introduction to the 2nd edition (1971) of her "The Zimbabwe Culture" she wrote:
. . . the identity of the 'ruin-builders', and their predecessors who occupied the site, still eludes certainty. That they were African is generally agreed by qualified opinion, but evidence is confused by millennia of hybridisation and absorption, as well as by our present ignorance of the physical extent to which, in whole or part, African populations have been subject to Asiatic or other intrusions. Where the morphology leaves off genetics may take over.
Those who read my book will note that Gertrude Caton Thompson gave me great encouragement when I started studying my thesis in 1959. In a letter to me dated Aug 8th 1959 she expressed the sentiment echoed in the quotation above when she wrote: "I myself used the term 'Bantu' in 1929 with expressed reserve. My subsequent commentators exceeded my intentions in the use of the word." She went on, in the same letter:
I still believe that Zimbabwe, as an important site, was occupied by iron-age people, with a culture which developed into the full-blown Z. Culture, several centuries before the 13th Cent. I find it difficult to reconcile the fact that a pre-building ashy stratum exists underneath the existing buildings in so many places, and is non-existent outside their boundaries, with a 'foundation' completely unconnected the one with the other.
She went on to discuss the probable dates concluding that they were: " . . . improbably older than the first 500 years A.D. . . . which is probably before the Karanga, the Shona, or any other Bantu-speaking people had crossed the Zambezi on their southward and eastward migrations.
- (Länk till sidan: [4])
Citat 2
* Almost every local tribal group claims to be the original builders of Great Zimbabwe, but the Lemba probably have the best claim. Artefacts found at the site are very similar to those used by modern Lemba (part of the Shona group of peoples), and this is backed up both by similarities in burial customs and by folklore.
At its zenith between the years 1100 and 1450, Zimbabwe is believed to have had 10-20,000 inhabitants, and to have controlled a huge empire between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, covering much of modern Zimbabwe and some of Mozambique. It is clear from artefacts discovered in the ruins that this was a great trading empire and items from as far away as China having been found.
- (Länk till sidan: [5])
Citat 3
* Great Zimbabwe is a mysterious ruin and the largest ancient stone construction south of the Sahara. The huge walls and tower, which are held together without mortar are some of the most extraordinary man made remains in Africa and were built between AD 1250 and AD 1450
- (Länk till sidan: [6])
Citat 4
* When Portuguese traders first encountered the vast stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe in the sixteenth century, they believed they had found the fabled capital of the Queen of Sheba. Later travelers surmised that the site's impressive stone structures were the work of Egyptians, Phoenicians, or even Prester John, the legendary Christian king of lands beyond the Islamic realm. Such misguided and romantic speculation held for nearly 400 years, until the excavations of British archaeologists David Randall-MacIver and Gertrude Caton-Thompson early in this century, which confirmed that the ruins were of African origin.
- (Länk till sidan: [7])
Citat 5
* Many thousands of prehistoric gold-workings are scattered round the former territory of Southern Rhodesia - over an area, in fact, similar to that containing the ruins10. Some calculations indicate that more than 20 million ounces were extracted11. Exploiters of such riches tend not to disclose their source, so it is quite credible that most of it ended up in the northern hemisphere12. In fact, in the sixth century AD, Cosmas Indicopleustes of Alexandria13 referred to gold acquired by trade with southeast Africa (where "winter occurred during northern hemisphere summer"); so did Masudi and Ibn Al Wardy in the tenth century - when it was apparently being exported from an Arab trading post at Sofala (on the coast east of the Zimbabwe Ruins: the modern resort there still carries the old name). That gold could easily have been first detected in alluvial mud at the mouth of the Zambezi river, and perhaps also in the Sabi.
- (Länk till sidan: [8])
Citat 6
* That Muslims were responsible for constructing the Zimbabwe Ruins structure is accepted by many authorities. However, they clearly used slave labour to construct the fortifications and slave market for their trade route. The Zimbabwe Ruins is very similar to comparable structures and designs in South Yemen. Arabic coins and jewelery found on site confirm that Arab slave traders used the Zimbabwe Ruins.
- (Länk till sidan: [9])
Citat 7
* Since Europeans first encountered the ruins of Great Zimbabwe, it has been the focus of ideological concern and conflict. Unwilling to believe that sub-Saharan Africans could have built such a structure, adventurers and ideologues long claimed the ruins a mystery, theorizing that ancient Phoenicians, Arabs, Romans, or Hebrews created the structures. In fact, as Tingay points out, "since archaeologist Gertrude Caton-Thompson's excavations in 1932, it has been widely known that Great Zimbabwe is truly of Africa and less than 1000 years old" (98). Nonetheless, the White Rhodesians, whose ideology proclaimed the land "empty" of people and culture before they arrived, "tried to rewrite history -- even asserting that an African genesis for Great Zimbabwe was tantamount to treason" (98). After the War of Liberation, the new nation, discarded the name of Cecil Rhodes and, looking to the past for nobler origins, chose the name Zimbabwe.
- (Länk till sidan: [10])
Citat 8
* Certain features of Swahili architecture on the East Coast resemble those at Zimbabwe, in particular the great tower. (Länk till sidan: [11])
