Great Zimbabwe
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Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a Shona trading state that flourished in the highlands of southern Africa between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Its name comes from dzimba dza mabwe, houses of stone, and its walls, built without mortar from granite blocks, are the largest in sub-Saharan Africa: the great enclosure has a wall up to eleven metres high and five metres thick, curving in a way later builders have not matched. The city grew rich by controlling the gold and cattle of the Zimbabwe plateau and by trading ivory, copper and iron with Swahili merchants on the Indian coast, who sent glass beads, porcelain and cloth inland; Chinese and Persian ceramics have been found at the site. At its height between 1290 and 1450 the settlement held perhaps 18,000 people, with a hilltop complex for the elite, dry-stone towers and a conical tower whose purpose is still debated. The state declined as trade routes shifted and the plateau was exhausted, and by 1450 the site was largely abandoned. Colonial-era myths that the ruins could not have been built by Africans were disproved by archaeology, and the ruins appear on Zimbabwe's flag and currency, which takes its name from the ruins.