According to the movie we watched in class, Zimbabwe means the “Great House of Stone”. This name is fitting since the city was built out of it, using dry-stone techniques. Africans would spend so much time just shaping the stone to make a wall. The Zimbabwe Ruins consisted of a fortress named Acropolis, and a temple now named Great Zimbabwe (http://www.dlmcn.com/anczimb.html). These structures were so beautiful that white people who saw them could not believe they were built by Africans. They were convinced black people could not create such monumental stuctures and they were thought that there had to be a hidden “white city”. (This sounds a little crazy to me, though I am not surprised.)
On another note, Zimbabwe was active in trade with Muslim merchants. Gold, cattle, ivory, and copper were traded for cloth, porcelain, and glass. Though Great Zimbabwe “was not close to the local gold seam”, they were powerful because they could control trade (http://www.somalipress.com/zimbabwe-overview/early-history-zimbabwe-1140.html).
Overall, Zimbabwe’s history was somewhat a mystery because of the fact that people wanted to think one way, whether or not it was true. Though things in history actully happen only one way, the perceptions of different people can alter the understanding of others in the future, thus “changing” it.
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Perceptions play a huge role in how we view or see something. I was amazed by the video how much whites historians thought that Africans were not capable of creating something so magnificent. I almost wonder how much of the history of Zimbabwe is lost because of this.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. It actually makes me wonder how much of all history has been altered.
ReplyDeleteThis video was filled with great information and I enjoyed learning about how history can be hidden with assumptions. Early explorers and historians did not want to believe that African Americans created this great society of Zimbabwe.
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