North entrance
The majestic stone structures of Great Zimbabwe, constructed by the Shona people in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, were designed to dignify rather than to defend the largest city of southern Africa. Center of a cattle-raising economy that operated over great distances, the settlement lay on the rim of the central-southern plateau of Africa, between the dense scrubland of the winter pastures and the open country of the high veld.
The reconstruction at left shows a view within the Great Enclosure, which was probably the royal residence (plan, above). A massive wall 820 feet long and more than thirty feet high, built of granite blocks without mortar, surrounded the thatched huts that belonged to the ruler's family as well as a number of ceremonial or symbolic structures; the latter included a conical tower and platforms for displaying carved artifacts and pots.
At intervals along the wall stood soapstone carvings; a number of these portrayed the sacred fish-eagle (far left), the "Bird of Bright Plumage" revered by the 10,000 inhabitants of Great Zimbabwe as their guardian and counselor.
Existence in every region of Africa—from the humid equatorial rain forests to the burning deserts of the south, from the mountainous eastern highlands to the grassy inland plateaus—and had developed strategies of survival and cooperation that were precisely attuned to their needs.
By the fourteenth century, settled agricultural societies—interspersed in regions less suitable for farming by seminomadic cattle-raising peoples—were thriving across the whole of Africa almost down to the Cape of Good Hope; the only exceptions to the farmers and herders were the Pygmies in the rain forests of the Congo and the Khoi of certain arid central and southern regions, who lived by hunting and gathering their food. The agricultural accomplishments of the African peoples had been made possible by two related developments during the first millennium AD. The first was the steady outward migration of Bantu-speaking peoples from their base in the lower Congo basin; these skilled ironworkers taught the societies they settled among how to make metal tools and so enabled them to penetrate densely populated terrain and to grow crops in previously uncultivated land. The second was the introduction of Southeast Asian foods—plantains, sugar, and new varieties of coconuts, rice, and yams—by Indonesian settlers in Madagascar; many of these foods could be grown in moist conditions and produced high yields.
Though linked to its neighbors by regional networks of trade, each community was largely self-sufficient and isolated; in relation to the vastness of their continent, the African people were few in number, and warfare for territorial gain was rare. As well as farming, many of the settled peoples mined for copper, tin, gold, or iron ore. The metals were used to make tools, weapons, and jewelry; wood, ivory, and terra cotta were also worked to make sculptures and other sacred objects.
The forms of social organization evolved by these peoples varied according to their size and the ecology of their territory, but certain features were shared by many. Each community generally comprised a number of lineage groups based on kinship and family descent, while farmers, artisans, and others with specialist occupations had fixed responsibilities and privileges according to the social value of their work. Blacksmiths in particular, who possessed the secrets of turning iron-bearing ores into useful metal, enjoyed a special status as almost magical beings. The seminomadic peoples were often divided by age; As they advanced in years, all the males of the same age became warriors and then elders at mass-initiation ceremonies.
Land was always collectively owned, and wealth was measured not in territory but often in the number of animals that a person owned. In the more centralized societies, the power of the king was perceived as the accumulated wisdom and strength handed down by the ancestors, and the health of the king was intimately associated with that of the community as a whole.
Underpinning the social framework was African religion. Centuries older than Islam and Christianity, African systems of belief posited a world of ancestral and natural spirits whose influence upon daily life could be beneficial or harmful. The supernatural was experienced as natural: Good fortune in war or the growth of crops could be invoked by ritual ceremonies, and wrongdoing would be punished by witchcraft. The dignity and meaning of individual lives lay in their relationship to the community, which consisted of the dead and the still-to-be-born as well as the living. Such beliefs functioned as unwritten codes of justice: They sanctified custom and authority and embodied clear ideals of behavior.
Through the rhythms of their music and dancing, through their shrines and sacred precincts, through the masks and sculptures made by anonymous artisans, the Africans linked themselves to their ancestors and to a spirit world that existed parallel to, and sometimes infringing upon, their own. Such beliefs and practices gave stability and a firm sense of identity to the local communities and hallowed their relationship with the land that sustained them.
Because they did not constitute a set of fixed doctrines but provided an infinitely flexible means of interpreting their experience, the religious beliefs of the Africans enabled them to absorb many external influences without undue disruption. Large-scale migrations, the acquisition of new skills such as ironworking, and the generation of new political ideas were all of momentous consequence, but each of these was subsumed into what was essentially a continuous, unbroken course of development and achievement.
Throughout the fourteenth century, even the activities of foreign travelers, merchants, and scholars in the kingdoms of the Sudan and the city-states on the east coast did not alienate these societies from their longstanding cultural traditions. Islam brought literacy and the stimulus of its own scholarly traditions; it introduced new political ideas and commercial practices; and it drew large parts of Africa into the international trading network that linked all the countries of Europe and Asia. But these benefits were accepted and exploited by the Africans without compromising their own cultural identity.
Contacts between the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa and incomers from other cultures were never again to be so fruitful. As the nations of Europe became dependent on supplies of African gold to sustain their economies, they began to contemplate the advantages of controlling its production as well as its consumption. By the end of the sixteenth century, during which ships from Europe traversed the globe, the nations to the north would attain the power to do so. They would also—in their need for labor to work the mines and plantations of their American colonies—acquire another motive for intruding on the African kingdoms. The intricately balanced structures of African societies, the product of milleniums of gradual evolution, were to be violently disrupted by the arrival of the Europeans. -
World History
