Masvingo Province Things to Do

The Great Zimbabwe Ruins

by Rusket

We heard two different stories about these famous ruins an World Heritage Site: The official one, that it was built by the shonas in the 12th century. The king lived at the top and his 200 wifes in the village below. When he wanted company, he called out the name of the lucky one, and she climbed up to him ;-)According to a descendant from white settlers, history was rewritten in 1983. He claimed that the shonas had hardly come to the country in the 12th century, their technology did not include building stone walls without mortar, and they did not live long enough in one place to build something like that. He meant that the ruins are remnants from a phenician trade community, based on the similarity of these structures with structures found elsewhere.Over the years there have been several myths about the ruins, one of them beeing that there was a connection with King Salomon's Mines,...