Tagged “africa”
Great Zimbabwe
Colonial-era authorities spent decades insisting Africans could not have built this city — so how, exactly, did a Shona state organize the labor, engineering skill, and long-distance trade needed to raise 800,000-plus mortarless granite blocks into walls eleven metres high, and why, after roughly two centuries at the height of its power, was the city abandoned?
c. 11th-15th century CE · Masvingo Province, ZimbabweAdded July 2026
Pyramids of Meroë
A powerful, literate African kingdom raised nearly 200 steep-sided pyramids in the Nubian desert over six centuries — so why does this vast royal necropolis remain so little known next to Egypt's, and what does it really take to understand how the Kushites built, and why they built, on this scale?
c. 300 BCE - 350 CE · Meroë (Bagrawiyah), River Nile State, SudanAdded July 2026