Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a powerful Shona state that grew rich on cattle and on the gold trade carried down to the Swahili port of Kilwa and into the Indian Ocean. Its builders raised massive curved walls of precisely fitted granite blocks laid without mortar, enclosing the hilltop and the valley complex, including the famous Great Enclosure and its conical tower. At its height the city may have housed many thousands of people. Long misattributed by colonial writers to outsiders, it is now firmly understood as an indigenous African achievement.
Great Zimbabwe is the monumental capital of a sub-Saharan trading state, proving large-scale African statehood and stone urbanism, and refuting colonial denials of an African origin.