ABSTRACT
Zimbabwe is a landlocked country located north of SOUTH AFRICA, east of Zambia and Botswana, and west of Mozambique. San hunter-gatherers, who arrived from the North c. 8000 B.C., were absorbed by Bantu invaders after 500 A.D. The Shona (Bantu) word “Zimbabwe” means “houses of stone” and dates from the fifteenth-to sixteenthcentury Munhumutapa kingdom. The Great Zimbabwe, an impressive collection of stone buildings, began to rise on a site in central Zimbabwe in the eleventh century after the gold-mining, cattle-ranching Bantu groups had begun to arrive from the north. Great Zimbabwe was a trading center, fortress, and shrine to the preeminent god Mwari. In the fifteenth century Great Zimbabwe’s control over the region began to decline and centers of political and economic activity became more diverse.
