1. How These Notes Work…
The notes you should take can be conveyed from the PowerPoint presentations.
I use PowerPoint to keep my thoughts clear and organized.
If a “*” is at the end of a sentence, it is important to write down.
If a “*” is at the end of the title of a slide, all the information is important.
Of course, all information on the slides is important in history…knowing it will contribute to you being more knowledgeable about social studies.

2. First topic….Great Zimbabwe
Who?- The Shona people of southeast Africa.
When? C.E C.E.
Where?- Southeast Africa
What?-Capital of thriving state.
Why?- Stood near important trade route that linked the coast with the gold fields inland. Great Zimbabwe gained control of these trade routes and flourished.

3. Who are the Shona people?
Traditionally, Shona peoples lived in dispersed settlements, usually consisting of one or more elder men and their extended families.
Shona are primarily agricultural. They raise some cattle, sheep, and chickens. Cows are considered taboo for women, so men must do all of the milking and herding.
The language they spoke was Xhosa.

4. Why was it so successful?*
Sometime after 1000, Great Zimbabwe gained control of gold trade routes.
From the 1200s-1400s the leaders taxed traders who traveled the routes and demanded payments from less powerful chiefs.
Because of its growing wealth, Great Zimbabwe became the economic, political, and religious center of its empire.

5. So what happened to them?
Shona oral tradition says that a man named Mutota left Great Zimbabwe in 1420 to find a new source of salt. He founded a new state in the north to replace Great Zimbabwe called the Mutapa Empire.
By 1450 Great Zimbabwe was abandoned*…why?
No one knows for sure, but theories include:
-Cattle grazing wore out the grassland
-Farming wore out the soil
-Salt and timber was used up
What do you think happened to Great Zimbabwe?

6. So what’s the big deal?
The city at the center of Great Zimbabwe was not a community of wooden shacks, it was a giant city of stone. “Zimbabwe” comes from the Shona word for “stone houses.”*
Almost everything we know about Great Zimbabwe comes from its ruins. Portugese explorers knew about the site in the 1500’s.
Karl Mauch, a German, was one of the first to “discover” the remains in 1871.*

7. Why the big walls?
What do the giant yet non-climbable walls of Great Zimbabwe suggest about its safety and security?
The stones that make up the walls are placed so evenly that there is no possible way of climbing up them.
The city held a population of about 10,000. The walls contain 900,000 stone blocks and do NOT CONTAIN MORTAR.
Among the ruins were found tall figures of birds, carved from soapstone.
Archaeologists believe it took 400 years to construct Great Zimbabwe.

8. What do you think? Why do the Yankees always win?
Because the other team can’t stop looking at their pinstripes.
It is one theory that the walls were used to show off power and control. Visitors would be awed by the site of such huge structures and would therefore be more likely to not attempt a battle with the Shona people and more likely to offer tribute.

9. Conclusion Watch this video.
What would you say to Karl Mauch to dispute his claim that a white tribe must have built the walled city?
For homework find out who, what, when, where, and why for the Kingdom of Benin.