It is immensely interesting to see the de-westernization of modern archaeology .. it seems to be being forced by the artefacts themselves, which provide ample motivation and evidence that western ideals need not be applied to ancient ways.
It is one of those subjects where the intersection of religious fervour and scientific rigour has produced endless falsehoods - yet with every scrape in the dirt we get more and more truth behind human history.
As an armchair fan of archeological endeavours from Gobekli Tepe to the forests of the Amazon, I can only hope that the elevation of Great Zimbabwe in the human lexicon results in further enlightenment with regards to our human history. It is very rewarding to see the veils of christian political movements falling from the stage of archeological accomplishment. We need more of this.
It's less "de-westernization" and more a internationalization and the removal of racist ideology in archeology. Archeology was for decades deeply affected by racist believes, both directly and indirectly by building on-top of research which was affected without realizing it.
Idk. why but people often forget that the race ideology (crossed with nationalism and religion) which is today often seen a "being a nazi thing" was very wide spread even before the German Nazis became a thing all around the western world (and also outside of the western world replacing "european-white supremacy" with e.g."japanese-asian supremacy", but that kinda doesn't matter for this discussion).
A good example how the mindset affected "historic" research for a long time, is how for a long time it was believed that in pre-human history in each step of evolution there where always a few "evolved" sub-subspecies from a human predecessor and only one survived "by itself/without mixing". Which as it turns out is complete bs as there was a constant interbreeding of such species and the modern human is a result of this interbreeding (sure some species traits dominated, but either way it wasn't still constant DNA exchange of sub-species, i.e. "pre-humans" which are noticeable more different then any two modern humans of different ethnicity).
Why would you think de-westernization of archeology has anything to do with it or is even relevant?
He won 2 awards for his research, 1 in 2019 from Antiquity. Which is from the UK and so western.
I think most people want to find out the truth and that's it.
The problem was that there was not much similar evidence for this architecture to buy build nearby, so some archeologists had wrong conclusions.
It don't think anyone benefits from pushing a false dogma.
At least, i don't see how they could benefit x centuries afterwards.
On the contrary, the named archeologists could have had more success by acknowledging it's history ( even though they didn't acknowledged it) and helping investigation.
Zimbabwe is interesting, but hard to compare to recent work that shines light on the pre-Saharan civilizations that led through migration during climate change to the earliest dynasties of Egypt. Africa has a really long and complex history with Zimbabwe being a relatively late and modest component elevated largely because of a not entirely rational obsession with stone building remains. In a similar way it is only recently that some of the earliest artifacts are being uncovered in South America because so few stone buildings were left behind.
The breathless language of this 'presentation'--and the silly superlatives like 'a triumph of engineering' tell me this is some kind of agenda presented as 'archaeology'.
> In 1889 Willi Posselt, another German explorer, bribed a local bigwig and stole one of Great Zimbabwe’s bird carvings which had spiritual importance for the local Shona people.
Stole, or bought? Increasingly common to erase all acquisition as theft because it happened a long time ago. Can think of other examples too. The famous cock from Cambridge "returned" a few months ago. For example
I think "stole" is appropriate given that (1) the "local bigwig" wasn't likely the rightful owner of the bird carving, and (2) colonialism has historically relied on asymmetrically informed "sales" to export wealth back to the West.
See also: Manhattan's "sale" for $24 of beads. Contemporary Americans spend years in court arguing that sums far less were stolen from them in far more legitimate "sales."
I use NoScript to block unnecessary JavaScript on websites, so I'm used to pages failing to load. But this article's nice scrolling 3D animation works fine on mobile with only the 'economist.com' domain allowed to run JS.
Africa is full of so many great civilization stories, that they highlighted this relatively recent one from 1200 to 1550:
in its prime, from around 1200 to 1550, Great Zimbabwe was home to about 10,000 people. The state covered 1,779 acres, more than twice the area of New York’s Central Park.
-----
From Ancient Egypt to Carthage to the Malian Empire (with wealthy cities like Timbuktu) there are so many remarkable parts in Africa.
> Great Zimbabwe was home to about 10,000 people. The state covered 1,779 acres
That seems... absolutely tiny? 7km^2, so a reasonably fit person could run around the entire country in an hour. Population of 10k at a time when the total population of Africa was in the tens of millions. Not a value judgement, but I'm honestly shocked how small those numbers are.
A 250 meter long wall 11 meters tall is far from "triumph of engineering" even in 1200. "Drainage channels" are far from "evidence of a sophisticated civilisation". They could even be naturally formed by water along the unpaved ground and other parts of the world had sewer systems a lot earlier. I could go on and talk about 10k people and so on...
"Drainage channels" are far from "evidence of a sophisticated civilisation".
The term "civilization" has a technical meaning in archaeology which includes things such as permanent settlement and a hierarchical social order. Walls and drainage are absolutely treated as evidence of civilization when discussing other ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Maya.
The fact that Great Zimbabwe is not as sophisticated as other civilizations of the same time-period is a moot point because the thing that is interesting about it isn't how it stacks up to contemporary Eurasian society but the fact that it apparently is an entirely home-grown civilization in southern Africa.
Because of a history of archeology degrading the people of the region, perhaps, and a desire to apply the same civilization-building moral standards to Africa as the rest of the world?
A 250 meter long wall, 11 meters tall .. made out of nothing but bricks (no mortar, remember) .. surviving mostly intact after 10 centuries? That is definitely a triumph of engineering, by anyones standards ..
The desired end-point narrative changes with the political objective.
120 years ago Cecil Rhodes was keen to prove that Zimbabwe was fantastically advanced for its time and place, because it would prove it could not have been built by the locals, and therefore he could take the land from the present occupants, because they had taken it from someone else.
As Michener puts it in his (fictionalized) account:
"So now, if Rhodes could prove that no black society had ever been advanced enough to have built Zimbabwe, his theft of Matabeleland would seem more palatable. It would, after all, be rather ugly to have stolen a kingdom in order to bring it civilization if that kingdom had once been civilized."
I agree. This really felt patronising to me. Like they were trying too hard to be impressed. At the very least such claims require some contextualisation, which the article does not really supply. And I think it’s obvious why that context is never provided.
It's hardly unique to Africa, and the opposite exists, too. People do their best to tear down past accomplishments that were previously hailed as special.
Why? I think it's to make themselves feel better in comparison. They get some kind of happiness or satisfaction from elevating their own ancestors, or degrading others'.
Personally, I believe it's for the same reason there's an Afrofuturism exhibit at The Met in NYC speculating a history which never was. It's the same reason Black Panther grossed 1.4b. It's the same reason Ian Smith is painted as a racist and Mugabe is now remembered fondly as a controversial but well-meaning champion of the people.
I'm not sure how to phrase this without being accused of dog-whistling, but I do think there's a subversive effort, especially in the media, in painting the history of Africa into something that it's not.
why does the west feel its their job alone to write the history of African countries instead of letting them research and write their own history instead?
ooh, I can answer this one. It seems abundantly clear that the premise of the article is that many people don't believe that African civilizations in that time period could have built walls or drainage channels like this.
It was little clues in the text that gave it away, like this: "That is because, says Mr Chirikure, Great Zimbabwe should be a “symbol”, not just of Africa’s power and potential, but of how outsiders have too often told Africans’ stories—and got them wrong."
If the prevailing idea is that this relatively rudimentary technology was too advanced for the people of the region, then this discovery is evidence to disprove that. It doesn't have to be "sophisticated" on an absolute scale. Only relative to expectation.
Imagine a 5 yr old wrote working Java code. Any working program, even the equivalent of a drainage ditch, would be worthy of praise. And something as simple as a linked list could be described as a "sophisticated technique" (for a 5 yr old)
Understanding context and reading the article are, as ever, the keys.
Is this satire? The construction of New England's rock walls is well documented and occurred primarily between 1700ish (starting date varies greatly based on location) and 1840ish (when it became substantially less economically useful to clear land to graze sheep for wool) with a long tail extending up until the industrialization of the 1870s.
Give me a text version with a separate widget to look at the 3D and this would be usable. I hate faffing with this scrolling one sentence at a time nonsense.
[+] [-] boffinAudio|4 years ago|reply
It is one of those subjects where the intersection of religious fervour and scientific rigour has produced endless falsehoods - yet with every scrape in the dirt we get more and more truth behind human history.
As an armchair fan of archeological endeavours from Gobekli Tepe to the forests of the Amazon, I can only hope that the elevation of Great Zimbabwe in the human lexicon results in further enlightenment with regards to our human history. It is very rewarding to see the veils of christian political movements falling from the stage of archeological accomplishment. We need more of this.
[+] [-] dathinab|4 years ago|reply
Idk. why but people often forget that the race ideology (crossed with nationalism and religion) which is today often seen a "being a nazi thing" was very wide spread even before the German Nazis became a thing all around the western world (and also outside of the western world replacing "european-white supremacy" with e.g."japanese-asian supremacy", but that kinda doesn't matter for this discussion).
A good example how the mindset affected "historic" research for a long time, is how for a long time it was believed that in pre-human history in each step of evolution there where always a few "evolved" sub-subspecies from a human predecessor and only one survived "by itself/without mixing". Which as it turns out is complete bs as there was a constant interbreeding of such species and the modern human is a result of this interbreeding (sure some species traits dominated, but either way it wasn't still constant DNA exchange of sub-species, i.e. "pre-humans" which are noticeable more different then any two modern humans of different ethnicity).
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|4 years ago|reply
He won 2 awards for his research, 1 in 2019 from Antiquity. Which is from the UK and so western.
I think most people want to find out the truth and that's it.
The problem was that there was not much similar evidence for this architecture to buy build nearby, so some archeologists had wrong conclusions.
It don't think anyone benefits from pushing a false dogma.
At least, i don't see how they could benefit x centuries afterwards.
On the contrary, the named archeologists could have had more success by acknowledging it's history ( even though they didn't acknowledged it) and helping investigation.
[+] [-] m0llusk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stakkur|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] md_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pythonlion|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kikokikokiko|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Grustaf|4 years ago|reply
Compare Great Zimbabwe to the 2000 year older Gate of Ishtar, or even the 3500 year older Ziggurat of Ur.
Even backwaters like Scandinavia had more impressive structures a millennium earlier, in the iron age, like Eketorp.
[+] [-] easytiger|4 years ago|reply
Stole, or bought? Increasingly common to erase all acquisition as theft because it happened a long time ago. Can think of other examples too. The famous cock from Cambridge "returned" a few months ago. For example
[+] [-] woodruffw|4 years ago|reply
See also: Manhattan's "sale" for $24 of beads. Contemporary Americans spend years in court arguing that sums far less were stolen from them in far more legitimate "sales."
[+] [-] selimthegrim|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whatatsentyways|4 years ago|reply
I use NoScript to block unnecessary JavaScript on websites, so I'm used to pages failing to load. But this article's nice scrolling 3D animation works fine on mobile with only the 'economist.com' domain allowed to run JS.
Talk about a refreshing change of pace.
[+] [-] ajdude|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Strs2FillMyDrms|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 1cvmask|4 years ago|reply
in its prime, from around 1200 to 1550, Great Zimbabwe was home to about 10,000 people. The state covered 1,779 acres, more than twice the area of New York’s Central Park.
-----
From Ancient Egypt to Carthage to the Malian Empire (with wealthy cities like Timbuktu) there are so many remarkable parts in Africa.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu
[+] [-] rory|4 years ago|reply
That seems... absolutely tiny? 7km^2, so a reasonably fit person could run around the entire country in an hour. Population of 10k at a time when the total population of Africa was in the tens of millions. Not a value judgement, but I'm honestly shocked how small those numbers are.
[+] [-] trabant00|4 years ago|reply
Why? Why do they feel the need to do this?
[+] [-] astine|4 years ago|reply
The term "civilization" has a technical meaning in archaeology which includes things such as permanent settlement and a hierarchical social order. Walls and drainage are absolutely treated as evidence of civilization when discussing other ancient civilizations such as the Sumerians and the Maya.
The fact that Great Zimbabwe is not as sophisticated as other civilizations of the same time-period is a moot point because the thing that is interesting about it isn't how it stacks up to contemporary Eurasian society but the fact that it apparently is an entirely home-grown civilization in southern Africa.
[+] [-] aa-jv|4 years ago|reply
Because of a history of archeology degrading the people of the region, perhaps, and a desire to apply the same civilization-building moral standards to Africa as the rest of the world?
A 250 meter long wall, 11 meters tall .. made out of nothing but bricks (no mortar, remember) .. surviving mostly intact after 10 centuries? That is definitely a triumph of engineering, by anyones standards ..
[+] [-] SaintGhurka|4 years ago|reply
The desired end-point narrative changes with the political objective.
120 years ago Cecil Rhodes was keen to prove that Zimbabwe was fantastically advanced for its time and place, because it would prove it could not have been built by the locals, and therefore he could take the land from the present occupants, because they had taken it from someone else.
As Michener puts it in his (fictionalized) account:
"So now, if Rhodes could prove that no black society had ever been advanced enough to have built Zimbabwe, his theft of Matabeleland would seem more palatable. It would, after all, be rather ugly to have stolen a kingdom in order to bring it civilization if that kingdom had once been civilized."
[+] [-] ycombinete|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wccrawford|4 years ago|reply
Why? I think it's to make themselves feel better in comparison. They get some kind of happiness or satisfaction from elevating their own ancestors, or degrading others'.
[+] [-] JJMcJ|4 years ago|reply
Because the still common belief that Africa was in a very primitive state before the Europeans showed up and "civilized" them.
[+] [-] honkdaddy|4 years ago|reply
I'm not sure how to phrase this without being accused of dog-whistling, but I do think there's a subversive effort, especially in the media, in painting the history of Africa into something that it's not.
[+] [-] interactivecode|4 years ago|reply
(write as in write down, not write as invent)
[+] [-] ravar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gromitss|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] hooande|4 years ago|reply
It was little clues in the text that gave it away, like this: "That is because, says Mr Chirikure, Great Zimbabwe should be a “symbol”, not just of Africa’s power and potential, but of how outsiders have too often told Africans’ stories—and got them wrong."
If the prevailing idea is that this relatively rudimentary technology was too advanced for the people of the region, then this discovery is evidence to disprove that. It doesn't have to be "sophisticated" on an absolute scale. Only relative to expectation.
Imagine a 5 yr old wrote working Java code. Any working program, even the equivalent of a drainage ditch, would be worthy of praise. And something as simple as a linked list could be described as a "sophisticated technique" (for a 5 yr old)
Understanding context and reading the article are, as ever, the keys.
[+] [-] foxhop|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thom|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombela|4 years ago|reply
I think that we are so conditioned to have shitty experiences, that we brace ourselves at the first sign of multimedia.
[+] [-] invalidusernam3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pell|4 years ago|reply