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F
rom the 7th–11th centuries, Bantu
migrants
reached southern
Africa, where they were to form
great city states. Great Zimbabwe
was at its height between the 11th
and the mid-15th centuries when,
for reasons unknown, it was
abandoned. It had impressive stone
buildings, built by the ancestors of
the Shona, the wealth of whose
empire came from large-scale gold
and copper mining, these metals,
together with iron and ivory, having
been traded since the 10th century.
Their control extended over the area
between the Zambezi and Limpopo
rivers and extended west as far as
the Kalahari Desert.
There were other local cities,
Khami being a 15th-century
BELOW:
The Zambezi river.
OPPOSITE ABOVE:
The Kalahari
Desert.
OPPOSITE BELOW:
A family sitting
outside their traditional house in a village
on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.
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SOUTHERN AFRICA