Great Zimbabwe's stone enclosures expanded

1267

On the Zimbabwe Plateau, Shona builders raised the Great Enclosure's outer wall to eleven meters, enclosing a complex of stone towers, grain stores, and ritual spaces without a single drop of mortar. The city controlled the gold and ivory trade flowing to the Swahili coast at Sofala and Kilwa. At its peak Great Zimbabwe housed some eighteen thousand people, the largest medieval settlement in sub-Saharan Africa.