The Shona Myth: Decoding Great Zimbabwe's Lost Origins

Great Zimbabwe: The Lost African Kingdom of Stone — Fexingo History · Oct 16, 2026 · 8m · transcript

For decades, the grand stone walls of Great Zimbabwe were dismissed by European explorers as too sophisticated to be built by indigenous Africans. This episode traces the intellectual journey from Carl Mauch’s misplaced search for Solomon’s Mines to Gertrude Caton-Thompson’s groundbreaking archaeological proof in the 1920s. We explore how colonial bias distorted the narrative for nearly a century, ignoring the oral traditions of the VaShona people who maintained that these dzimbahwe had always belonged to them. Through the lens of recent excavations and the reinterpretation of the soapstone…