Transcript

Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the stone walls and the gold trade and the cattle economy, but there's one thing we keep circling around and I want to finally dig into it properly: the soapstone birds of Great Zimbabwe. Those carved birds on monoliths that have become the national symbol of modern Zimbabwe. Luna: The Zimbabwe bird, right? I've seen it on flags and coins, but I don't actually know what it is. Lucas: Exactly. So there were seven of them discovered in the ruins—carved from greenish-gray soapstone, each about a foot and a half tall, perched on a pedestal. They were found mostly in the Hill Complex and the Great Enclosure. The earliest known mention is from 1889, when a European hunter named Adam Render saw them, but they were really brought to the world's attention by the British archaeologist Theodore Bent in 1891. Luna: What did they look like? Were they all the same bird?