#shona

[tdsharkgirl]

refined version of my total drama oc shona…! she’s a mutant shark (and fang’s cousin) who became an intern for the show because she lived around the island anyway. in the water

she constantly thwaps people with her tail accidentally and she flirts with with the other intern girls by giving them poorly made seashell jewelry, which she also sells on her etsy shop

[ciara-knightly]

i love how maddy will say things and rhydian will like. Physically Cringe. he had to stop eating here so he could close his eyes this is killing me asdfghjgf

[alvallah]

It’s just me and the home boy.

[fallingsun]

xiao lanhua: i want to wake up with you every day for the rest of our lives

dongfang qingcang: i wake up at 4:30 a.m.

xiao lanhua: ...

xiao lanhua: i want to see you at some point every day for the rest of our lives

[ausetkmt]

BBC: The ancient remains of Great Zimbabwe

The ancient city of Great Zimbabwe was an engineering wonder. But archaeologists credited it to Phoenicians, Babylonians, Arabians – anyone but the Africans who actually built it.

W

Walking up to the towering walls of Great Zimbabwe was a humbling experience. The closer I got, the more they dwarfed me – and yet, there was something inviting about the archaeological site. It didn't feel like an abandoned fortress or castle that one might see in Europe: Great Zimbabwe was a place where people lived and worked, a place where they came to worship – and still do. It felt alive. 

Great Zimbabwe is the name of the extensive stone remains of an ancient city built between 1100 and 1450 CE near modern-day Masvingo, Zimbabwe. Believed to be the work of the Shona (who today make up the majority of Zimbabwe's population) and possibly other societies that were migrating back and forth across the area, the city was large and powerful, housing a population comparable to London at that time – somewhere around 20,000 people during its peak. Great Zimbabwe was part of a sophisticated trade network (Arab, Indian and Chinese trade goods were all found at the site), and its architectural design was astounding: made of enormous, mortarless stone walls and towers, most of which are still standing.

However, for close to a century, European colonisers of the late-19th and early-20th Centuries attributed the construction to outsiders and explorers, rather than to the Africans themselves.

Indeed, the author of the first written European record of Great Zimbabwe seemed to be staggered by the very idea that it could have been built at all. Portuguese explorer Joao de Barros wrote in 1552 that, "There is masonry within and without, built of stones of a marvellous size, and there appears to be no mortar joining them."

Built between 1100 and 1450 CE, Great Zimbabwe was large and powerful (Credit: evenfh/Getty Images)

In the Shona language, zimbabwe translates approximately to "stone house", and because of the site's size and scope, it became known as Great Zimbabwe. Moreover, it was not the only such "Zimbabwe": there are remains of approximately 200 smaller settlements or trading posts spread across the region, from the Kalahari Desert in Namibia to Mozambique. 

According to Munyaradzi Manyanga, a professor of archaeology and cultural heritage at Great Zimbabwe University, the position of Great Zimbabwe among these settlements has been widely debated. Some people have speculated that it was a capital city of a very large state, but to Manyanga, that seems unlikely. "Such a state would have been too large. One wouldn't have been able to manage that kind of extent and size. So most of the interpretations talk of these as having been influenced by Great Zimbabwe." He added that the Kingdom of Zimbabwe is considered to be made up of Great Zimbabwe and the smaller settlements located closer to it.

The walls, which are made of granite, are stacked precisely and do not use any mortar to hold them in place (Credit: 2630ben/Getty Images)

The walls, which are made of granite, are stacked precisely and do not use any mortar to hold them in place. "The quarrying of the granite, taking advantage of natural processes of weathering and the shaping of it into regular blocks was a major engineering undertaking by these pre-colonial communities," Manyganga said. Iron metallurgy was needed to make the tools required to cut the blocks; it was also needed to make trade goods subsequently found at the site. All of this points to a highly organised and technologically advanced society.

The population of Great Zimbabwe began to decline in the mid-15th Century as the Kingdom of Zimbabwe weakened (possible theories for the decline include a drop in mining output, overgrazing by cattle, and depleted resources), but the site itself was not abandoned. Manyganga explained that it was regularly visited by different Shona groups for spiritual reasons right up until colonisation by the British in the late 19th Century. 

Europeans of the late-19th and early-20th Centuries attributed the construction to outsiders and explorers, rather than to the Africans (Credit: Agostini/Getty Images)

A decade later, in a speech to the Royal Geographic Society, British journalist Richard N Hall supported Bent's perspective after visiting the site himself. He talked about the artistic value of soapstone carvings that had been unearthed and the "marvellous cleverness" of a gold-mining operation that spanned hundreds of mines, before concluding that "it is quite a moral certainty that even the cruder methods of [these sciences'] application were imported from the Near East, and did not originate in South-East Africa." Instead, he and his colleagues held that Phoenicians, Arabians or Babylonians created the city.

According to Manyanga, "They wanted to use [this explanation] as a moral justification for colonising Zimbabwe. If there was this long-lost civilisation in this part of the world, there was nothing wrong with colonialism because they were resuscitating this old kingdom."

However, a few archaeologists of the time countered that the site was not nearly old enough to be from Biblical times. "The then-colonial government suppressed these views, and the official narrative in public media and museums was that Great Zimbabwe was of foreign origins," said Manyanga. This version of history was upheld through the 1960s and 1970s by the white-minority government of the colony. Only in 1980, when Zimbabwe achieved independence, could the new leaders finally affirm that the site was built by their own ancestors. During the 1960s, black nationalists had even settled on Zimbabwe as the name for the country they hoped to lead to freedom, harkening back to Great Zimbabwe.

Since 1980, local archaeological research has been slow to resume and has dealt largely with maintenance and repair. Research has instead focused on the satellite sites, in part because they were less disturbed by early excavations. Manyanga emphasised that scholarly understanding of Great Zimbabwe has shifted. "Eurocentric models interpreted the site as though you were looking at a castle in Europe. What has come to light from recent work is that Great Zimbabwe was built over a long period of time; it was not built once and then occupied, but grew over time. Even the walling came at a later stage because earlier on there were farming communities at Great Zimbabwe."

Today, the great ancient city remains just as important for Zimbabweans. Shona villages are located nearby, and many residents work to maintain the site. A religious centre is close by too, and the site still attracts worshippers who practice traditional Shona faiths.

"It was Africans who created this," said writer Marangwanda. "And over a millennium later it's still standing. It's a testament to who we are." 

BBC Travel's Lost Civilisations delves into little-known facts about past worlds, dispelling any false myths and narratives that have previously surrounded them.

[folkfashion]

Shona woman, Ashley Morgen, Zimbabwe, by Miss Africa 2020

[danzonho]

Charlotte & Shona at This Way Up S01E01

[michaelmac6072-art]

Bad Brewing

A bad potion made Pat go from minigiant to just mini~

While waiting out being smol, she realized that it's much easier to be teased at that size. Fellow magician Shona also realized this.

(Shona belongs to AdeordLeaner over on DA)

[words-for-cat-bracket]

round 4 - week 4 - 1 of 4

brought to you by: clara

kissa (finnish) vs katsi (shona)

info and propawganda under the cut!

kissa /ˈkisːɑ/

"it is very cute. very cute!

I want to give every kissa a kiss on the forehead :)

It sounds very nice, and kind of friendly, in a way.

Because a common mis-spelling of kissa is kisa, which means competition and this is a competition and kissa should win

It sounds like kiss, and I love giving kittens kisses

it sounds like both ""hiss"" and ""kiss"" and cats hiss and i want to give them a little kiss on the head. plus finnish is a fun language and people don't know that much about it "

katsi - no IPA provided

It's cute

[zerox77660]

[asterbats]

silverwind prologue

[ciara-knightly]

i think one of the things that really gets me about the maddian dynamic in maddy cool is that when maddy is acting out because of her recent transformation, rhydian won't embarrass her in front of anyone and call her out until they're on their own. and even though she's being snarky and prickly, he takes a gentle approach, telling her to run with him so she can work out her excess energy. it's only when she pushes too far that he actually expresses his irritation and anger at her, but it's always coming from a place of concern. like he didn't want to go to the party and they had just fought but he goes anyway just in case maddy shows up. the way he treats her in that episode is so telling, and i always thought occam's razor was when he realized he was falling for her but his behavior in maddy cool just confirms it for me because he is starting to show and verbalize his concern for her

[alvallah]

🥰

[fallingsun]

i can’t stop laughing over changheng realizing xiao lanhua/xi yun remembers her past and saying “you remember everything, but you won’t reunite with dfqc because you’re going to die and you don’t want to hurt him anymore. but you’re ok with marrying me and then having me watch you die?“ and xlh was basically like “yeah, sorry.” like that was brutal lmao, get this man some therapy

[abloomsdayy]

[danzonho]

DI Charlotte & DS Shona O’keefe

Inspired by this beautiful moodboard by @helebing