Where is the legendary gold hiding place in Zimbabwe?

When people think of Africa, they may immediately think of the pyramids and the Sphinx in North Africa and Egypt. If you pay attention to the ancient civilization of mankind, please don't forget Zimbabwe in southern Africa, where ancient ruins also shine with the glory of distant ancient civilization.

In Zimbabwe, the residents here are mostly Bantu Mashona and Matabele. In Bantu, Zimbabwe is called "Zimbabwe" because it comes from 200 stone towns all over the country, and Mashona people call any one of them "Zimbabwe".

The name Zimbabwe gives people infinite imagination, because it means "respectable stone house" and "stone house" in the local Bantu language; Some people think that Zimbabwe is a homonym of "Mazinbuwe" in Seshona language, which should mean "chieftain's residence". Some people think that it is a transliteration of the Ngoni language "Zimbi Wanbiwei", so it means "rich mine". And so on, to Zimbabwe, a landlocked country in southern Africa, its ancient ruins are shrouded in charming colors.

/kloc-one day in 0/868, a European explorer traveled on this magical ancient African continent. He was chasing a wild animal in the dense forest about 30 kilometers southeast of Victoria Castle in Zimbabwe and accidentally found a stone ruin. This is the world-famous "Great Zimbabwe". Although it was only the ruins of a large stone city at that time, it still looked mysterious and noble, unfathomable because of its unknown age. After 187 1 year, German geographer Karl Moher once said, "It was a huge stone building with no roof. It is made of gray granite with exquisite craftsmanship, some of which are carved. Those high stone walls on the mountain are clearly European buildings. " The arrogant European scholar says this is "European architecture" because he doesn't believe that the flower of ancient civilization is so gorgeous in the hinterland of Africa, which is vilified by white people as a "dark continent". It is inherent in itself and is by no means grafted by outsiders.

Although "Great Zimbabwe" has experienced the changes of mulberry fields in the century, most of them have been turned into ruins, but some of them still present magnificent weather and remain to this day.

As the main building, the most brilliant part of Greater Zimbabwe is located on the flat ground below the mountain. Because its outer wall is oval, with a circumference of 256 meters, an inner diameter of 89 meters and a width of 67 meters, it is called an oval wall. The wall here is nearly 10 meter high and about 5 meters thick, with a total area of about 4600 square meters. There are three doors on the east, west and north walls, and the top of each door has a huge circular arch made of granite. The top of the fence is carved with slender and hard patterns, and some single-sided tops are also carved with a grotesque stone bird. In the southeast of the fence, there is also a stone wall parallel to the fence, which is about 1 m apart, forming a narrow passage with the fence body of 100 meters long. At the end of the passage is a semi-enclosed area similar to a yard. There are conical stone pagodas, stone tablets, cellars, wells and some abandoned graves on stone cliffs in the besieged city, just like the remains of ancient courts. There are many small houses near the besieged city, and these low and dilapidated walls may be the residential areas of ordinary officials or servants.

Outside the oval wall, there are a series of walls, forming a fortress. There are intricate passages, stone steps and corridors on the city wall. Climb a stone ladder along a steep gap, and you can come to another major building: the Acropolis. Weicheng is built on a cliff about 90 meters high next to the oval city wall, commanding and overlooking the whole valley. The acropolis wall rises and falls with the rocks and naturally blends with the large arc mound. The besieged city is all made of granite, which is solid and imposing. It may be a fortress of defense. Inside the Acropolis, there are many broken houses and complicated criss-crossing passages. There are traces of gold in this site. Another building that looks like an altar may be the place where ancient people held religious ceremonies.

Among all the buildings in Great Zimbabwe, the most mysterious and puzzling is the conical tower in the oval wall. This is a solid granite building, with a thick bottom and a thin top, and a height of about 20 meters, without any traces of words. It is mainly made of flat granite carved into bricks and laid regularly according to certain patterns and lines. There is no trace of mortar or other adhesive bonding between Shi Zhuan. However, the connection between Shi Zhuan is so tight that it is difficult to insert even a thin blade into the gap. The appearance of the conical tower is mysterious, novel, exquisite, beautiful and strong. I don't know how many years of wind and rain I have experienced.

Since 1868, groups of European explorers and scientists have come to southern Africa with great interest, looking for traces in this suddenly magical land of Zimbabwe, and making repeated investigations in order to find out the inner mystery of "Greater Zimbabwe". The mysterious conical tower is their first choice for investigation. British archaeologist Bent once spent a lot of money and manpower to dig a tunnel around the conical tower on a large scale, trying to find an entrance. For this reason, he moved a lot of stones, only to find that the tower is solid, and this entrance has not been found so far-maybe it has no entrance at all. Therefore, archaeologists can't help wondering: what is the use of this giant tower that goes straight into the blue sky?

People have different views on this. Some people think that the shape of the tower is similar to the local granary, and it may be a huge granary. However, as the whole tower proved to be a solid whole, there was no room for storing food at all. Some people think that it is a symbol of male reproductive organs, used in some ancient religious ceremonies, and it represents a vigorous tribal spirit or the supreme power of tribal chiefs. However, these statements are ultimately unconvincing due to the lack of strong evidence and historical records. The cone tower is still strong, and I stood there alone, smiling silently, guarding the secret deeply hidden by the years.

/kloc-At the end of 0/9, kind Europeans crossed the ocean one after another to catch a glimpse of Zimbabwe. Because there is no textual research, they can only explain the mystery of "Zimbabwe" by their own subjective guesses, but they always use the existing viewpoints to explain the problem, trying to deny the African origin theory of this ancient civilization site and stubbornly linking its civilization connotation with the existing civilization.

For Europeans, Greater Zimbabwe should be a mythical golden country. They think that Stone Town is very similar to some temples of King Solomon in ancient Israel recorded in European history books, and it is probably the location of King Solomon's gold mine mentioned in the Old Testament. The Acropolis was built in imitation of the temple of the Lord built by King Solomon on Mount Moriah. The oval wall is modeled after the palace where the ancient Ethiopian queen Sheba lived in Jerusalem when she visited Solomon.

This kind of subjective speculation once aroused the enthusiasm of Europeans to go to Stone Town for gold. After many Europeans came to Stone Town, they hired local Mashona people and used imported advanced machinery to dig around precious sites, digging three feet and plundering precious cultural relics. Except for the hard granite stones, everything that can be taken was taken away, and all the cultural relics that may explain the historical truth were destroyed, and the research really began.

In later years, people excavated a lot of cultural relics around Zimbabwe. There are various production tools, sharp combat weapons and exquisite decorations, as well as ceramic fragments from far away China, glass beads from Arabia, Persian colored porcelain and Indian beads. From these unearthed cultural relics, we can at least see that the Stone Town, which disappeared in the distant years, has a long history of cultural and trade exchanges with ancient China, Arabia, Persia and India. As we all know, there are few records about Great Zimbabwe in China, Arabia and Persia.

Perhaps, these imported goods were obtained from the switch trade in the hands of a third party, so who are these third parties? We don't know. From the spectacular large conical tower, we can see that its construction technology has reached a very high level, that is to say, the construction technology of conical tower can be described in civilized terms. The builders of conical towers have mastered profound knowledge of architecture, geometry and mechanics for a long time.

What are these stone buildings, big and small, far and near? People haven't figured it out yet. Up to now, everything is speculation: some people think it may be the imperial capital of an ancient kingdom that has disappeared, while others think it is just a huge religious place. Different from other sites of civilization, all these stone buildings have no characters, carved patterns or murals, which is very different from the reliefs on Maya cities in the United States or temples in Angkor Wat in Southeast Asia. Moreover, it is not recorded in the handed down literature, so it can be said that there is no trace to be found. The relevant question can only be, who built this magnificent stone city with what tools and methods when? What is the relationship between the builders of Stone Town and Mashona and Matabele people living in Zimbabwe today? If its builders were foreigners, why did they suddenly abandon this place one day?

Because of the famous Zulu war in 1830, it is speculated that all the aborigines living in greater Zimbabwe were driven away, so where did they move? It is puzzling that what lives in this land now is just a branch of Mashona-Karan. Most of them still live in low and crude traditional shacks in Africa, and their daily life and religious ceremonies have nothing to do with these piles of stones.

At the beginning of the 20th century, European and American archaeologists launched a heated debate on these issues. British archaeologist McPherson believes that the architectural style of Great Zimbabwe has no traces of ancient Eastern Europe or Western Europe at any time, so it can only come from African aborigines. However, another British archaeologist, Hall, believes that African aborigines have no tradition of building stone buildings since ancient times, and no similar examples can be found in other parts of Africa. Therefore, Greater Zimbabwe can never be built by African aborigines. Both schools have supporters, but both suffer from lack of evidence, and no one can convince anyone. No one has counted how many workers and working hours are needed to make such a great civilized ancient city stand in the dense jungle of Africa. Maybe they worship the supreme power of the ruler.