A fascinating survey, prepared at the turn of the century, of Zimbabwe and numerous other mysterious ruins in Rhodesia. For the past hundred years controversy, often acrimonious and always lively, has surrounded the origins of the great walled structure of Zimbabwe and the lesser, but still very impressive, edifices of Khami, Inyanga and some 200 other sites. One school of thought has held that the builders were exclusively Bantu and (particularly after dating techniques had been improved) that they were medieval; the rival school has stubbornly maintained that the Bantu, primitive in terms of technical accomplishment, simply do not know how to build in stone and that therefore other, more advanced races - the Phoenicians, the Arabs, the Portuguese - must have provided the architects if not the craftsmen. The first archaelogist to excavate at Zimbabwe was Theodore Bent (in 1891), whose work is recorded in The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland reprinted as Vol. 5 in this Series. The next investigation, conducted in 1902 at the request of Cecil Rhodes, was undertaken by the authors of this work, Hall and Neal. This reprint is of the rarer, second, revised and enlarged edition of their book, and is well illustrated withmaps and plates.

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