Until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.

That proverb comes from Zimbabwe, and that's where we'll be traveling today,

to the ruins of the once great capital city.

The capital city of an African empire called the Kingdom of Zimbabwe,

that existed from the 9th to the 15th century.

I'm Dylan Therese, and this is Atlas Obscura, a celebration of the world's strange,

incredible, and wondrous places. Today, we're taking you to the towering ruins of great Zimbabwe.

To explore this ancient economic powerhouse, whose influence stretched across continents and

about how a colonial empire was determined to rewrite its story. More after this.

So, the key thing about great Zimbabwe is that it is a remarkable piece of human genius.

That Shadrick Shury Kurei, he is the British Academy Global Professor of the School of Archaeology

at Oxford University, which is a mouthful. He's also a native of Zimbabwe, and he works as an

archaeology professor at the University of Cape Town. Basically, he's a really busy guy who spends

a lot of his time studying ruins. Ruins that include great Zimbabwe.

Shadrick says that during its prime,

Greed Zimbabwe had a lot going for it economically.

The key thing about that great Zimbabwe is that it has evidence of a very strong local

production abyss, and that is very important. So, there is evidence of farming,

cattle keeping, the keeping of sheep and goats. There is also evidence of industry, gold,

iron working, copper working. It's important to note that Greed Zimbabwe was not the entire

civilization, but actually just the capital city of the kingdom of Zimbabwe. It was an empire that

covered an area about the size of Iowa, and at the height of the kingdom, Zimbabwe was a land

...