MC_A Concise History of Africa

SOUTHERN AFRICA

F rom the 7th–11th centuries, Bantu migrants reached southern Africa, where they were to form great city states. Great Zimbabwe was at its height between the 11th and the mid-15th centuries when, for reasons unknown, it was abandoned. It had impressive stone buildings, built by the ancestors of the Shona, the wealth of whose

BELOW: The Zambezi river. OPPOSITE ABOVE: The Kalahari Desert. OPPOSITE BELOW: A family sitting outside their traditional house in a village on the edge of the Kalahari Desert.

empire came from large-scale gold and copper mining, these metals, together with iron and ivory, having been traded since the 10th century. Their control extended over the area between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers and extended west as far as the Kalahari Desert. There were other local cities, Khami being a 15th-century

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