Talk:Great Zimbabwe

City or village?

Is the term "city" really justified for something this size? Wouldn't "village" be more accurate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.195.1.165 (talk) 13:06, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

History

Ndebele State 217.15.117.118 (talk) 18:05, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Lemba

Is it necessary to have the paragraph about the Lemba genetic and cultural origins? It is covered in Lemba people, and this level of detail is not pertinent to discussion of the hypothesis of their involvement in Gt Z. Babakathy (talk) 17:20, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

The ancestors of the Lemba are postulated as being the originators of Greater Zimbabwe (a discussion that is repressed in Zimbabwe) so I guess it is pertinent. Although I note there is no note of their semitic DNA which would be especially relevant in that semitic peoples were heavily involved in the trade of ores from the region in History. 2001:8003:70F5:2400:4D5D:CCB:F17F:E633 (talk) 02:51, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm happy not relying on Gayre, but now we have the Lemba claimed sourced only to Bolts and Anderson, both unreferenced. Anderson's main work archived doesn't mention the Lemba at all, saying no black people could be the builders. Babakathy (talk) 09:56, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

@Babakathy Sorry. I'm not at all sure this is ok, but see Lemba people#Migration into Africa. That article has had a lot of pov editing in the past. Doug Weller talk 10:45, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, as does this one.

What we need in the Lemba section is to be able to summarise research done in the relevant period, as we have on Mauch and Bent and so on.

Bolts I can only find the primary reference, Gayre and his derivatives.

Bolts, W.B., 1777. “Report sent to Mr Andrew Daniel Pollett (Agent for their Imperial Majestics)”, p. 6; Transvaal Argief A497.

Babakathy (talk) 10:52, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

As this is a subsection of history of research would it be better to put Bolts in his correct historic epoch, rather than under Lemba? Babakathy (talk) 10:55, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Probably. But we should use nothing to do with Gayre. If we can't find anything better maybe it should be left out. I thought I'd fixed this some time ago, hopefully I didn't make it worse! Doug Weller talk 13:59, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Date of abandonment

User:Kowal2701 The Museum source does say 15th century. "Great Zimbabwe in Historical Archaeology: Reconceptualizing Decline, Abandonment, and Reoccupation of an Ancient Polity, A.D. 1450–1900" says "However, even when both oral and written sources become available after A.D. 1500, Great Zimbabwe remains peripheral to mainstream developments on the Zimbabwe Plateau and the western Indian Ocean zone. Clearly it must have been abandoned then," The Current Anthropology aticle says up to the first half of the 16th century What have I missed about the date? Doug Weller talk 16:17, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

The Conundrum of Great Zimbabwe says 1100-1700, however I'm happy to put 16th century. Truth is, we don't know. This from 2020 also says c. 1600. This from 2019 says The doubling of existing radiocarbon dates showed that most unwalled settlements were occupied post-AD 1450, with settlement persisting into the 17th century. 15th century is definitely outdated, it used to be thought states in Southern Africa were linear, such that Mapungubwe ended 1300, Zimbabwe began 1300 ended 1450, Mutapa began 1450, but this has effectively been ripped up in the past decade. Kowal2701 (talk) 16:56, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

San people

100,000 years must be wrong. Doug Weller talk 16:19, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

It's what the Mlambo source says, also this and this support it Kowal2701 (talk) 17:03, 21 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll replace the NYT source in their article with this. Should it be in the lead there? Doug Weller talk 14:22, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Or maybe not. Go to the Wikipedia library and search for "Primordialism and the ‘Pleistocene San’ of southern Africa". "The fundamental problem with trying to identify a ‘San culture’ in the Pleistocene is that this taxonomic unit holds little internal or external validity" Doug Weller talk 14:33, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't read the source properly (Pargeter et al from 2016). There seems to be some academic debate on this. This source dated 2023 says

Based on the primacy of fossil evidence, eastern Africa has typically been considered the locus of origin for humans (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2008). However, in just the past decade, genomic evidence is nearly unequivocal in demonstrating that the deepest population divergence is between the Khoe-San and all other human groups. Eastern Africans simply do not carry the highest levels of genetic diversity nor the deepest divergent lineages among sampled populations. The absolute date of this Khoe-San divergence varies widely depending on the types of loci included, the mutation rate, and the method of analysis. Almost all dates range from 200 to 100 ka with a mode around 150 ka-120 ka, which corresponds roughly the marine isotope stage (MIS) 5 to MIS 6 transition (Knight et al., 2003; Poznik et al., 2013; Henn et al., 2018).

and cites Pargeter et al later in the article saying

Future interdisciplinary research is necessary to further unravel southern Africa’s prehistory, though this is not without challenges. Different mediums, methods, and varying definitions across disciplines have given rise to opposing conclusions, further complicating interdisciplinary discussions (Pargeter et al., 2016)

I can't access this Oxford Research Encyclopedia article annoyingly. What do you think about including it in articles accompanied with a note about criticisms of drawing ethnic groups back that far? Kowal2701 (talk) 15:04, 22 December 2024 (UTC)