For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it.
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@oscarfalcon This is very kind. Thank you! I love that people are engaging with this ancient craft and my thoughts on it.
Ooh you'll get a kick out of this: a few years ago I did a "garden sculpture" for a house I designed and built and although it's not a wall, it is in the drystone technique... There are two standing stones and two shorter ones in the middle representing the four family members of this household.
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Ooh you'll get a kick out of this: a few years ago I did a "garden sculpture" for a house I designed and built and although it's not a wall, it is in the drystone technique... There are two standing stones and two shorter ones in the middle representing the four family members of this household.
@oscarfalcon I love this!! Once we have a bigger garden we are very keen to get some standing stones too.
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris
> Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
BS. that claim is essentially false.
It is not true that “nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece,” and it is not true that we know nothing about it.
The more accurate answer is this: we usually do not know the names of the individual laborers who carried stones, mixed mortar, cut blocks, or raised walls. But we do know quite a lot about the categories of people involved, the institutions behind the works, the funding, the contracts, the workshops, the architects, the craftsmen, and sometimes even the names of builders, contractors, slaves, freedmen, or professional associations.
For Rome and Greece, we have several kinds of evidence.
We have building inscriptions. Many ancient monuments explicitly state who commissioned them, who paid for them, who restored them, or who dedicated them. In Rome this was extremely common: emperors, magistrates, wealthy citizens, cities, provinces, and associations all left inscriptions on buildings. A famous example is the Pantheon, which still carries the inscription of Agrippa, even though the building we see today is mostly from Hadrian’s period.
We also have ancient literary sources. Writers such as Vitruvius, Pliny, Pausanias, Strabo, Livy, Cassius Dio, and others discuss buildings, techniques, patrons, artists, architects, and major public works. They are not always as precise as a modern archive, but we are not in the dark.
We have administrative and financial records. In the Greek world, especially for temples and sanctuaries, some accounts were carved into stone: payments, materials, suppliers, wages, and work stages. In places such as Athens and Delos, these records give us direct evidence of how public and religious construction projects were organized.
We also have material evidence, such as brick stamps in the Roman world. These can indicate workshops, kiln owners, dates, administrators, and sometimes elite or imperial ownership. They do not tell us “this exact worker placed this exact brick,” but they do allow historians and archaeologists to reconstruct supply chains, chronology, and production systems.
And then there is archaeology itself: quarries, ramps, scaffolding traces, tools, construction marks, repairs, unfinished blocks, mistakes, changes of plan, and workers’ graffiti. Even when no text survives, the construction process often leaves physical evidence.
In some cases, we even know the names of architects or designers. For the Parthenon, for example, ancient tradition names Ictinus and Callicrates as architects, with Phidias supervising the artistic and sculptural program. In Rome, we know figures such as Apollodorus of Damascus, associated with major imperial projects.
So no, these buildings are not “mysterious” in your pseudohistorical sense.
They were built by societies perfectly capable of organizing large-scale labor: slaves, free wage workers, specialized craftsmen, engineers, architects, contractors, quarrymen, transport crews, public officials, religious authorities, and political patrons.
What we often lack is the name of the individual worker who carved one block or laid one stone. But that is very different from saying that we do not know who built them. Ancient societies usually recorded the patron, the funder, the magistrate, the emperor, the temple, or the architect — not every anonymous laborer on the site.
So the correct version would be:
“We usually do not know the names of the individual workers who built Greek and Roman monuments, but we have substantial evidence about their patrons, designers, construction techniques, labor organization, materials, suppliers, workshops, and building processes.”
That is very different from “we know nothing.”
If you have the same records and the same evidences about this stone walls, no issue to say they are built by locals. Otherwise, it was someone else.
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Uriel Fanelli
Using Aktor: https://git.keinpfusch.net/loweel/Aktor-2
XMPP: uriel@keinpfusch.net
blog: https://blog.keinpfusch.net -
@kristiedegaris
> Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
BS. that claim is essentially false.
It is not true that “nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece,” and it is not true that we know nothing about it.
The more accurate answer is this: we usually do not know the names of the individual laborers who carried stones, mixed mortar, cut blocks, or raised walls. But we do know quite a lot about the categories of people involved, the institutions behind the works, the funding, the contracts, the workshops, the architects, the craftsmen, and sometimes even the names of builders, contractors, slaves, freedmen, or professional associations.
For Rome and Greece, we have several kinds of evidence.
We have building inscriptions. Many ancient monuments explicitly state who commissioned them, who paid for them, who restored them, or who dedicated them. In Rome this was extremely common: emperors, magistrates, wealthy citizens, cities, provinces, and associations all left inscriptions on buildings. A famous example is the Pantheon, which still carries the inscription of Agrippa, even though the building we see today is mostly from Hadrian’s period.
We also have ancient literary sources. Writers such as Vitruvius, Pliny, Pausanias, Strabo, Livy, Cassius Dio, and others discuss buildings, techniques, patrons, artists, architects, and major public works. They are not always as precise as a modern archive, but we are not in the dark.
We have administrative and financial records. In the Greek world, especially for temples and sanctuaries, some accounts were carved into stone: payments, materials, suppliers, wages, and work stages. In places such as Athens and Delos, these records give us direct evidence of how public and religious construction projects were organized.
We also have material evidence, such as brick stamps in the Roman world. These can indicate workshops, kiln owners, dates, administrators, and sometimes elite or imperial ownership. They do not tell us “this exact worker placed this exact brick,” but they do allow historians and archaeologists to reconstruct supply chains, chronology, and production systems.
And then there is archaeology itself: quarries, ramps, scaffolding traces, tools, construction marks, repairs, unfinished blocks, mistakes, changes of plan, and workers’ graffiti. Even when no text survives, the construction process often leaves physical evidence.
In some cases, we even know the names of architects or designers. For the Parthenon, for example, ancient tradition names Ictinus and Callicrates as architects, with Phidias supervising the artistic and sculptural program. In Rome, we know figures such as Apollodorus of Damascus, associated with major imperial projects.
So no, these buildings are not “mysterious” in your pseudohistorical sense.
They were built by societies perfectly capable of organizing large-scale labor: slaves, free wage workers, specialized craftsmen, engineers, architects, contractors, quarrymen, transport crews, public officials, religious authorities, and political patrons.
What we often lack is the name of the individual worker who carved one block or laid one stone. But that is very different from saying that we do not know who built them. Ancient societies usually recorded the patron, the funder, the magistrate, the emperor, the temple, or the architect — not every anonymous laborer on the site.
So the correct version would be:
“We usually do not know the names of the individual workers who built Greek and Roman monuments, but we have substantial evidence about their patrons, designers, construction techniques, labor organization, materials, suppliers, workshops, and building processes.”
That is very different from “we know nothing.”
If you have the same records and the same evidences about this stone walls, no issue to say they are built by locals. Otherwise, it was someone else.
--
Uriel Fanelli
Using Aktor: https://git.keinpfusch.net/loweel/Aktor-2
XMPP: uriel@keinpfusch.net
blog: https://blog.keinpfusch.net@uriel I think you have completely misunderstood what I am saying.
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@uriel I think you have completely misunderstood what I am saying.
@kristiedegaris
You think wrong. If you ask me how I am sure the Pantheon was built by romans, I can tell you with evidences.
Just do the same with your African walls, and that's it.
It's easy.
--
Uriel Fanelli
Using Aktor: https://git.keinpfusch.net/loweel/Aktor-2
XMPP: uriel@keinpfusch.net
blog: https://blog.keinpfusch.net -
@oscarfalcon I love this!! Once we have a bigger garden we are very keen to get some standing stones too.
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@oscarfalcon Lovely!!
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@oscarfalcon Lovely!!
Thank you!
It has sunk a bit over the years (it was built in 2007) and the owners have asked if it would be possible to dig it up and raise it about 30 cms. or so and of course I'm up for it, my body might ache a bit more now but why not right!
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
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@LukePhilipps ha! Yes, exactly!
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris A lot of white people in apartheid South Africa firmly believed Zimbabwe was "obviously" built by the Phoenicians.
A lot of the stone structures across South Africa were just demolished by white farmers for building materials.
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@kristiedegaris A lot of white people in apartheid South Africa firmly believed Zimbabwe was "obviously" built by the Phoenicians.
A lot of the stone structures across South Africa were just demolished by white farmers for building materials.
@SecondUniverse I can't even imagine the treasures that were lost. What still exists in Zimbabwe is truly some of the most intricate and best drystone in the world.
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris
Wow I live I africa but I have heard about it
Do you live in africa -
@kristiedegaris
Wow I live I africa but I have heard about it
Do you live in africa@Timothyswallehz No, I live in Scotland.
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris sorry, that's very interesting, I knew nothing about it
There's still someone that says they are not local creation? I read that these theories were demolished in 1930 and even before...
History has always been bent for other interests, political and economical ones
Even the same European history has been deformed and used, so many times... -
@Timothyswallehz No, I live in Scotland.
@kristiedegaris
How do you come to know some facts of Zimbabwe -
For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris Ah, the oldest trope in archaelogy pop culture; Egyptians didn't build the pyramids and if they did then they Ancient Egyptians have nothing whatsoever to do with Modern day Egyptians! (whose DNA has got corrupted or something)
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris Amusing that the Greeks called the Mycenaean walls "Cyclopean", because they didn't believe their ancestors could have shifted the enormous boulders, and it must have been the Cyclopes (one-eyed giants) who did it.
My point being that there seems to be a general tendency to say "I don't understand how they managed that massive building project, so it must have been giants/aliens/an advanced civilisation we know nothing about" when ancient cultures inc Africans were VERY CLEVER.
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris "I am a drystone waller/All day I drystone wall./ Of all appalling callings/Drystone walling's worst of all." - Pam Ayres (Though I suspect she never tried hedging with thorn bushes.)
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For decades, descendants of the people who built Great Zimbabwe were told by colonial archaeologists that they couldn't possibly have built it. This despite all the evidence & Zimbabwe meaning 'houses of stone' in the Shona language.
The ancient aliens industry applies the same logic to Sacsayhuamán in Peru.
Yet nobody questions who built the impressive structures in Rome or Greece.
Sunday's Drystone Diary will explore Whose History Is Worth Keeping?
@kristiedegaris Zimbabwe mentioned!
