When first visited by a European, the German geologist,Carl Mauch, in September 1871, he described it as such:

"I do not think that I am wrong if suppose that the ruin on the hill is a copy of Solomon's Temple on Mount Moriah and the building in the plain a copy of the palace where the Queen of Sheba lived during her visit to Solomon."

Denial that African's were capable of building such a city dictated the type of archaeology that was done, and led to restoration and digging that destroyed much of the archaeological evidence. Great Zimbabwe (see map) has been ravaged by treasure hunters and amateur archaeologists. Layer after layer of African artifacts were trashed in order to reach the bottom layer which, it was assumed, would prove that whites had exerted early influence in southern Africa.

It is only in the last several of decades (Zimbabwe became independent in 1980) that archaeologists have begun to ask what the ruins at Great Zimbabwe and similar sites represent in social, economic and political terms.

The name Zimbabwe reflects what a chiefdom group known as the Shona, a Bantu speaking people, refer to these ruins. In Shona, the translation is roughly as follows:

dzimba dza mabwe = houses of stone

dzimba woye = venerated houses, a phrase usually used to describe a chief's house or grave.

dzimbahwe = court, home or grave of chief.