Q 01/05

Great Zimbabwe's builders spoke a language from which large African family?

A) Bantu

B) Semitic

C) Khoisan

D) Nilotic

Answer · why

A) Bantu

Bantu-speaking ancestors of the Shona raised the walls, yet colonial writers credited outsiders, and Rhodesia's government was still suppressing the e...

Q 02/05

Great Zimbabwe lies about 30 km from which modern Zimbabwean city?

A) Masvingo

B) Bulawayo

C) Mutare

D) Harare

Answer · why

A) Masvingo

Masvingo was founded in 1890 as Fort Victoria, a British outpost named for the queen, and swapped that colonial name for a Shona one two years after i...

Q 03/05

What distinction does Great Zimbabwe hold in southern Africa?

A) Highest settlement above sea level

B) Largest precolonial stone structure

C) Site of Africa's first gold mine

D) Oldest continuously occupied city

Answer · why

B) Largest precolonial stone structure

Largest precolonial stone structure in southern Africa, it so stunned 19th-century Europeans that they refused to credit local builders and looked abr...

Q 04/05

Great Zimbabwe's rulers measured much of their wealth in herds of which animal?

A) Camels

B) Cattle

C) Horses

D) Goats

Answer · why

B) Cattle

Cattle were the staple food of the court, and the herds may have been moved with the seasons to find fresh grazing.

Q 05/05

What holds the stone blocks of Great Zimbabwe's walls together?

A) Gravity alone

B) Mud daub

C) Wooden pegs

D) Lime mortar

Answer · why

A) Gravity alone

Gravity alone: each course of stone was set slightly further back than the one below, so the walls lean inward and hold themselves up.