Africa where the human race began nearly a billion people live here and it's a continent with an incredible diversity of communities and cultures yet we know less of its history than almost anywhere else on Earth but that's beginning to change in the last few decades researchers and archaeologists have begun to uncover a range of histories as impressive and extraordinary as anywhere else on [Music] Earth it's a history which has been neglected for years and it's largely without written records but it is preserved for us in the gold and statues in the culture art and legends of the people my name is Gus casley Hayford over many years I've studied the history and culture of Africa as an art historian I'm used to drawing stories from mute objects from the past I'm going to discover the history and find out what really happened to the Lost kingdoms of Africa in 1871 a German geologist exploring southern Africa stumbled across these extraordinary ruins he was astonished by what he found a vast Stone City stranded in the empty Savannah Great Zimbabwe he had no idea who was responsible for this astounding feat of architecture but he was sure of one thing it was too sophisticated to have been built by Africans thankfully these assumptions have been discredited today but only now are we piecing together the fragments we know about this Lost Civilization and its connections to other kingdoms of pre-colonial southern Africa could Great Zimbabwe really have been an African Eldorado a City built on gold in this film I'm Going In Search of the story of one of the most mysterious cities and Society in Africa I don't think we can understand this Kingdom without understanding the civilizations and kingdoms that grew up around it it was part of a rich and fascinating history largely unknown the history of wealth trade and gold my journey to find out about Great Zimbabwe would take me from the Swahili Coast in modern day Tanzania to mosambique South Africa and hopefully to Modern Zimbabwe itself where no BBC crew has been allowed to film for 8 years my first stop is right here at the edge of the continent where Africa meets the Indian Ocean this is the ancient Swahili Coast the centuries people have been drawn here from as far away as China India and the Middle East and they've been drawn here by trade trade in Goods but particularly trade in gold for many years Western Scholars paid little attention to the history of this Coast they didn't think it fitted into the wider trade patterns of the ancient world to Arabia in the north and India in the East but Recent research now suggests that this Coast was Central to an international trade in gold gold which originated in Great Zimbabwe 1500 km in land and I think this ancient trade route may lead to a better understanding of what Great Zimbabwe actually represents in the untold history of this continent there's evidence to suggest that Traders were already coming to this Coast from Far a field as long ago as the 1st Century ad I've got my holiday reading with me which is uh well it's a bit more than holiday reading this is uh the periplus of the erran sea which is a a first century Guide to the Indian Ocean it talks about all the sorts of wonderful places that merchants and sailors could have traveled in that time to ply their trade and it talks about this place called Raptor which is supposed to be the most southernly port in Africa that you could then travel to the periplus is an ancient Greek text which describes the ports and cities which dot this Coast all the way up to Arabia according to the periplus Raptor was the place where Traders from India and Arabia came to buy Ivory fine toris shell and rhinoceros Hall in return the people of raptor imported Spears daggers and glass but unfortunately the periplus is vague on the exact whereabouts of raptor and the stories of this trading City have been dismissed as Legend now however Professor Felix charmi of the University of Dar Salam in Tanzania thinks he might have found it are you Felix hey hi I've heard a I've been reading my parus in preparation for this good man but I know you're the man to show me around you're welcome I mean the legendary Raptor I mean if you found it this is quite something so I'm expecting a [Applause] lot Felix charmi is a world-renowned archaeologist whose work has been instrumental in piecing together the ancient history of the Swahili Coast if he has indeed found Raptor this will rank as his greatest discovery yet it will also prove that this region was a vibrant part of the ancient world did you see a crocodile seriously yeah oh that's a you it's a lizard isn't it monism it's just amazing Felix and I are on the raiji river which flows to the Indian Ocean from deep within the African interior you managed to do it and not get any mud on your shoes yeah that side was bre I Felix believes that Raptor once stood near the banks of this River but Felix's idea of Nia is a little different from mine it's also danger as you can see there are snakes here there are snakes when a big fan of snakes Felix the kind of snakes all sorts pythons python Pon the periplus talks of raptor as a great trading center a Cosmopolitan Metropolis where Traders from all over the ancient world would meet and barter and try to make a quick Buck but it's difficult to imagine such a vibrant Place existing here in this Riverside Wilderness with crocodiles and snakes I'm beginning to wonder if the Charming Felix Charming has made a mistake then 1 hour later in the dirt beneath our feet fragments of an ancient world emerge this is the beginning of what I call uh Raptor site and actually if you look down there are Pottery of 2,000 years probably has been brought down from the settlement and uh if you again you move and see the ground yes you can see for example you see this one this is a piece of potery for sure it is 2,000 years old once you get your eye in they're everywhere aren't yeah yeah and actually if you are able to clean this ground you'll see more can see like there's another piece there yes and when we go up I'll see you I'll show you more buried beneath the dirt and foliage of this isolated Wilderness Felix thinks he's found something remarkable shards of pottery tantalizing evidence of an ancient settlement so somewhere under here yeah May well be the remains of of of raptor exactly Felix thinks he's found Raptor because of the age and variety of the pottery which lies hidden beneath the surface I promise you that I'll show you some poets they are 2,000 years 2000 years actually car 14 dating for this material is giving us a date of 200 to about 300 ad 200 ad is a common date here for this kind of pottery are these imported or are they made they are local they they're local they are local yes have you found pottery that has come from Beyond these Shores Beyond yes yes we have found good amount of uh Ceramics which are brought from different parts of the world this Potter from Egypt was uh examined by a professor in Sweden and he confirmed this Potter is from the N Valley can see the texture of it it's incredibly fine and light is it exactly exactly you can even see the color of it the pinkish color of it yes no it feels like we're in the middle of nowhere but the evidence from the pottery its age its varied provenance and the sheer amount of shards suggests that Felix might be right that in this this empty place a trading center once thrived playing host to Merchants from as far a field as ancient Egypt and India evidence that from the earliest of times this part of Africa had established trade routes with the wider World talking to Felix I mean he's opened up a whole raft of possibilities of where to explore next but more than anything it's this idea that this was the Hub of a whole network of ports that ran down this bit of the [Music] coast according to the periplus Raptor traded goods from the African interior like Ivory and rhinoceros horn but there's no sign yet of the trade in gold which I'm looking for but as I head back into town the next morning toward the markets that bustle here today I can hear the evidence of a legacy of trade exchange and contact with a world Beyond this Coast in the language that people [Music] speak swah is an African language but one which has incorporated many words from around the world like a linguistic Melting Pot the word Swahili itself actually comes from the Arabic word for coast and there are traces of Indian and even Portuguese too in fact Portuguese traders first passed through here in 1498 and described a spectacularly wealthy City on an island just off the coast and that's where I'm headed [Music] next the Portuguese produced it's absolutely beautiful maps and illustrations of this gorgeous place and they just look so deeply impressive and if the place lives up to this it's just going to be Magnificent the city was kilwar kissani a city whose streets the Portuguese describe as overflowing with gold and fill with black moors the old European term for Africans Colonial historians assume that kilwa was an Arab Outpost because of its Muslim Heritage but now we think that kilwar was African that these were black African Muslims an interpretation backed up by the observations of the famous Arab traveler ion batuta who came to kilwar in 1331 he talks about kilwar as one of the most beautiful cities and he he talks about the local population as being a very dark complexion and he describes their ethnic scarifications I mean this really was an African City and it was also a very profitable one the reason I'm here is that a copper coin like this from 14th century kilwar has been found at Great Zimbabwe 15500 km in land evidence perhaps that Great Zimbabwe and kilwar are two ends of what was a lucrative trade and goods those early Portuguese Travelers described a city of fine Coral built houses and the ruler's hundred room Palace full of Gold Silver and precious stones the site is still spectacular today among the ruins are the houses which would have accommodated the traveling foreign traders who regularly descended on kilwar from across the ocean local guide athmani Abdullah has agreed to show me around so why particularly kilwi why was it such an important Post in in terms of the trading Network along the coast yeah was important because um it was easier for the traders who used the the Sailing Boat to come here so it act like a barrier because when you come in you can anchor easily because these guys were traveling through the Monson wind the direction of the prevailing wind on the suah coast changes twice a year allowing ships to cross the Indian Ocean and return again within 12 months and that's why kilwa was ideally placed to serve as East Africa's gateway to the trading networks of the ancient world lovely to meet you Stephanie nice to meet you welcome to co oh thank you British archaeologist Stephanie wi Jones of Bristol University is an expert on kar's history and has studied how its fortunes have ebbed and flowed Through the Ages one of the things that's really been demonstrated through the Archaeology is that there's been a settlement here since the at least the 9th century ad they were really integrated into the Indian Ocean system actually and there were a lot of imports brought to the site from um mainly from the Persian Gulf area also from India um as sort of reaching this island at at that dat so what was being traded through this port exported what sorts of goods were well in general from the sili coast um the products of the African hinam were being traded often in the form of raw material Kare was particularly famous for gold and the source of kare's wealth was and based on the gold trade from the south from the Zimbabwe Plateau this was an Island state made Rich by gold these Merchants knew the international value of the precious metal and bargained hard and as the gold flowed through kwr by the 14th century the city had become one of the most important and richest ports in Africa and if you look closely enough some of that wealth is still visible well this is the great Mosque of Kwa the congregational mosque which would have uh served for the Friday prayer when the whole Community would come together and one of the things that's quite wonderful about this particular structure um are the domes and vaults that you can see uh in the roof um and this is a very particularly killworth phenomenon to um to have this of quantity of of does and all the sort of arches and columns that you see here and finding this incredible material I mean this this is coral isn't it it is and uh I mean this is one of the this is the defining characteristic of suil architecture um we call these places Stone towns and we refer to Stone houses but actually there's no natural particularly good natural sources of stone on the coast um and instead this architectural style developed where they use the coral which is found in abundance here um and the entire structure a built of coral the blocks like the one that you're looking at um were actually cut from the living coral and because it was soft they were able to use it for these carved features and then how would it have been finished so what would it have looked like if I came in well well the entire thing would have been plastered also with lime plaster um which actually also comes from Coral so everything is from Coral from start to finish and it would have appeared you know totally smooth and totally white I me it would have been very beautiful thing to look at [Music] actually beautiful and technically sophisticated many of the Great buildings of Europe were built around the same time the Piaza Del Campo in Sienna the Cathedral of nraam in Paris to my mind this is surely a match for them [Music] kilwi was clearly a busy confident trading center a citystate that was intimately linked with the wider World economy but if kar's wealth came from the gold it traded across this vast ocean the source of this wealth the precious commodity which formed the basis of this trade is not found in Kwan Africa's gold comes from Deep Inland from the high plateau of Zimbabwe 1500 km away and I'm going to try and trace this gold route to its source I'm traveling Inland from the post heading West toward the ancient gold lands and some where out here I'm hoping to find an outpost of one of Africa's greatest kingdoms we know that Great Zimbabwe was at its Zenith in the 13th and 14th centuries just when kilwar 2 was at its height but Great Zimbabwe is still two countries One Visa application and many days travel away I'm looking for outposts of this gold trading kingdom here in mosambique tantalizingly my guide tells me that there's a Zimbabwe type ruin just 70 kilm in land from here this site man Kenny is mentioned in the history books but I can't find it on any map these Sandy roads are a bit of a challenge actually but uh I'm a bit more used to um to acting in rush hour than this but uh I'm loving it [Music] [Music] nevertheless there's a welcome waiting for me led by local historian vente vulos hello welcome and the villagers want to perform a small good luck ceremony for us we have visitors here that want all things to go well so that no snakes no anyone can be beaten or something go wrong thank you I particularly hate snakes so I think that's I'm really grateful to you thank you the chief son offers beer to the ancestors on our behalf the ancestor have heard us and have welcomed us thank you very much thank you with the blessings of his forbears vente and I set off for the ruins of maniken and what was its relationship to the coast and also to Great Zimbabwe actually manen was in between the coast and the Great Zimbabwe people from the coast used to bring like things to trade here and this was was a trading Place actually manen means it's a BN word that means the place where people can give to each other really yes I see that's what is the meaning of maniki the existence of maniken was barely known to schols until the 1970s but when archaeologists did come to dig it up they were rewarded with some clues about its past they found things like gold things like copper wires things like H blades things like glass beads but this is a lost history in more ways than one the museum which housed most of Manny Kenny's Treasures was destroyed by fire but while the artifacts have gone the knowledge remains we know that gold was found in the graves of manik kenn's Elders and that there are some startling links to Great Sy this grass here is typically from Great Zimbabwe in Moz can be found just in this place so This Grass this particular variety of grass this one is only found in manin in manin and Great Zimbabwe so they they brought this grass to feed their cattle we don't find this kind of grass anywhere in mosm so we believe that it was brought here mainly to feed the C Great Zimbabwe means houses of stone the walls of manik Kenny appear to have been built using a similar technique vente is certain that the trading community at mankeni was once closely connected to the Kingdom of Great Zimbabwe so this is the walls the walls of manen they were built stone on Stone and stood for many years and very strongly and they're doing business people from the coast and people from Grand Zimbabwe whatever they exchanged like gold and Beads and all the things they used to take this way to lead them to Grand Zimbabwe wow so so this is this is the Gateway this is the gate Zimbabwe yes Manny Kenny seems to have been a crossing point in two senses it seems likely that it was a place where gold was traded as a commodity coming in from Great Zimbabwe then going out toward the coast and by boat up to KW but it also seems to be a place where the attitude to the gold itself shifted grave findings at manik Kenny show that gold was not just a commodity it was buried with the dead very different from kilwa it's time to move further Inland but first a send off from the ancestors manik Kenny today to is far from the bustling trading center of the past but it's a place where the past is remembered and where the ancestors who may once have formed an important Cog in a larger global economy are celebrated enthusiastically this is a sort of passing on to the future generation because the old ones they will be dying out so they want their children to know how to dance that's why they have to dance with the young on it seems a little bit easy but it's not easy it is believed the ancestors are dancing right now an and they're hearing it they happy that they have not been forgotten the evidence that this place was once a link in the gold trade between Great Zimbabwe and the coast seems compelling the architecture the grass the oral tradition and the discoveries of gold all point that way but before I head for Great Zimbabwe I want to investigate stories of an even earlier Kingdom mang but to do that I need to head for the modern city of Petoria in South Africa map Goodway is now part of South Africa's Lim poo Province and Fate has been kinder to it than it has been to Manny Kenny the museum where MPP and goway's glorious past is now stored is still standing home to an astonishing collection of African gold curator cyan tyly nail shows me the most famous piece a little golden [Music] Rhino WOW gold is so thin it almost glows doesn't it it's yes yes the gold the gold would have been hammered out on a stone envil what they would have done is they would have carved a wooden Rine and then formed the gold foil over the wood and all the little holes you see are way minute techs or Nails would Tech uh the gold sheeting to the wood the wooden core and of course the wood is disintegrated over a thousand years Almost 100% pure gold so it's got a levy battery shine to it so they must have been a very powerful people yes they were um in fact there's many other gold artifacts that were found the second perhaps most significant item is this gold scepter or mace it's the largest gold object that was recovered from from the burial also made of of gold foil M goway was a 12th century Kingdom only a short distance from the gold mines of the Zimbabwe and Plateau its people clearly developed great skill in Gold smithing this work is impressive by anyone's standards as at Manny Kenny much of the treasure was found in the graves of the Kings and such burials imply a culture which valued gold for more than its commercial value gosh this is a beautiful Bowl isn't it absolutely gorgeous in fact it's not a gold bowl it's in fact a headdress uh it was also found in one of the barels um for 75 years it's been interpreted as a bowl as such because it obviously just looks like a bowl sounding good company yes whereas in fact it was it was found inverted near the cranium of the individual um near his head not as a crown as if it would fit over the cranium of course it's it's too small but more a symbolic headdress of some sort so Sayan who might have been buried with this well the royalty buried with these gold objects um of course were the ruling power of the Limpopo Valley at the time or Southern Africa so their wealth lay in in not only the gold objects but also their wealth in cattle and trading right until the East Coast the amount of glass trade glass beads that one finds at the site together with the gold as well as the ivory shows a very wealthy Society time to visit MPP and Goodway for myself thanks to meet you and for that I need to get airborne local farmer Jac VM has offered to give me a [Music] ride from up here Things become a bit clearer below me is the mighty Limpopo which flows to the coast this huge River was for centuries a highway which carried people and goods from the interior to the [Music] coast wow look at [Music] that and there is what remains of the golden Kingdom of map and [Music] gway today maping Goodway is part of South Africa's national park system the heart of the Old Kingdom is M and goway Hill Park Ranger Cedric Seth laaco has agreed to show me around this is uh the hill itself Mungo Hill where people lived about a thousand years ago wow archaeologists believe that map and goodway's reach spread across southern Africa from the 11th to the 13th centuries and that after the kingdom collapsed some of its people may have headed north and founded Great Zimbabwe it was one of the most complex Societies in southern Africa with a rigid division between the king his ministers and his subjects the King was buried here with lot of artifacts uh if you look at the hill itself I mean why the people will choose to live up here is because uh if you look around it I mean it's just sheer Rock I mean there's no way that you can be able to can access this hill there's only one way up to the [Music] top the Kingdom's rulers kept the hill to themselves ordinary members of MPP and goway Society were not allowed in even in modern times the hills still holds mystical powers to the people here most of the people long back used to believe that you wouldn't even look at the hill itself they were even scared to look at the hill I mean even the person who brought the first people uh uh to discover the site and he had to turn his back and sort of like point it there is the hill right behind me and I'm not going there really yeah so so what might happen to you if you did look at the hill what what I mean um some people believed that you would you would go blind or lose your life or die or something like [Music] that wasn't so bad eh well this view completely makes up for yeah any tiredness I feel about that clim it's just glorious and suddenly you understand why you would want to build up here archaeologists have found remnants of of the sight of a grand Stone enclosure here with Huts for servants and a wooden Palisade built around the summit for privacy and defense it was also where MPP and goodway's rulers lived and died with their gold this is exactly where uh that uh little G and Rhino came from just from around here it's exactly where it was discovered and also to indicate to you that from from the bush back there up to here this whole area this was a burial site these people were buried in a sitting position facing west and each one of them was buried Within These golden bracelets and the was well buried with clay pots which were filled with thousands and thousands of golden glass beads so Cedric why was this site so important m is the first Southern African Kingdom meaning this is exactly where Kingdom ship started in southern Africa I mean of all this uh kingdoms which are still existence I me today I mean this is exactly where it all [Music] started the wooden and stone structures which would have stood here have long since disappeared but the gold artifacts in ptor testified to this ancient Kingdom's existence its power and its work wealth but Cedric is Keen to show me one aspect of map and goway life that still survives today now we have a game here it was played by the mungu people a thousand years ago this is a game called maruba Inu muua inventor I think I recognize this but please tell me do you um well my family in West Africa and we have a a game there which looks fairly similar called aari aari is an ancient game of strategy now you see the gloves are off the gloves are off I always thought that aari was a West African tradition but the fact that variations of it were played here in map Goodway hints at connections which extend across the continent so maybe this wasn't an isolated Kingdom maybe it was connected with cultures across the [Music] continent the outline of MPP and goway Society may be faint today but the Kingdom's geography seems clear the subjects and their families lived at the bottom of the hill and at the top protected by the forbidding stoning enclosures with the royal family and their retinue I think one of the things that has really struck me is how complex the sociology of this particular area is and if you imagine the people came and they settled here but they didn't just settle here but they created a really complex social system the support of all the people who would have lived down here farming trading bringing the water up all of that infrastructure to support the family the elite that lived up there and this was a real departure for this bit of Africa a settled hierarchical society and one that seemed to at least for the period in which it was here to really work as [Music] well m Goodway was once the most powerful Kingdom in southern Africa but by the 13th century it seems to have collapsed we don't know why there is much more we don't know about the life of the people here like how power was handed down or what they believed in but archaeologists now think that the people of Mugu may have traveled North to found an even bigger more impressive Kingdom Great Zimbabwe good news we finally been granted permission to film in Great Zimbabwe the greatest Lost Kingdom of southern Africa I'm not going to pretend it's been easy getting permission to film in Zimbabwe it's taken months of applications persuasion and at last it looks like we've got permission but nothing is certain in Zimbabwe these days even with our permissions there's still a border to cross it took 4 hours but eventually I'm in a 16th century Portuguese Captain described Great Zimbabwe as an almost mythical city among the gold mines of the Inland Plains is a fortress built of stones of marvelous signs and there appears to be no mortar joining them Great Zimbabwe was Africa's elderado a place of myth and mystery a meeting Zimbabwean archaeologist Edward matanga former curator of the entire site Edward hello hello lovely to meet you he tells me the ruins are so important to the people here that I must have the blessing of one of the site's spiritual Guardians UA fazer before I can get in what saying that welcome is is an honorable guest so now we are going to take you to the secret entrance to to the site thank you it's been a beautiful welcome as well as curating this site Edward matanga has written extensively about Great Zimbabwe he's recognized as one of the world's foremost Authorities on this mysterious place for say 1890 this place was out of bounds to to to strangers yes you are not a stranger anymore because we have now been accepted I feel very honored so basically people would would have to be initiated as it way and part of the initiation is passing through the the entrance where the custodian the the spiritual sort of head of the the place opens the site for I [Music] see so she is she is the key to the side yes she's the key in her sort of responsibility she has to open the entrance the entrance traditionally you'd have to stop here you have to stop [Music] here ambua is one of several people who claim to be the spiritual guardians of this site it certainly is an impressive performance she's saying that now you can you can you can enter [Music] the [Music] this is the great gold Kingdom of Great [Music] Zimbabwe for 200 years the rulers of this place controlled a massive Empire between the zambesi and Limpopo Rivers covering much of modern day Zimbabwe and part of mosambique this was their Capital their palace and their [Music] Bastion this is the credle of a lot of people who live in this region the descendants of people who used to live here are now found in South Africa in bana in other in other countries from the 13th century to the 15th these people controlled the gold mines of the plateau here in stone is their expression of that wealth and power walls that soar out of the earth that curve and flow around the Contours of the ground creating narrow passageways and forbidding enclosures this is is a stunning feat of architecture there is nothing gluing these walls together just an extraordinary precision and craft this is the highest wall at Zimbabwe at 11 11 [Music] M it is 6 M wide at the bottom um it is estimated that more than a million bricks are pegged into this into this war at its height this place was a medieval city home to 25,000 people seemingly divided into social groups right now we are on the summit of the the the the Zimbabwe Hill this is called the Zimbabwe Hill Complex there are three sort of areas of the making up the the site we were the Hill Complex we were the the valley ruins of which the the largest building the great closure is located there and then beyond the the the the the stone walls and least obvious of course to many visitors is the fact that there were a lot of housing units DS housing units that were located outside the enclosures and over an area of about 720 h the subjects and their King seem to have lived very Separate Lives it's likely that great Zimbabwe's immense stone walls ensured that the rich religious and the powerful were kept separate from everyone else yes the site in many ways is a matrix of passages yes and way they build so many passages is anybody's guess but I want to believe that it might have something to do with social protocols yes that the idea basically was to control the traffic of people see some people were not supposed to be SE seen in certain places yes so they would have to follow designated passages so there might have been various passages for sort of various levels of I mean in terms of social organization of the community yes that okay the king or the realy wives they would follow these passages and then of course the plebians the the lower sort of rank would follow these passages but for decades the significance of this place what it meant who built it has been fiercely debated the British who ran this part of the world in the late 19th century believe that a non-african people must have built this Kingdom speculation as to who that might have been has ranged from the Phoenicians to the Queen of Sheba when this country was run by its white minority the idea that anyone but Africans built this city was actively and enthusiastically promoted but carbon dating technology has ruled out ancient foreign civilizations as being responsible for Great Zimbabwe there's no evidence in this architecture to suggest that this place was built by anyone other than those who came from here and the evidence from earlier settlements like map andway shows a continuity of Southern African culture the settled view now is Great Zimbabwe was built by Africans archaeologists are also sure that this place was a rich trading Kingdom a wealth of trading Goods beads bracelets porcelain and glass from China and the Middle East have been found here along with gold mined only 40 km away gold was obviously very important and we know there was traffic between this place or the southern African hinderland and the East African Coast linking with China with India with the Middle East yes and that was one factor that might have caused the people to become wealth and build these structures as an expression of that wealth one artifact in particular shows the links between Great Zimbabwe and The Wider world it's a 14th century copper coin like this one from kilwar kisiwani the great trading City on the [Music] coast a place Which derived its wealth by selling on the gold from Great Zimbabwe to the rest of the world two ends the same trading route there's still so much that we don't know about Great Zimbabwe the nature of its king or Kings the full meaning of its narrow passageways and forbidding architecture but we do know that this vast city was one of Africa's richest and most sophisticated kingdoms and the starting point of a gigantic trading Network that stretched from these high Plateau across southern Africa to the Swahili coast and across the globe to Arabia India and China and when Great Zimbabwe went into decline in the 15th century so too did kilwar two kingdoms connected by gold and forgotten by historians for [Music] centuries today the ruins of Great Zimbabwe have given their name to a modern African country they are a reminder that although ancient kingdoms can be forgotten they are rarely truly lost this remarkable Kingdom High in the Zimbabwe Highlands is an emblem of a continent remembering its past I began this journey some distance from here on the Swahili Coast thinking that this was a journey about trade about gold but it's been about more than that it's been about recovering an African past from the ruins of lost civilizations there's still much we don't know about this history and these lost kingdoms but here in Africa their memory is still celebrated and rightly served the past is still very much alive here it's still a living breathing part of people's lives their culture and their identity coming up tonight here on bbc4 we're staying in Africa as we explore the World in 80 Treasures the Ark of the Covenant from Ethiopia is up [Music] next [Music] oh my [Music] God is this really [Music] happening Rock dead you limey fer you think I don't know what you've been doing in there I am so high and while you're distracted I'm going to take off my shoes that okay go around you got to really pay [Music] attention your words not [Music] mine not men you have everything and so much of it the multi-award-winning drama returns next Wednesday at 10:00 on BBC 4 woo Charlie brooker's brand new newswipe is