Zimbabwe Bird

The original carved birds are from the ruined city of Great Zimbabwe, which was built by the ancestors of the Shona, starting in the 11th century and inhabited for over 300 years.

He climbed to the highest point of the ruins despite being told that it was a sacred site where he should not trespass, and found the birds positioned in the centre of an enclosure around an apparent altar.

He later wrote: Each one, including its plinth, had been hewn out of a solid block of stone and measured 4 feet 6 inches in height; and each was set firmly into the ground.

[10] Rhodes' acquisition of Posselt's bird prompted him to commission an investigation of the Great Zimbabwe ruins by James Theodore Bent, which took place in 1891 following the British South Africa Company's invasion of Mashonaland.

[12] The colonists erroneously attributed Great Zimbabwe to ancient Mediterranean builders, believing native Africans to be incapable of constructing such a complex structure; thus in Rhodes' mind, as a 1932 guidebook put it, it was "a favourite symbol of the link between the order civilisation derived from the North or the East and the savage barbarism of Southern and Central Africa before the advent of the European.

[14] In 1981, a year after the attainment of independence in Zimbabwe, the South African government returned four of the sculptures to the country in exchange for a world-renowned collection of Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants) housed in Harare; the fifth remains at Groote Schuur.

[16] It is now the definitive icon of independent Zimbabwe with Matenga (2001)[3] listing over 100 state, corporate and sporting organisations which incorporate the Bird in their emblems and logos.