World Heritage Identification Number: 306
World Heritage since: 2003
Category: Cultural Heritage
Transboundary Heritage: No
Endangered Heritage: No
Country: 🇿🇼 Zimbabwe
Continent: Africa
UNESCO World Region: Africa
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Matobo Hills: A Geological Marvel and Cultural Treasure
The Matobo Hills, located approximately 35 kilometers south of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe, present a unique blend of geological wonders and rich cultural heritage. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, this area is renowned for its distinctive rock formations, ancient rock art, and enduring significance to the local community.
More to come…UNESCO Description of the World Heritage Site
The area exhibits a profusion of distinctive rock landforms rising above the granite shield that covers much of Zimbabwe. The large boulders provide abundant natural shelters and have been associated with human occupation from the early Stone Age right through to early historical times, and intermittently since. They also feature an outstanding collection of rock paintings. The Matobo Hills continue to provide a strong focus for the local community, which still uses shrines and sacred places closely linked to traditional, social and economic activities.
UNESCO Justification of the World Heritage Site
Criterion (iii) : The Matobo Hills has one of the highest concentrations of rock art in Southern Africa. The rich evidence from archaeology and from the rock paintings at Matobo provide a very full picture of the lives of foraging societies in the Stone Age and the way agricultural societies came to replace them.
Criterion (v) : The interaction between communities and the landscape, manifest in the rock art and also in the long standing religious traditions still associated with the rocks, are community responses to a landscape.
Criterion (vi) : The Mwari religion, centred on Matoba, which may date back to the Iron Age, is the most powerful oracular tradition in southern Africa.
Encyclopedia Record: Matobo National Park
The Matobo National Park forms the core of the Matobo or Matopos Hills, an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some 35 kilometres (22 mi) south of Bulawayo, southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2 billion years ago with granite being forced to the surface; it has eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Matopo/Matob was named by the Lozwi. A different tradition states that the first King, Mzilikazi Khumalo when told by the local residents that the great granite domes were called madombo he replied, possible half jest, "We will call them matobo" - an Isindebele play on 'Bald heads'.Additional Site Details
Area: 205,000 hectares
(v) — Outstanding example of traditional human settlement
(vi) — Directly associated with events or living traditions
Coordinates: -20.5 , 28.5
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© Macvivo at English Wikipedia (Original text: Samwise Gamgee), CC BY-SA 3.0 Resized from original. (This derivative is under the same CC BY-SA license.)
