264 CHAPTER 11 | The Emergence of Cities and States
- Artist fashions sculpture from wax. 2. The wax model is surrounded with clay.
5. When the metal has cooled, the
clay model is broken open to reveal a
solid bronze sculpture. - This is heated so the clay hardens and
the wax melts. - The now hollow mold is inverted and
molten bronze metal is poured into it.
Figure 11.4 The same lost wax casting method used to create sculptures—such as
the 3,000-year-old bronze Zeus, from the National Museum of Archaeology in Athens,
Greece—is still used by artists today.
These elliptical granite walls held
together without any mortar at Great
Zimbabwe in southern Zimbabwe,
Africa, attest to the skill of the
builders. When European explorers
unwilling to accept the notion of
civilization in sub-Saharan Africa
discovered these magnificent ruins,
they wrongly attributed them to
white non-Africans. This false notion
persisted until archaeologists dem-
onstrated that these structures were
part of a city with 12,000 to 20,000
inhabitants that served as the center
of the Bantu state.
© Robert Holmes/Corbis