Chapter 1: What Even Is a “Lost” Kingdom?

Wait—did you guess it right? If you shouted “MALI!” you just earned your first Explorer Badge. If you guessed “a desert where camels live” or “the place where chocolate comes from,” don’t worry—you’re about to learn way more fun clues to crack the next mystery kingdoms. Let’s keep playing, but first, let’s talk about what makes a kingdom “lost” in the first place. You might think a “lost” kingdom is one that’s gone forever, like a sandcastle that gets washed away by the tide. But for the kingdoms we’re going to explore in this book, “lost” means something a little different. It’s not that the people, the buildings, or the treasure disappeared completely—it’s that their stories got hidden, forgotten, or buried under time, so most people have never heard of them. Let’s break that down into three easy-to-understand types of “lost,” just like sorting your toy box into blocks, stuffed animals, and art supplies: 1. Buried lost: The kingdom was covered up by sand, bushes, or dirt, so no one could see it for hundreds of years. It’s like if you buried your favorite toy in the backyard and forgot exactly where, so no one can find it until someone remembers to dig it up. 2. Hidden lost: People knew the kingdom existed, but they deliberately didn’t tell others about it, or they took all its treasure and stories away. It’s like if a classmate found your amazing drawing but hid it in their backpack so no one would know you drew it. 3. Forgotten lost: The people who knew the kingdom’s stories moved away or stopped telling them, so after a few generations, no one remembers it ever existed. It’s like if you made up an awesome game when you were 5, but you and your friends stopped playing it, so when you’re 10, you totally forgot you ever invented it. All three of the African kingdoms we’ll explore in this book were “lost” for at least one of these reasons. Let’s test your detective skills with two more mystery kingdom riddles, then we’ll talk about why so many of Africa’s ancient stories got lost in the first place.

Riddle #2: The Stone City No One Built?

I’m made of stone, but no cement was used to hold my walls together. My tallest tower is as high as a two-story house, and people built me 800 years ago without any cranes or power tools. I’m in the southern part of Africa, where elephants roam and baobab trees grow as wide as houses. What am I? Take a second to think. If you guessed “a really big Lego castle,” you’re close! If you guessed “Great Zimbabwe,” you just earned your second Explorer Badge. Great Zimbabwe is one of the coolest stone cities ever built in Africa. It’s located in the country we call Zimbabwe today, which is in the southern part of the continent, right next to a huge river called the Zambezi where hippos swim and crocodiles sunbathe on the banks. The name “Zimbabwe” even comes from a local language word that means “stone houses,” which is exactly what this place is. The most amazing part of Great Zimbabwe is its walls. The biggest wall is 11 meters (36 feet) high—that’s taller than a two-story house! It’s 250 meters (820 feet) long, which is longer than three football fields put together. And the people who built it didn’t use any cement, glue, or mortar to hold the stones together. They just cut each stone into perfect, flat rectangles, then stacked them so tightly that you can’t even slide a piece of paper between them. It’s like if you built a tower out of wooden blocks so perfectly balanced that it doesn’t fall over even if you bump the table—except this tower is 11 meters high and 800 years old! For hundreds of years, Great Zimbabwe was the capital of a powerful kingdom ruled by a king called the *Mwene Mutapa*. People from all over southern Africa came to trade there: they brought gold from nearby mines, ivory from hunted elephants, copper for making tools, and even animal skins to sell. In return, they got cloth from India, glass beads from Europe, and porcelain from China. It was like the biggest, coolest shopping mall in all of southern Africa, except instead of food courts and movie theaters, it had huge stone courtyards where people held feasts, and a royal palace where the king lived with his family. So why did Great Zimbabwe get “lost”? First, after about 100 years of being the capital, the kingdom ran into a big problem: the weather got really dry, and there wasn’t enough water or food for everyone. The king and most of the people moved away to a new capital further north, and Great Zimbabwe was left empty. Slowly, bushes and trees grew over the stone walls, until after a few hundred years, the whole city was hidden under a thick green blanket of forest. No one even knew it was there. Then, in the 1800s, a European explorer named Karl Mauch was traveling through southern Africa looking for gold and the lost city of Ophir (a city mentioned in the Bible that was supposed to have tons of gold). He stumbled on the stone walls peeking out of the bushes, and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He didn’t think African people could have built something so big and impressive, so he decided it must have been built by white people from Europe, or even by aliens from outer space! He spent months digging around the site looking for gold and proof that it was built by outsiders, but he never found any. It wasn’t until the 1900s that African and British archaeologists did careful research and proved that Great Zimbabwe was built by local African people, the ancestors of the Shona people who live in Zimbabwe today. But by then, most of the treasure and artifacts from the site had been stolen by explorers and taken to museums in Europe, so the full story of the kingdom was still “lost” for a long time. That’s the thing about “lost” kingdoms: sometimes they get lost twice—first when people leave them, and second when other people refuse to believe the people who built them were capable of making something amazing.

Riddle #3: The Kingdom With the Ark of the Covenant?

I’m in the horn of Africa, where the sun rises first over the continent every morning. I have a 3,000-year-old history of building stone obelisks taller than ten people stacked on top of each other. Some people say I’m the home of the biblical Ark of the Covenant, and my ancient kingdom traded with Rome, India, and China long before Europeans ever sailed to Africa. What am I? If you guessed “a place where you can see the sunrise first,” you’re half right! If you guessed “Axum (the ancient kingdom in what’s now Ethiopia),” you just earned your third Explorer Badge, and you’re about to hear one of the coolest stories in all of African history. Axum was one of the four most powerful kingdoms in the whole world 1,500 years ago, right up there with Rome, China, and India. It was located in the northeastern corner of Africa, in the area we now call Ethiopia and Eritrea, right on the coast of the Red Sea. That location was perfect for trade: ships from Rome would come down the Red Sea to trade glass and wine for African gold, ivory, and incense, and traders from India would sail across the Indian Ocean to sell spices and cloth. Axum even traded with China: Chinese historians wrote about sending a giraffe as a gift to the king of Axum in the year 100, which was like getting a pet elephant as a gift today—super rare and super cool! The most famous things Axum is known for are its obelisks: huge, tall stone pillars carved with pictures of animals and patterns. The tallest one that’s still standing today is 24 meters (79 feet) high—that’s as tall as an 8-story building! The people of Axum carved these obelisks as grave markers for their kings and rich people, and they carved them out of a single piece of stone, without any modern tools. They used stone hammers and chisels to carve them, then rolled them into place using logs and ropes. It took months of work to make just one obelisk, which shows how important the kings were to the people of Axum. Axum is also famou