The Shona make up roughly 80% of Zimbabwe’s population and speak a Bantu language with several major dialects. Their ancestors built Great Zimbabwe, the stone city that gave the country its name, and later the Rozvi Empire, founded by Changamire Dombo in the late 17th century.
Shona sculptors have carved stone since at least the 1200s, when Great Zimbabwe (the stone city that gave the country its name) was built; the modern Shona stone sculpture movement treats carving as a way of expressing the link between the physical and spiritual worlds.