Archaeologists have found goods from as far as China that were used by the people. This shows they bought and sold things over great distances. The city had stopped growing when traders from Portugal came to southern Africa 500 years ago, but nobody is sure why this happened. Europeans at first thought that Great Zimbabwe had been built by foreigners. Now we know it was built by the local people. People who have studied the site have learned much about old Africa.
The earliest known written mention of the ruins was in 1531 by Vicente Pegado, Captain of the Portuguese garrison of Sofala, who recorded it as "Symbaoe". The first visits by Europeans were in the late 19th century, with investigations of the site starting in 1871.
Machu Picchu
(Machu Picchu is a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site in Peru, in South America.
The Incas built the city on a mountain ridge, 2430m above sea level. They lived there between 1200 and 1450 AD. Other people lived there before about 650 AD.
The Incas built houses, fields and temples by cutting the rock on the mountain so it was flat. They built an Observatory to look at the stars).
When the Spanish invaded Peru, the Incas left Machu Picchu. Nobody knows for sure why they did that, but some think it was because of diseases from Europe. The city was left unfinished, most likely due to the Spanish invasion and/or a civil war between the ruling rival Inca brothers named Huascar and Atahualpa. The Spanish never found Machu Picchu or the lost city during their occupation.
(Machu Picchu is very difficult to get to because it is so high in the mountains. It has only one way in and a stone wall to protect it. Most people on Earth did not know it was there until a Yale graduate named Hiram Bingham rediscovered it in 1911). He heard rumours of a hidden city which was already known to the native Peruvians, who guided him there. He led a restoration project that was partly funded by the National Geographic Society. Bingham made a deal with the government to take artifacts to the Peabody Museum for study. Peru is still trying to have those artifacts returned to them.
(Machu Picchu was declared a Peruvian Historical Sanctuary in 1981 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. In 2007, Machu Picchu was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in a worldwide Internet poll).
(Today, there is a new road so that tourists can visit. People can also walk along the Inca Trail, or take a train from Cusco.)
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Apple Inc.
Apple Inc. is a multinational company that makes personal computers (the Macintoshes), software (macOS, iOS, watchOS and tvOS), and mobile devices (iPod, iPhone and iPad) like music players. Apple calls its computers "Macintoshes" or "Macs", and it calls its laptops "MacBooks". Their line of mobile music players is called "iPod", their smartphone line is called "iPhone" and their tablet line is called "iPad". Apple sells their products all around the world. Apple Inc. used to be called Apple Computer, Inc., but Apple changed their name after introducing the original iPhone.
Apple Inc. is a public company and trades on the NASDAQ under the stock ticker AAPL. On March 19, 2015, it became one of the 30 components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Apple was started in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Before they made the company, they sold "blue boxes", which had telephone buttons on them. People could use them to make telephone calls from payphones without paying any money. It did this by pretending to be a telephone operator. The company's first product is now called the Apple I computer. They were almost ready to sell it, but a problem happened. Steve Wozniak was working for the computer company Hewlett-Packard, and the papers that said he could work there said he had to give everything he invented to the company before he could do what he wanted to do with it. He showed the first Apple I to the boss at Hewlett-Packard, but they did not want his computer. Wozniak was then free to do what he wanted to do with the Apple I. It began selling in 1976. In 1977, they made their second computer, called the Apple II, which later became very successful compared to Apple I.
Before the iPhone, the most popular product made by Apple was the iPod. It was first sold in 2001, and Apple sold over 100 million in six years. iPods are used to play music. Recent iPod Touches have a LED screens, can take and show pictures, record, view and edit videos, record word and voice memos, can connect to the Internet for features such as e-mail, and downloading apps from the App Store. The latest iPod Touch is made with a 64-bit architecture.
There are several different types of iPods:
The red iPod shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod touch models, and a few more products, are part of the "(PRODUCT) RED" program. This means that some of the profits from these iPods goes to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.
Apple makes computers. Newer computers by Apple run the OS X operating system, which is included with the Mac.
Apple also makes software for their computers. Some of the software that Apple makes is:
Most computer users in the world use Microsoft Windows, the rival to Mac OS X. About 10% of computer users use Apple's Macintosh computers. It is not legal to run Apple's Mac OS X on a Windows computer. However, it is allowed to run Windows on modern Macintosh computers. Even though Apple makes their computers to run Mac OS X, they also make software that allows you to install Windows. This software is called Boot Camp.
Apple is perhaps most famous for its mobile devices, which are small computers that are easy to carry around. They have touchscreens with multi-touch technology instead of a separate keyboard and mouse. Most of these products run an operating system called iOS. It is very similar to the Android software made by Google. iOS can do a lot of different things, and it does so by running "apps", which are programs similar to those on a PC. Users can download and buy more apps for their device from Apple's App Store.
The iPhone is a mobile phone that can be used to make calls, send text messages, play games and music, show photos and videos (like an iPod), browse the Internet, and do much more. It was one of the first smartphones in the world when the first version was announced in 2007. Apple makes and sells a different model every year, with new models being faster and more powerful and having a newer version of iOS than those that come before them. The newest iPhones released are the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 12 Pro which run on iOS 14. Many cellular carriers around the world sell iPhones, including Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile in the US.
The iPad is a tablet computer, similar to the iPhone and iPod Touch but with a much larger display - while a typical iPhone has a screen about 4 to 5 inches in size, iPads have screens from 8 to 12 inches big. The first iPad was introduced in 2010 and along with the iPhone, new and better models are made and sold every year. A new iPad will ship with the latest iPad OS software if it is supported.
The Apple Watch is an example of "wearable technology", because it is worn around the wrist in the same way as a traditional wristwatch. However, it is much more than a wristwatch. It not only tells the time and date but also tracks the fitness of the person wearing it and monitors the person's health. It can also do many of the same things that an iPhone can do, such as use Apple's Siri personal assistant, but it needs to be "paired" with an iPhone for it to do these things, meaning that it will not work if you do not have an iPhone. The Apple Watch has many different designs: there is the standard version, a "Sport" version designed for athletes, and an "Edition" version which is made as a fashion product. These all run "watchOS", a modified version of iOS.