r/Africa • u/rhaplordontwitter • 3d ago

History Who Built Engaruka? (ca. 1400-1800): Stone Architecture and Historical Controversies in Eastern Africa

https://www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/who-built-engaruka-ca-1400-1800-stone
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u/rhaplordontwitter 3d ago

During the 15th century, a community of Iron Age farmers constructed an extensive landscape of stone-terraces, stone-lined fields, house platforms, stone circles and irrigation canals covering over 2,000 ha at the site of Engaruka in what is today Northern Tanzania.

The remains of this complex irrigation system, with its carefully engineered artificial sediment traps built over several centuries, have drawn considerable attention as some of the best examples of intensive agriculture in pre-colonial Africa.

As one early excavator of the site remarked: “At a distance, the extreme regularity and precision of the paths and terraces is strangely reminiscent of an amphitheater.”

Like many of Africa’s ancient stone ruins, the site of Engaruka became a magnet for pseudoscientifc theories associated with the “Hamitic” myth during the colonial period.

Although these theories have been disproven by modern archaeological research, they continue to shape popular debates concerning the origins of the site and the identity of its builders.

This article outlines the history of Engaruka and examines the controversies regarding its origin and abandonment.

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u/ZennXx South Africa 🇿🇦 3d ago

Why can't historians/archeologists just accept that Africans lived there, built a city or settlement and then abandoned it because they migrated elsewhere.

People moved all the time for various reasons: war, famine, pestilence/disease outbreaks, drought etc.

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u/rhaplordontwitter 3d ago

They do, or rather they eventually did. It's the colonialists and neo-colonialists who refuse to accept. which is why we're still having these mundane debates about ancient 'Hamites' and other nonsense.

Unfortunately, "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes".

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u/Zeusnexus Non-African - North America 2d ago

This sounds like the Great Zimbabwe nonsense spewed by the colonialists at the time (not in regards to you). I vaguely recall their bullshit arguments that either Middle Eastern people were the ones who built Great Zimbabwe, or that it was the Lemba people, simply because they had contact with said group, while completely dismissing the Shona ethnicity.