ENGARUKA RUINS

Stone dwellings, square in shape, and an ingenious and gigantic irrigation system, with canals sometimes raised 3 m high, have been found here. These exceptional masterpieces, which date from the 17th century, cannot be attributed to the Nilote, Bantu, Cushitic and Khoisan tribes, who were at best content with simple constructions of wood and dried mud. This disappeared city was, moreover, located too far from the great caravan routes to be attributed to the Arabs, especially since the cultivation of fields was not at all part of their customary occupations in Black Africa. Several hypotheses have been put forward: Egyptians or Greeks who came more than 2,000 years ago, Dutch who arrived several centuries ago, then were decimated by disease and exterminated by the Maasai, or a small, radiant but extinct African kingdom, rather like the "Great Zimbabwe" of the Shona Bantu, which became extinct in the 16th century.

The impoverishment of the city could have been due to an exceptionally severe and long-lasting drought, to the disappearance of the trees (acacias and mopane trees) which were used to heat the stone before it was broken up by pouring cold water on it, to the domination of all trade by the Portuguese, to an epidemic, to a war, or, more probably, to several of these factors combined. The date of the abandonment of the city goes back to the arrival, in the north-east of present-day Tanzania, of the Barabaigs (or Tatogs) and the Maasai, who are known to have conquered, without strong opposition, all these lands for their herds, pushing the ethnic groups that had been settled for some thousands of years further south. Fragments of pottery, once containing sorghum, have been found and dated. It is also known that the mysterious builders raised livestock, not extensively, in a kind of stables. It is assumed that if some survived, they were dispersed and mixed with the surrounding ethnic groups, notably the Warushas and the Sonjos, the latter being the only Bantus in the region to know some irrigation techniques, but only with earthen ditches and on much smaller surfaces. The analysis of the finds made during the excavations showed that the inhabitants of Engaruka practised an agriculture that was highly sensitive to climatic and volcanic hazards, since many layers of ash, probably from the neighbouring Ol Doinyo Lengai, were found.