THE MEGALITHIC CIRCLES OF SENEGAMBIA

A priceless treasure from this region of Africa, listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2006. Four major stone groups are spread over a 100 km-wide strip between Senegal and Gambia. Sine Ngayène, Wanar, Wassu and Kerbatch, the four groups, bring together 93 circles and numerous tumuli, funerary mounds - heaps of stones above a tomb - organized in two alignments generally known as the tombs of the king and the king's mother. Some have been excavated, revealing archaeological material that can be dated between the ^3rd century BC and the ^16th century AD. The Sine Ngayène site, actually located in Dialloumbere, 400 m west of the village of Sine Ngayène, near Nioro du Rip, is one of the most extensive. It comprises 52 circles with 1,200 megalithic stones and around a hundred tumuli. Twenty kilometers from Nioro du Rip, Senegal's second site, Wanar, is less extensive, but just as interesting. In the middle of nowhere, this necropolis comprises 21 megalithic circles, including one double circle. The site is characterized by the presence of numerous lyre stones, megaliths split in two and thought to have an astronomical function. A hundred meters to the north-west, note the stone, left unfinished, not far from the laterite cuirass. Some sixty bodies have been exhumed to date, some wearing copper bracelets.