<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > introduction</h1>
In 1935, regional officials in Tanganyika reported that there was a "huge collapsed city" on the border between Tanganyika and Kenya, about three hundred miles off the coast. It sits on a steep cliff in the "Rift Valley" southwest of Lake Natran and is clearly a difficult to reach and well hidden place. Because the cliffs are full of rocks, the slopes are slippery and full of thorns.
He said it was a large ruin and, as far as we know now, no one had previously reported on their existence. His report reached the ears of Dr. L.S. .B Richie, who was studying Early Stone Age relics in Kenya at the time, and piqued his interest. Richie decided to go and see Engaruka (the name of the place). He knew that many years ago, during German rule in 1913, Dr. Hans Lake of the University of Berlin had reported on the stone mounds near here, and that the stone mounds were indeed of all sorts of stone houses, stone mounds, and terraces, all over East Africa, and that Ngaluka was probably no different from these common things. But Ngaluka is very different.
Far from the usual scattered mutilated stucco-free stone buildings, a few lonely graves, and some vague lines of ancient terraces, though all of this was also found here; he did find the ruins of a city. He wrote: "I estimate that in the main cities on this slippery hillside there are about six thousand three hundred houses, about five hundred houses on the ruins in the valley, and more cemeteries than houses in the valley. He argues that the number of inhabitants "could be between thirty thousand and forty thousand, and I think this may be a lower estimate than actually."
As he persevered in his toil between gray-brown stones and thorns, Richie saw that it was a place that had long been occupied, consciously established and maintained. "Houses in the main cities are built on well-built stone walls. Some of the terraces built were used as roads, and some were used to build houses. The ruins of the valley are dotted with stone walls and mounds, which I assume are somehow related to farming and irrigation. But this assumption has not yet been confirmed. Unfortunately, he was not able to find any bones (this disappointment is often encountered in African archaeology. It is for this reason that Mapungubwe, as we shall see later, will prove to be of fundamental importance.) "This is obviously due to the fact that the properties of the soil here are not suitable for preserving bones"; he also found no inscriptions.
But carvings on the stones have indeed been found. These carvings are generally some irregular lines and some "cup marks". He considered these to be the signs of the clan. Richie argues that the architecture of Engaruka is no more than three hundred years old, probably significantly less than three hundred years. Perhaps it was built by the ancestors of the Mbulu people who still live near here. When the Northern Marsai invaded or invaded, it was abandoned and deinstructed. Foxbrook pointed out in 1938 that the ruins of Ngaluka bear striking resemblance to some of the other stone buildings found in the village of Sangio about fifty miles away. He also said that the legend of the Marshe people connected the inhabitants of Ngaluka with the inhabitants of the village of Sanjo. That's all that has been said about what Ngaruka might say. But the city of Ngaluka, one of the most astonishing discoveries in modern East African archaeology, is likely to belong to a much broader tradition.
Whether or not Ngaluka's age is as recent as Richie puts it, there is no doubt that it belongs to what Hending ford first called the "Azania civilization of Kenya" in 1933. Ngaruka is a powerful and profound understanding of how Iron Age civilization developed and flourished inland kenya and Tanganyika within the coastal zone where trade was conducted during the pre-medieval and medieval centuries. Is there an organic link between the civilization of the coastal zone and this "Azania civilization" inland? Does the former's demand for objects teeth and iron contribute to the latter's improvement? Did the merchants from cities like Engaruka smuggle these goods to the early Malindi and Mombasa, as well as to Kilva? The answer is yes.
Because research is only superficial. Until now there is little, or no evidence, that coastal goods (or goods from the East) have ever been far inland. For example, the great earthworks of Uganda's Iron Age have not yet reflected anything along the coast. In this respect, the evidence for trade links of the "Azania civilization" is far less abundant than that of a civilization such as Zimbabwe, which is located in the far south of modern Rhodesia. But some cities along the coast must have always had their own suppliers in the interior. Some of the accounts of trade that follow the Voyage Notes show that some of the coastal settlements and cities traded more or less frequently with inland kingdoms and their neighbors.
Off the coast of Kenya, some pottery similar to Zimbabwe and Mapanggubwe has been found in strata of the fourteenth century or earlier. Medieval Kielva was the largest of these coastal markets and distribution centers. When it flourished – both profit-making traders and lucrative tariffs – it was at the end of an ancient trade route leading to the mouth of the sea. The road stretches all the way inland to the Great Lakes region, and beyond. The simple fact is that archaeology is only just beginning to concretely consider the developmental relationship between coastal and inland areas. At the same time, there is inconclusive evidence in vast areas from Somaliland to the coast of Mozambique that it was inhabited by long-settled city dwellers who were particularly adept at using stones, whether for irrigating or maintaining soil and water or building houses.
They mine iron and other minerals and smelt them for their own use or export. They breed livestock and grow large quantities of grain. They are probably the monks that El Masłdi described in such detail a thousand years ago. The ruler of the south of these monks was Vaklimi. Although obscure in many places, especially in Kenya, this branch of the "Azania civilization", which is more or less closely linked in social structure, technology and mining, pottery, and ironmaking, may spread from the southern valleys of Ethiopia all the way to the entire region of Zimbabwe with its tall walls and Mapanggubwe, where the graves of gold are buried.
As early as 1928, The Wacang had pointed out that many "wells dug into limestone at depths of sixteen to forty feet" were still used in Kenya's Northern Province. Today, some nomadic peoples in Africa still dig the same wells there and elsewhere. This well still seems to retain its former appearance and constitutes another aspect of Azania technology. The report on the barn is noteworthy in terms of its implications for another evolution— the evolution of European attitudes toward these relics of ancient African civilizations.
Speaking of the situation in Tanganyika he wrote: "The top of the terraces is about a foot wide. It turned out that it might be three feet wide, and the height of the field was three feet. There are also many roads, and there are steps on the road, "generally ten or twelve feet wide", "the side of the hillside is exposed, once excavated with tools". Wilson believed that the longest road would lead from the mouth of Niassa Lake to Albert Cohen in Northern Rhodesia, connecting Nairobi and Arosha in Kenya's "White Highlands" with Arosha. It may be five hundred or six hundred miles long from south to north, and the distance from the coast varies from two hundred to three hundred miles vertically.
Ursley and Romberger also report that there is a small intermittent ancient road between Ilyinga and the northern end of Lake Nyasa, or what looks like an ancient road. One of them was about nine feet wide, "apparently elevated somewhere to make the pavement flat, and a row of small stones embedded along the curb." Wilson explains: "The location of these roads shows a traffic system from north to south east of the Great Lakes, while traffic with coastal areas cannot be clearly seen under any circumstances." "But traffic with coastal areas still exists by and large. The north-south road and the road leading to the coast help explain why the pottery styles of ancient Malindi and ancient Zimbabwe are similar.
A full archaeological survey of the area has not yet been undertaken, although the Government of Tanganyika has recently begun to show a useful understanding of the importance of the issue. According to Huntingford, it happens to be the highland area that is now inhabited by European immigrants, and it is the place with the most ruins and the most developed place in Kenya. In the greenery of Drans-Enzoa, Uasin-Gishu, Kerrycho and Lekipia, there were clearly large numbers of inhabitants living in settlements of various stone buildings. Huntingford divided the stone buildings into five categories: stone paddocks, rows of thatched huts, stone mounds, linear geotechnical works, and irrigation works. The stone paddock is generally composed of a number of circular walls made of stones, of which the double walls with a diameter of about sixty feet are obtained from the relatively simple and simple.
He found that when building circular huts, he sometimes tried to connect them in rows. He continued: "The so-called linear geotechnical works, including some undoubtedly roads, and others are more trench works than roads. In Kenya and Tanganyika, some of the earthworks that can be surely roadworks have steps, others, carved into the shape of railways through the hillsides as they pass through the hillsides, and, as they pass through the swamps, have carefully built embankments. He noticed that there was such an ancient path in the Kenyan highlands of Uasin-Gishu. One section of the road, once fifteen feet wide, had a fourteen-foot-high gap carved out of the hillside and another section passing through a seven-and-a-half-foot-high embankment. "Irrigation works include channels, terraces, and walls.
So far, only one place in Nadi, Kenya, has seen ancient aqueducts: the best example I know of is the last section of a five-foot-deep three-foot-wide canal about a hundred yards long. On the western slopes of the Rift Valley... The Sukhs of Malakout still use this canal for irrigation. Such canals tend to be quite long. He commented: "They are still too barbaric to learn to do it themselves." This may be an Azanian tradition. "One can find a lot of such evidence, but it has yet to be systematically collected, collated and reviewed.
Wacang said, "Among some official people, there are two types of ideas. The first describes some stone mounds and wells as the result of volcanic eruptions and ponds as the result of natural erosion of tropical rainstorms on the ground. Contrary opinions believe that this is an ancient civilization. "The latter opinion prevails. Writing about the situation in Tanganyika twenty-five years later, Foxbrook said: "There is a great deal of archaeological evidence that in some time in the past there were settled, agricultural, Iron Age people who lived on these plains. "It was these people who dug wells, built and traveled on these ancient roads of East Africa.
These "sedentary, agricultural, Iron Age people" Hending ford called them Azanias, according to classical Greek custom, left a great deal of evidence: the ruins of stone settlements and cities, terraces, irrigation canals, roads, mines and forges, stone homes and petroglyphs. It's all broad, but also vague. They are rarely, or cannot be, further confirmed or understood. Were they the early suppliers along the coast? It's possible, and even nine times out of ten. But ancient accounts of coastal trade are extremely sparse, and almost always through the vague curtain of monopoly on coastal trade has reached our hands.
When Europeans first came to all parts of this coast, they found that the peoples of the coast, especially the Swahilis, were well aware of the value of monopolizing trade with the hinterland and knowledge of the hinterland. According to the Navigation Essentials, this practice appears to have been around for a long time. When we say that little is known, or not understood, of the situation of the peoples of the interior of the great centuries of maritime trade, we do not mean that nothing can be understood. These centuries coincided with the development of the Iron Age in eastern and southeastern Africa, and the "Azania civilization", though vague and mysterious, was in the same era as zimbabwe's foundation and early development.
And judging from the pottery found, it may also have trade links with Zimbabwe. But the people of the coastal communities have hung a curtain from it. It was only in the inland Iron Age civilizations that were more powerful and possibly more advanced, in the South, that this curtain was broken in some places, and through these gaps we see a great deal of facts. Hending Ford believes that around 700 AD, or earlier, was the earliest years of the beginning of agricultural civilizations such as Kenya and Tanganyika, which used stone to build and use metal. This era is obviously not very precise. This is not only due to its lack of evidence, but also because the initiation and establishment of this broad culture in East Africa is certainly a process rather than a simple event or a series of brief events.
This process may be linked to migration from the north, and the way of life here may find its birthplace in southern Ethiopia. In southern Ethiopia, for example, Conso and Kafa now retain some of the same characteristics as Azania's achievements. "We can speculate that a civilization that prevailed in the Horn of Africa in the first 700 years AD (which undoubtedly inherited much from the Shabis, the Axum, and the Middle Meroe and the Middle Nile) was destroyed by Islam; its creators retreated south through Kenya (Islam never crossed Kenya); and around the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, probably earlier, this retreat ceased." "The history of the tribe doesn't conflict with that.
The millennium from 500 to 1500 AD was the peak of east Africa's trade with some of the maritime nations of the Indian Ocean. This millennium was also a period of maximum cultural development during the Iron Age in eastern and southern Africa. Since 500 AD, four major factors have stimulated social and economic development: the southward spread of the technology of iron and the consequent further increase in agriculture; the emergence of more powerful tribal societies and the beginning of urban settlements; the increasing coastal demand for other goods such as ivory, iron, and gold; and the expanding capacity of inland settlers to supply these demands and the ability to purchase imported goods from the coast.
The persistence and achievements of this development can be seen in Ngaruka, which is the result of this long-term development of civilization. Even if, according to Richie's calculations, the population of Engaruca was between thirty thousand and forty thousand, and compared purely numerically, there were about sixty thousand people in medieval Florence, and Foxbrook had shown that in order to support such a population as Engaruka, no less than eight thousand acres of land were necessary to grow grain. Even in the past, when rain conditions were slightly better, it would have been inconceivable for such a large number of people to live in such a place without skilled irrigation knowledge. Ngaruka's knowledge of this has been confirmed.
Further study is required to give a comprehensive account of Ngaruka. But the existing material is sufficient to show that its civilization is relatively developed, both in terms of its epoch and in terms of its type. Its agriculture clearly has the capacity to produce surplus food on a regular basis. Because this city is not only densely populated, but also has an important division of labor. There are many artisans there. None of this is an isolated incident.
People have long traveled from north to south on well-built roads. The ruins of many villages in Tanganyika have no less than a hundred houses. Grinding stones and other tools have confirmed that they can produce grain. Slag and broken air pipes illustrate their culture of using metals. In these villages, no iron tools have been found until now. Foxbrook believes this is due to the fact that iron has long since been oxidized. But they have quite a few relatively high levels of pottery. What kind of people are these? Why did their development stop so much? At least with regard to the second question, we have received some more reliable answers.
Since the fourteenth century, East Africa has been subjected to a long period of immigration from the north, mainly by nomadic peoples such as the Yigara, Somalis and Marshes from the Horn of Africa. These invaders appear to have thwarted, conquered, and dispersed the "Azanias", although the more recent estimation of Engaruka's age shows that the process was lengthy. As many previous and subsequent events have shown, more civilized nations have been destroyed by the more backward. Once again, the nomads defeated the "weakly settled" people.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="29" > conclusion</h1>
Ibn Haldon wrote around this time (though he was not referring to East Africa) "When the two sides are evenly matched, it is often those who are accustomed to a nomadic life who win. "What proved right in Asia and Europe is also true in East Africa: the herders of the north, who are technically more primitive, are militarily more powerful because of their way of life and method of organization. Thus, we can conceive that the "Azanias", whether in times of peace or war, are organized according to the traditions of the Nigro people, the Bantu tradition, which is based on the "extended family", while the herders form larger, more closely united organizations to facilitate movement and combat.
Destroyed by the more backward. Once again, the nomads defeated the "weakly settled" people.