Tanganyika notes and records
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Date
1938
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Fosbrooke
Abstract
There exists a striking similarity between the ruins at Engaruka, and the stone works to be found in the Sonjo villages some fifty miles to the north-west of this site. To illustrate this resemblance I propose to examine the report on Engaruka, by Dr L. S. B. Leakey, published in the first number of this journal, quoting relevant sections for ease of reference, and then adding comments from my observations in Sonjo country. As this method of presentation will tend to obscure the differences, it should be stated at the outset that these are manifold.
The population of Sonjo is about two thousand five hundred souls; probably no village has more than eight hundred inhabitants; this contrasts strangely with the thirty thousand at Engaruka. The Sonjo’s actual dwellings are beehive huts; they erect no burial cairns, but inter their dead in the large heaps of goat manure that accumulate outside the houses; their dwelling's are confined to the scree slopes, and nothing corresponding to the valley ruins of Engaruka is to be found.
Having made these differences clear, it is now possible to turn to the similarities, working systematically through the article under reference.
The Geographical Position.—“The Engaruka ruins are situated along the scree slopes of the Rift valley wall on either side of theism all stream.” Every Sonjo village, and there are five, is situated on the screen slopes of an upper scarp of the Rift valley, fifteen to twenty miles west of Lake Natron. In every case, a stream runs past the village.
Description
Available in Print form, East Africana Collection, Dr Wilbert Chagula Library, ( EAF PER DT436.T3)
Keywords
Tanganyika, History, Periodicals, Tanzania
Citation
Fosbrooke, Henry A. (1938) Tanganyika notes and records