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Sungbo’s Eredo Defensive Walls From West Africa circa 1000 AD?

The jewel in the African civil engineering crown.

They enclose an area the size of Greater London, or 30 times bigger than Manhattan.

One of the largest monuments in sub-Saharan Africa: a 100-mile-long wall and moat whose construction began a millennium ago.

Darling says that tropical landscapes are littered with ancient earthworks that dwarf more famous ancient mega-structures such as the ruins of Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa or the pyramids of Egypt and even compare with the Great Wall of China.

newscientist.com-the-african-queen

The Eredo’s earthen bank rises 70 feet in the air from the bottom of a wide ditch, its reddish, vertical wall glistening with patches of moss.

 A carbon analysis of parts of the rampart showed that it dates from the 10th century and suggested that a highly organized kingdom existed in the rain forest at least three centuries earlier than previously believed.

 A Wall, a Moat, Behold! A Lost Yoruba Kingdom 

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“Built long before the mechanical era, it was all hand-built, requiring a large labor force and a well co-ordinated labor force working to a master plan,” Dr Darling explains.

BBC News | AFRICA | Legends 

Sungbo’s Eredo is a system of defensive walls and ditches that is located to the southwest of the Yoruba town of Ijebu Ode in Ogun State, southwest Nigeria (6.78700°N 3.87488°E). It was built in honour of the Ijebu noblewoman Oloye Bilikisu Sungbo.

The Eredo served a defensive purpose when it was built in 800–1000, a period of political confrontation and consolidation in the southern Nigerian rainforest. It was likely to have been inspired by the same process that led to the construction of similar walls and ditches throughout western Nigeria, including earthworks around Ifẹ̀, Ilesa, and the Benin Iya, a 6,500-kilometre (4,000 mi) series of connected but separate earthworks in the neighboring Edo-speaking region.

The biblical Queen of Sheba, do you remember her?

The queen that visited Solomon. Do you know she had her abode in the present day Nigeria? Watch this insightful documentary of Bilikisu Sungbo (Queen of Sheba).

Sungbo’s Eredo has also been connected with the legend of the Queen of Sheba which is recounted in both the Bible and Quran.

In the Hebrew Bible, she is described as having sent a caravan of gold, ivory and other goods from her kingdom to Solomon.

In the Quran she is an Ethiopian sun-worshiper involved in the incense trade who converts to Islam; commentators added that her name was “Bilqis”. Legends of the contemporary Ijebu clan link the Eredo to this fabled woman, a wealthy, childless widow named Bilikisu Sungbo. According to them, the monument was built as her personal memorial. In addition to this, her grave is believed to be located in Oke-Eiri, a town in a Muslim area just north of the Eredo. Pilgrims of Christian, Muslim and traditional African religions annually trek to this holy site in tribute to her.

A lecture by historian and lawyer Ed Keazor in Sungbo Eregdo.

The Eredo “ditch” is Africa largest engineering feat apart from the pyramids. Dug circa 1000 AD, it is over 200km in diameter and 70 feet deep…. it is a truely marvelous testimony to the organisation and ambitions of pre colonial African empires. A childless wealthy and industrious noble woman Bilkisu Sungbo who is thought to have been the consort of King Solomon ordered its construction…

It is believed that the Eredo was a means of unifying an area of diverse communities into a single kingdom. It seems that the builders of these fortifications deliberately tried to reach groundwater or clay to create a swampy bottom for the ditch. If this could be achieved in shallow depth, builders stopped, even if only at the depth of 1 meter. In some places small, conical idol statues had been placed on the bottom of the ditch.

Sungbo’s Eredo is an earth wall and ditch that is 160 kilometres long, rises 10 metres in places and encloses an area 40 by 35 kilometres (Pearce, 1999). Radiocarbon dating on the charcoal remains of fires that were used to clear the forest before the building of the rampart suggests that construction started on the site around 1200 years ago (Ibid). Sungbo’s Eredo has been described as Africa’s largest single ancient monument (Ibid).

sungbo-eredo

Over a thousand years ago in Ijebu land, a mysterious woman, Sungbo, carved out an empire whose ruins dwarf the pyramids of Egypt and even compare with the Great Wall of China, and is now considered one of the largest archeological phenomena on earth. The locals call these ruins “Sungbo’s Eredo”.

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The impressive size and complex construction of the Eredo drew worldwide media attention in September 1999 when Dr Patrick Darling, a British archaeologist then with Bournemouth University, surveyed the site and began publicizing his bid to preserve the Eredo and bring the site some prominence. Previously, the Eredo had been little-known outside of the small community of residents and specialists in Yoruba history. Forty years passed between Professor Peter Lloyd’s publication of his analysis of the site and that of Darling, but it still served to necessitate a complete rethinking of West Africa’s past.

sungbo-eredo

Total length of fortifications is more than 160 kilometres (99 mi). Fortifications consist of a ditch with unusually smooth walls and bank in the inner side of ditch. The height difference between the bottom of the ditch and the upper rim of the bank on the inner side can reach 20 metres (66 ft). Works have been performed in laterite, a typical African soil consisting of clay and iron oxides. Ditch forms an uneven ring around the area of the ancient Ijebu Kingdom, an area approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) wide in north-south, with the walls flanked by trees and other vegetation, turning the ditch into green tunnel.

The Biblical Queen of Sheba is believed to have migrated from Abyssinia (Ancient Ethiopia) to Oke Eri, Ijebu Ode in Nigeria (West Africa) where locals claim she lived the rest of her life, died and was buried. This is a trailer of a documentary movie on this claim ….

This site was added, along with the Iya of Benin, to the UNESCO World Heritage Site Tentative List on 1 November 1995 in the Cultural category.

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