Stone Circles of Senegambia
Ben’s Place of the Week

Stone Circles of Senegambia
Coordinates: 13° 41 N | 15° 31 W
Approximate area: 15,000 square miles (39,000 sq. km)

Mention stone circles and most people probably think of the photogenic megaliths that beckon tourists to England’s Salisbury Plain. Farther to the south however, along the River Gambia in West Africa, 93 stone circles arranged into four groups in Senegal and The Gambia represent a larger, more complex sacred landscape dwarfing the enormity of Stonehenge. These massive seven-ton pillars were erected between the third century BCE and the sixteenth century CE in a low-lying, sub-tropical region that endures nearly five months of rain between June and October. On July 21st, the World Heritage Committee added the Stone Circles of Senegambia along with 17 other sites to their list of 830 cultural and natural properties deemed most valuable to present and future generations.

– Ben Keene, editor of Oxford Atlas of the World.