Gambia · GM

Wassu Stone Circle

On a plateau in the Central River Region of The Gambia, the Wassu Stone Circles raise rings of laterite pillars that have stood for nearly a thousand years. Part of the UNESCO World Heritage property "Stone Circles of Senegambia," Wassu is one of the densest and most accessible concentrations of these megalithic monuments anywhere in the world, and the site where the tallest of all the stones was found. Eleven stone circles and their associated frontal stones make up the Wassu complex, each ring formed of between eight and fourteen dressed pillars set four to six metres across. The builders quarried the iron-rich laterite with metal tools and shaped it into almost identical cylindrical and polygonal columns averaging about two metres tall and weighing up to seven tons—an effort that speaks to a prosperous, well-organised society that kept this burial tradition alive for centuries.