How it began
Around the town of Bouar, on a plateau in the west of the Central African Republic, stand hundreds of granite megaliths arranged in about seventy groups. They were put up during the Late Stone Age by a farming society whose name is unknown. The Gbaya people, who settled the region around the 1500s, call the monuments tazunu.
Their age is debated. One widely repeated range places them in the very late Neolithic, about 3500 to 2700 BCE. Other estimates run as late as the first millennium BCE, and a reference chronology for the Central African Neolithic marks its early dates and contexts as still to be confirmed.
How it works
A tazunu is a low mound, or tumulus, with upright stones set into it. Nicholas David, who excavated two of them and published the results in 1982, describes tumuli that incorporate megalithic structures, of a type found in the western Central African Republic and in part of the eastern highlands of Cameroon.
The monuments resemble burial mounds, which is why a funerary purpose is often assumed. What the stones meant to their builders is not known.
Where it stands today
The megaliths of Bouar were placed on UNESCO's World Heritage Tentative List on April 11, 2006, in the cultural category. They appeared on a Central African postage stamp in 1967.
Fieldwork has been limited. The main studies are the surveys of Pierre Vidal in the 1960s and David's excavations. Bouar was captured and recaptured by armed groups several times between 2013 and 2021 during the country's civil war.
