If the Gambia is today a naturalistic destination of extraordinary beauty and richness, when visiting it one cannot ignore its main sites of historical importance, which bear witness to a past made up of mysterious ancient populations, powerful African kingdoms, geopolitical balances for the control of European trade and the sad memory of the slave trade.
About 30 km upriver from the capital Banjul, you arrive at the small traditional villages of Jufureh and Albreda. Inhabited by Wolof and Mandinka peoples, they were the scene of centuries of slave trade and clashes between European nations for control of the Gambia River.
It is here that the descendants of Kunta Kinteh still live, amidst traditional huts and colonial legacies, of which the famous fictional description was given in Alex Haley’s literary work Roots.
Not far away, in the middle of the river, is James Island, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003.
Occupied by the Portuguese in the 15th century, it was subsequently built by Baltic settlers from Courland in 1651 under the name of St Andrew, conquered a few years later by the Dutch and finally by the British in 1664, who renamed it James Island, repelling repeated French attacks from here, who controlled the river banks from Albreda.
Today, this tiny island, devoured by erosion and abandoned to its own decadence for more than two centuries, retains the ruins of its ancient fort with its crenellated profile and monumental baobab trees that contribute to its mysterious and ghostly charm.
The colonial outposts of James Island, Albreda and Jufureh were the first historical evidence of the Europeans’ desire to penetrate inland, expanding their control from the coast inland, via the Gambia River. Exactly what the French did two centuries later on the Senegal River further north.
It is hard to believe today that these dilapidated ruins, these sleepy places, suspended between daily activities and river landscapes of extraordinary beauty, were in past centuries the scene of such a past, if it were not for the small museum of slavery in Albreda or the house of the descendants of Kunta Kinteh in Jufureh, to remind us.
But Gambia’s history goes back many centuries before European colonisation and incursions. On the eastern border with Senegal, over a vast area north of Janjanbureh, mysterious megalithic circles, similar to Mediterranean menhirs, are scattered around. Made of laterite, they consist of blocks varying in size from 1 to 2.5 metres in height and arranged to form a hundred circles, each comprising between 10 and 24 stones. Recent studies show that they were erected in a wide period between the 3rd century BC and the 16th century AD, probably as sacred burial sites. The sites are distributed in four main locations, Wassu and Kerbatch in Gambia, Wanar and Sine Ngayene in Senegal, created by evolved and organised peoples, as each stone was quarried and worked with iron tools. It is not known exactly what peoples they were, but given the border area and the current demographics of the region, they were probably Wolof, Diola and Serer ancestors. The Gambian sites, in particular, retain a few exceptions, such as the tallest stone reaching 256 cm, a bifid stone and a V-shaped carved stone, all of which can be dated between 900 and 1300 AD, based on the analysis of burials found on site. UNESCO included the megalithic circles of Senegambia on its World Heritage List in 2006, given the exceptional nature of the remains.
