Tazunu Megaliths

5,000-year-old granite standing stones scattered across the grasslands — one of Africa's least-known prehistoric monuments

Address Various sites around Bouar
Admission Free; arrange a local guide for around 10,000 CFA

The reason to come to Bouar. Scattered across the savannah within about 20 km of town are dozens of separate megalithic sites — clusters of upright granite stones, sometimes in straight lines, sometimes arranged in irregular circles. Individual stones can weigh four tonnes; the largest is over three metres tall. The granite is not local — it was quarried from outcrops kilometres away and transported here by a society about which essentially nothing is known.

The most accessible cluster is at Beforo, just outside Bouar to the south-west. A local guide is essential — there are no signposts, no fences, no entry tickets, and the sites are easy to miss in the long grass. Hire one through your hotel or via the Diocese in town. The visit is one of the most extraordinary things in Central Africa, and you will likely be the only visitor of the year.

The sites have been on UNESCO's Tentative World Heritage List since the 2000s. Visit while they remain almost entirely unprotected and unstudied.

things to do sight
A story
The Tazunu sites were first surveyed by French colonial administrators in the 1930s. They are clusters of standing granite stones, some weighing four tonnes, arranged in roughly circular formations. Radiocarbon dating of charcoal found at the bases of several stones has placed the oldest sites at around 5,500 BCE — making them older than the megaliths of Britain and Carnac. Almost nothing is known about who erected them or why; the modern Gbaya population has no oral tradition connecting the stones to their ancestors.