Engaruka is located in the Rift valley in northern Tanzania, in the Arusha region, there are a set of ruins, considered to be one of the most important archaeological sites of Tanzania's Iron Age. As far as Engaruka is known, it was an Iron Age farming community, established around the 15th century. Composed of seven villages that were home to several thousand inhabitants, which in its apocalypse could have included a population of 8000 people, who survive through a sophisticated irrigation system and cultivation that includes irrigation channels with stone blocks that drained water from the massif from Ngorongoro to some stone cladded crop terraces.
About 20 square kilometers of cultivated land, were supported by the irrigation system, plus the inhabitants to minimize soil degradation and systematically improve the fertility of it, used cattle manure as fertilizer. As far as it is known, the people of Engaruka in were ancestors of the Iraqw and Sonjo cultures.The Iraqw, are a group of Cusite origin, who practice a lifestyle based on intensive agriculture and with techniques very similar to those of Engaruka, despite not currently living in the area, their oral histories and more corroborate that they were part of the local population, considering themselves to be the founders of the initial settlements of Engaruka.
Considering that the Iraqis were part of the Cusite-type villages of the Afro-Asian branch who led an agricultural and livestock lifestyle in the Great Lakes area and with several migratory phases. It is believed that another of the ancient occupiers of Engaruka, were the sonjo and unlike the Iraqw, they are a people of Bantu origin, very close to the kikuyu and meru. Their farming system, terraced villages also bear similarities with Engaruka.It is believed that the ancestors of the Iraqw and Sonjo, opened the area abandoned between 1700 and 1750 for several reasons, one of them is the decrease in the flow of the Engaruka River and various streams affecting their agricultural lifestyle.
Another was the pressure exerted by groups of nomadic nilotic herders who began to move across the highlands of the crater above Engaruka, long before the arrival of the masses who are the current occupiers of the Engaruka area.