With its mathematical layout and earthworks longer than the noteworthy Wall of China,Benin City was one of the best planned cities in the world when London was a position of ‘thievery and murder’. So why is nothing left?
Read other articles in our myth of cities seriesThis is the myth of a lost medieval city you’ve probably never heard about. Benin City, originally known as Edo, and was once the capital of a pre-colonial African empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. The Benin empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in west Africa,dating back to the 11th century.
The Guinness Book of Records (1974 edition) described the walls of Benin City and its surrounding kingdom as the world’s largest earthworks carried out prior to the mechanical era. According to estimates by the New Scientist’s Fred Pearce, Benin City’s walls were “four times longer than the noteworthy Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the noteworthy Pyramid of Cheops”.
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Source: theguardian.com