Salweyn, also known as Salwine, is a

proto-Somali Proto-Somalis were the ancient people and ancestors of Somalis who lived in present-day Somalia. Literature on proto-Somalis largely uses a time-frame pertaining to the 1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. History The Land of Punt, Puntites ...

archaeological site An archaeological site is a place (or group of physical sites) in which evidence of past activity is preserved (either prehistoric or recorded history, historic or contemporary), and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline ...

located in the

Sanaag Sanag (, ) is an administrative region ('' gobol'') in north eastern Somaliland.Regions of Somalia
Sa ...

region of

Somaliland Somaliland, officially the Republic of Somaliland, is an List of states with limited recognition, unrecognised country in the Horn of Africa. It is located in the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden and bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, E ...

Overview

Salweyn is situated to the east of the old coastal town of Heis. A small eponymous creek is located in the area. The site contains a very large field of

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

s, which stretches for a distance of around 8 km. An excavation of one of these

tumuli A tumulus (: tumuli) is a mound of Soil, earth and Rock (geology), stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as ''kurgans'', and may be found through ...

by Georges Révoil in 1881 uncovered a tomb, beside which were artefacts pointing to an ancient, advanced civilization. The interred objects included pottery

sherd This page is a glossary of archaeology, the study of the human past from material remains. A B C D E F ...

s from

Samos Samos (, also ; , ) is a Greek island in the eastern Aegean Sea, south of Chios, north of Patmos and the Dodecanese archipelago, and off the coast of western Turkey, from which it is separated by the Mycale Strait. It is also a separate reg ...

, some well-crafted enamels, and a mask of

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

design. Additionally, close to the cairns are a number of rows of standing stones. These

menhir A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the European middle Br ...

s are similar to those at Heis and Botiala. Along with Macajilayn, Salweyn is also the only local site where specialized ancient disc-like monuments have been found.

References

{{reflist Archaeological sites in Somaliland Sanaag