Innermost Benin city wall (Ewuare's rampart) constructed

Oral tradition attributes the innermost Benin "city wall" — a dump rampart with an outer ditch some twenty metres deep — to the 15th-century Oba Ewuare. A radiocarbon date of 1340 CE ± 105 from charcoal on the old land surface below the rampart gives broad confirmation of an early construction date. Building it required a strongly centralised directive authority.