[2] Sometime in the 15th century, an Iron Age farming community built a large continuous village area on the footslopes of the Rift Valley escarpment, housing several thousand people.

[5] Construction of Engaruka has traditionally been credited to the ancestors of the Iraqw, a Cushitic-speaking group of cultivators residing in the Mbulu Highlands of northern Tanzania.

The modern Iraqw practice an intensive form of self-contained agriculture that bears a remarkable similarity to the ruins of stone-walled canals, dams and furrows that are found at Engaruka.

Iraqw historical traditions likewise relate that their last significant migration to their present area of inhabitation occurred about two or three centuries ago after conflicts with the Barbaig sub-group of the Datoga, herders who are known to have occupied the Crater Highlands above Engaruka prior to the arrival of the Maasai.

[8] The first European to record the existence of these ruins was Gustav Fischer, who passed them on 5 July 1883, and compared them to the tumbled-down walls of ancient castles.

[citation needed] John Sutton of the British Institute in Eastern Africa later conducted excavations at Engaruka, and in 2002–2005 Ari Siiriainen led a research team from the Department of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki.