1600 BURUNDI - Rusizi River

The Rusizi (also sometimes spelled Ruzizi) is a river, 117km long, that flows from Lake Kivu to Lake Tanganyika in Central Africa, descending from about 1,500m to about 770m above sea level over its length. The steepest gradients occur over the first 40km, and further downstream, the Ruzizi Plain, the floor of the  Western Rift Valley, has only gentle hills, and the river flows into Lake Tanganyika through a delta. It is a young river, formed about 10,000 years ago when volcanism associated with continental rifting created the  Virunga Mountains. The mountains blocked Lake Kivu's former outlet to the watershed of the Nile and instead forced the lake overflow south down the Rusizi and the watershed of the Congo.

1507 BURUNDI - Batwa people and their pottery

The Great Lakes Twa (Batwa in English) are a pygmy people, generally considered to be the oldest population of the Great Lakes region, though currently they live as a Bantu caste. Current populations (approximately 80,000 people) are found in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and the eastern portion of the DR Congo. Traditionally, they have been a semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers of the mountain forests living in association with agricultural villages. When the Hutu arrived in the region, they subjugated the people that they called Abatwa, the ancestors of the Batwa. Around the 15th century, the Tutsi arrived and dominated both the Hutu and the Twa, creating a three-caste society with the Tutsi governing, the Hutu the bulk of the population, and the Twa at the bottom of the social scale.