History
Engolo is a kicking game and fighting tradition of the herding peoples of southern Angola. Players kick, sweep and do handstands, often to music, in a way that strongly resembles capoeira.
Historians such as Matthias Röhrig Assunção and T. J. Desch-Obi see engolo as one of the African roots of Brazilian capoeira, brought by enslaved Angolans.
The link with capoeira was first popularised by the Angolan-Portuguese painter Albano Neves e Sousa, who described "n’golo" among peoples of southern Angola in the mid-20th century. Later, historian T. J. Desch-Obi studied engolo in fieldwork and placed it within a wider family of Angolan fighting games.