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Ethiopia Origins and the Early Periods
Early Populations and Neighboring States
Details on the origins of all the peoples that make up the
population of highland Ethiopia were still matters for
research and debate in the early 1990s. Anthropologists
believe that East Africa's Great Rift Valley is the site of
humankind's origins. (The valley traverses Ethiopia from
southwest to northeast.) In 1974 archaeologists excavating
sites in the Awash River valley discovered 3.5-million-year-
old fossil skeletons, which they named Australopithecus
afarensis. These earliest known hominids stood upright,
lived in groups, and had adapted to living in open areas
rather than in forests.
Coming forward to the late Stone Age, recent research in
historical linguistics--and increasingly in archaeology as
well--has begun to clarify the broad outlines of the
prehistoric populations of present-day Ethiopia. These
populations spoke languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic
super-language family, a group of related languages that
includes Omotic, Cushitic, and Semitic, all of which are
found in Ethiopia today. Linguists postulate that the
original home of the Afro-Asiatic cluster of languages was
somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly in the area
between the Nile River and the Red Sea in modern Sudan. From
here the major languages of the family gradually dispersed
at different times and in different directions--these
languages being ancestral to those spoken today in northern
and northeastern Africa and far southwestern Asia.
The first language to separate seems to have been Omotic,
at a date sometime after 13,000 B.C. Omotic speakers moved
southward into the central and southwestern highlands of
Ethiopia, followed at some subsequent time by Cushitic
speakers, who settled in territories in the northern Horn of
Africa, including the northern highlands of Ethiopia. The
last language to separate was Semitic, which split from
Berber and ancient Egyptian, two other Afro-Asiatic
languages, and migrated eastward into far southwestern Asia.
By about 7000 B.C. at the latest, linguistic evidence
indicates that both Cushitic speakers and Omotic speakers
were present in Ethiopia. Linguistic diversification within
each group thereafter gave rise to a large number of new
languages. In the case of Cushitic, these include Agew in
the central and northern highlands and, in regions to the
east and southeast, Saho, Afar, Somali, Sidamo, and Oromo,
all spoken by peoples who would play major roles in the
subsequent history of the region. Omotic also spawned a
large number of languages, Welamo (often called Wolayta) and
Gemu-Gofa being among the most widely spoken of them, but
Omotic speakers would remain outside the main zone of ethnic
interaction in Ethiopia until the late nineteenth century.
Both Cushitic- and Omotic-speaking peoples collected wild
grasses and other plants for thousands of years before they
eventually domesticated those they most preferred. According
to linguistic and limited archaeological analyses, plough
agriculture based on grain cultivation was established in
the drier, grassier parts of the northern highlands by at
least several millennia before the Christian era. Indigenous
grasses such as
teff
(see Glossary) and eleusine were the
initial domesticates; considerably later, barley and wheat
were introduced from Southwest Asia. The corresponding
domesticate in the better watered and heavily forested
southern highlands was ensete, a root crop known locally as
false banana. All of these early peoples also kept
domesticated animals, including cattle, sheep, goats, and
donkeys. Thus, from the late prehistoric period,
agricultural patterns of livelihood were established that
were to be characteristic of the region through modern
times. It was the descendants of these peoples and cultures
of the Ethiopian region who at various times and places
interacted with successive waves of migrants from across the
Red Sea. This interaction began well before the modern era
and has continued through contemporary times.
During the first millennium B.C. and possibly even earlier,
various Semitic-speaking groups from Southwest Arabia began
to cross the Red Sea and settle along the coast and in the
nearby highlands. These migrants brought with them their
Semitic speech (Sabaean and perhaps others) and script (Old
Epigraphic South Arabic) and monumental stone architecture.
A fusion of the newcomers with the indigenous inhabitants
produced a culture known as pre-Aksumite. The factors that
motivated this settlement in the area are not known, but to
judge from subsequent history, commercial activity must have
figured strongly. The port city of Adulis, near modern-day
Mitsiwa, was a major regional entrepôt and probably the main
gateway to the interior for new arrivals from Southwest
Arabia. Archaeological evidence indicates that by the
beginning of the Christian era this pre-Aksumite culture had
developed western and eastern regional variants. The former,
which included the region of Aksum, was probably the polity
or series of polities that became the Aksumite state.
Data as of 1991
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