The history of East Africa has been divided into its prehistory, the major polities flourishing, the colonial period, and the post-colonial period, in which the current nations were formed. East Africa is the eastern region of Africa, bordered by North Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Sahara Desert. Colonial boundaries are reflected in the modern boundaries between contemporary East African states, cutting across ethnic and cultural lines, often dividing single ethnic groups between two or more states.
Geography
The area located at the south of the desert is a steppe, a semi-arid region, called the Sahel. It is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara Desert to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. The Sudanian Savanna is a broad belt of tropical savanna that spans the African continent, from the Atlantic Ocean coast in the West Sudanian savanna to the Ethiopian Highlands in the East Sudanian savanna.
Climate
In 15,000 BP, the West African Monsoon transformed the landscape of Africa and began the Green Sahara period; greater rainfall during the summer season resulted in the growth of humid conditions (e.g., lakes, wetlands) and the savanna (e.g., grassland, shrubland) in North Africa. Between 5500 BP and 4000 BP, the Green Sahara period ended.
Prehistory
In 78,300 BP, amid the Middle Stone Age, a two and half to three year old human child was buried at Panga ya Saidi, in Kenya.
In 13,000 BP, Nubians, who were found to be morphologically different from newer Nubian populations and morphologically similar to Sub-Saharan Africans (e.g., Kerma, modern Eastern Africans, modern Western Africans), resided in tropical Jebel Sahaba.
Between 8000 BP and 2000 BP, Saharan herders migrated into Eastern Africa, and brought along with them their monumental Saharan burial traditions.
Amid the Holocene, around 7100 BP, six individuals were buried.
In the uplands of Nakfa, there is painted rock art (e.g., petroglyphs) in Karora depicting symbolic representations, men, and animals (e.g., horses, camels, antelopes, goats, sheep, cattle), which has been dated to the 2nd millennium BCE.
Iron Age
Archaeometallurgical scientific knowledge and technological development originated in numerous centers of Africa; the centers of origin were located in West Africa, Central Africa, and East Africa; consequently, as these origin centers are located within inner Africa, these archaeometallurgical developments are thus native African technologies. The earliest records of bloomery-type furnaces in East Africa are discoveries of smelted iron and carbon in Nubia that date back between the 7th and 6th centuries BC, particularly in Meroe where there are known to have been ancient bloomeries that produced metal tools for the Nubians and Kushites and produced surplus for their economy.
There is also evidence that carbon steel was made in Western Tanzania by the ancestors of the Haya people as early as 2,300 to 2,000 years ago (about 300 BC or soon after) by a complex process of "pre-heating" allowing temperatures inside a furnace to reach 1300 to 1400 °C.
Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details Iron Age
Ancient history
Bantu expansion
From West Africa, Bantu-speaking peoples migrated, along with their ceramics, into the other areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The Kalundu ceramic type may have spread into Southeastern Africa. Additionally, the Eastern African Urewe ceramic type of Lake Victoria may have spread, via African shores near the Indian Ocean, as the Kwale ceramic type, and spread, via Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi, as the Nkope ceramic type.
Though some may have been created later, the earlier red finger-painted rock art may have been created between 6000 BP and 1800 BP, to the south of Kei River and Orange River by Khoisan hunter-gatherer-herders, in Malawi and Zambia by considerably dark-skinned, occasionally bearded, bow-and-arrow-wielding Akafula hunter-gatherers who resided in Malawi until the 19th century CE, and in Transvaal by the Vhangona people.
Bantu-speaking farmers, or their Proto-Bantu progenitors, created the later white finger-painted rock art in some areas of Tanzania, Malawi, Angola, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, as well as in the northern regions of Mozambique, Botswana, and Transvaal. The Transvaal (e.g., Soutpansberg, Waterberg) rock art was specifically created by Sotho-speakers (e.g., Birwa, Koni, Tlokwa) and Venda people. Concentric circles, stylized humans, stylized animals, ox-wagons, saurian figures, Depictions of crocodiles and snakes were included in the white finger-painted rock art tradition, both of which were associated with rainmaking and, crocodiles in particular, were also associated with fertility. The white finger-painted rock art may have been created for reasons relating to initiation rites and puberty rituals. Depictions from the rock art tradition of Bantu-speaking farmers have been found on divination-related items (e.g., drums, initiation figurines, initiation masks); fertility terracotta masks from Transvaal have been dated to the 1st millennium CE. Along with Iron Age archaeological sites from the 1st millennium CE, this indicates that white finger-painted rock art tradition may have been spanned from the Early Iron Age to the Later Iron Age.
Kingdom of Kush
The Kerma culture was based in the southern part of Nubia, or "Upper Nubia" (in parts of present-day northern and central Sudan), and later extended its reach northward into Lower Nubia and the border of Egypt. The city-state of Kerma emerged as the dominant political force, controlling the Nile Valley between the first and fourth cataracts, an area as large as Egypt. The Egyptians were the first to identify Kerma as "Kush" and over the next several centuries the two civilizations engaged in intermittent warfare, trade, and cultural exchange.Alberge, Dalya. "Tomb reveals Ancient Egypt's humiliating secret". The Times. London. It emerged as the earliest kingdom in Sub-Saharan Africa, and persisted from 2500 BCE to 1500 BCE.
Kingdom of Punt
The earliest recorded ancient Egyptian expedition to Punt was organized by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (25th century BCE), returning with cargoes of antyue and Puntites. However, gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt as early as the time of Pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty.
Subsequently, there were more expeditions to Punt in the Sixth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Eighteenth dynasties of Egypt. In the Twelfth Dynasty, trade with Punt was celebrated in popular literature in the "Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor".
In the reign of Mentuhotep III (11th dynasty, ca. 2000 BCE), an officer named Hannu organized one or more voyages to Punt, but it is uncertain whether he personally traveled on these expeditions. Trading missions of the 12th dynasty pharaohs Senusret I, Amenemhat II and Amenemhat IV had also successfully navigated their way to and from the mysterious land of Punt.Joyce Tyldesley, Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh, Penguin Books, 1996 hardback, p.145El-Sayed Mahfouz: Amenemhat IV at Wadi Gawasis, Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale A. (BIFAO) 2010, vol. 110, [165-173, 485, 491 [11 p.], , see also
Kingdom of Dʿmt
Given the presence of a large temple complex, the capital of Dʿmt may have been present day Yeha, in Tigray Region, Ethiopia. At Yeha, the temple to the god Ilmuqah is still standing.
Aksumite Empire
Somewhat based on the basis of Carlo Conti Rossini's theories and prolific work on Ethiopian history, Aksum is thought by some to have started out as a Sabaean colony, founded by the semitic Sabaeans, also evidenced by the semitic language domination over the oromo language, part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum. Others believe that the development of it was mostly independent. Proponents of the latter believe that Sabaean influence was minor, limited to a few localities, and disappearing after a few decades or a century, perhaps representing a trading or military colony in some sort of symbiosis or military alliance with or some other "proto-Aksumite" state. Evidence suggests that semitic-speaking Aksumites semiticized the Agaw people, who, before that, most likely took influence from foreign Afroasiatic cultures in their development as a people group, suggested by the Cushitic language they speak. They had also already established an agricultural community in the area before any known arrival of the Sabaeans, to which is affiliated with the spread of the Afro-Asiatic language phylum.
Swahili Coast
In the pre-Swahili period, the region was occupied by smaller societies whose main socioeconomic activities were pastoralism, fishing, and mixed farming.LaViolette, Adria. Swahili Coast, In: Encyclopedia of Archaeology, ed. by Deborah M. Pearsall. (2008): 19-21. New York, NY: Academic Press. Early on, those living on the Swahili coast prospered because of agriculture helped by regular yearly rainfall and animal husbandry. The shallow coast was important as it provided seafood. Starting in the early 1st millennium CE, trade was crucial. Submerged river estuaries created natural harbors as well as the yearly monsoon winds helped trade. Later in the 1st millennium CE there was a huge migration of Bantu-speaking peoples. The communities settling along the coast shared archaeological and linguistic features with those from the interior of the continent. Archeological data has revealed the use of Kwale and Urewe ceramics both along the coast and within the interior parts, showing that the regions had a shared lifeway in the Late Stone and Early Iron Ages.
Post-classical history
Harla Kingdom
Harla Kingdom was a 6th century CE Harla state centered around present day eastern Ethiopia. The kingdom had trading relations with the Ayyubid and Tang dynasties. It also established its own currency and calendar.
Kingdom of Bazin
The Kingdom of Bazin was an early medieval kingdom centered in Northeast Africa. According to Al-Yaqubi, it was one of six Beja polities that existed in the region during the 9th century CE. The kingdom's territory was located between Aswan and Massawa.
Kingdom of Semien
The beginning of a conversion process of the Kingdom of Axum to Christianity is thought to have occurred with the arrival of two Syrian brothers Frumentius and Aedesius, sometime in the reign of Ezana. The conversion, bringing with it Hebraizing elements, was partial, initially was limited to the court and probably affected only the caravan trading route areas between Axum and Adulis. Neither Judaizing nor Christianizing local populations would have fitted into what we later define as normative Judaism or Christianity, but were syncretic mixtures of local faiths and new beliefs from forebears of these respective religions. Later legend speaks of a revolt by Jews taking place at this period but there is no evidence that directly support this story, and its historicity is considered unlikely. A strong possibility exists that the Christian Kaleb of Axum, who had dispatched military contingents to fight against the Judaizing Dhu Nuwas of the Arabian peninsula kingdom of Himyar banished opponents to the Simien Mountains, which later emerged as a Beta Israel stronghold. Nothing in the historical record from the 6th century CE to the 13th century CE, however, has allowed scholars to make anything more than very tentative hypotheses concerning the Jewish communities of that time. Legends surrounding a Jewish queen called Judith (Gudit) have been dismissed by Ethiopian specialists like Edward Ullendorff as without foundation in any historical facts.
Kingdom of Belgin