Jack of Harts

Ethiopia is one of the oldest civilizations in Africa. Whether you call it Abyssinia, D’mt, Aksum, Ethiopia, or one of the many other names littered through history, civilization in what we now call the Ethiopian Highlands stretches back thousands of years, and was famous all over the world. It never fell under the direct power of Rome, but its ships and ports traded with Rome and all of the other great empires of the day. And it was one of the first nations to convert to Christianity. The later Arab invasion that shattered the eastern and southern Roman Empire cut Ethiopia off from the rest of the Christian nations.

It became a hidden empire of lost Africa, and many Europeans forgot it even existed. It may have been forgotten, but Ethiopia did not die. It continued to survive in the forested and mountainous region often called the Roof of Africa, even as the Arabs and later the Ottomans invaded and took control of Ethiopia’s rugged coastal regions. The Ottomans even drove into the Ethiopian Highlands to kill every Christian they could find in time, but the Ethiopians and their allies drove the invaders out. Fighting would continue over the centuries that followed as the Ottomans, the Sudanese, the Egyptians, and numerous others fought with Ethiopia and various European powers over control of the coasts.

The Ethiopian civilization has jealously guarded their access to the ports they have used to trade with the world for thousands of years. And of course everybody else wants those same ports as well, because they are rich ports all around the Horn of Africa. But the various invasions and wars were accompanied by mass migrations of people from modern day Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, and many other nations. Ethnic Ethiopians were largely driven out of their coastal regions, and though Ethiopia has fought many wars over the last several centuries to regain control of them, they have been driven back out each time.

The coastal regions of Ethiopia are now officially known as Eritrea and Somalia. They are the product of over one thousand years of mass migration that drove the indigenous African civilization out of their traditional trading ports and replaced it with a traditionally Arabian culture that has been trying to eradicate them ever since. That is mass migration at work.