The Horn of Africa is home to
a remarkable mosaic of peoples, languages, and cultures. Its intriguing
prehistory provides insights into the major issues surrounding human origins,
early food production, and state development. Fossil evidence reveals
the region to be the home of some of our earliest human ancestors 5.8
million years ago, the
first stone tool technology 2.6 million years ago, as well as the first
anatomically modern humans dating to 130,000 years ago. While the region
is rich in paleoanthropological studies little research has focused on the
origins of food production in the region. Yet, biogeography and linguistic
reconstructions suggest that the Horn is one of the eight centers of plant
domestication in Africa including, enset, teff, finger millet, ch'at, and
coffee. The early states of Aksum and Adulis controlled the trade
of obsidian, spices, incense, myrrh, wild animals, ivory, and gold from the
interior of Africa. They constructed incredible monoliths over the burials of
their elite, constructed dressed-stone architecture, invented an indigenous script (Ge'ez),
coinage, and adopted Christianity in the 1st century AD. Today, peoples in the region speak more than 80
languages of the Cushitic, Semitic, Omotic, Niger-Congo, Sudanic, and
EthioSemitic language families. They provide a rich and varied source for
ethnoarchaeological studies, which seek to understand a
broad
range of cultures with a variety of ideologies, practices, and
material forms.
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Link
to List of Researchers
working in the Horn
Bibliographies
Archaeology
of the Horn
Ethnoarchaeology
of the Horn
Paleoanthropological
Studies
Journal
of Ethiopian Studies
Annales
de Ethiopie
Aethiopica
Organizations and Research Centers
Ethiopia Authority for Research and Conservation of
Cultural Heritage
National Museum of Ethiopia
PO Box 76, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
National Museum of Eritrea
PO Box 5284, Asmara, Eritrea
South Omo
Research Center
http://www.southethiopiaresearch.org/
Human Evolution Research Center
http://herc.berkeley.edu/_people.php
Human Origins Research Center
http://iho.asu.edu/node/23
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
http://www.eva.mpg.de/english/index.htm
Institute for Anthropological Research on Africa
http://soc.kuleuven.be/arc/
Please
send additions to bibliographies and researchers names to:
kjarthur@stpt.usf.edu
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