Northeast Africa
African countries near the Red Sea
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Northeast Africa, or Northeastern Africa, or Northern East Africais the region is intermediate between North Africa and East Africa, and encompasses the Horn of Africa (Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia), as well as Sudan, South Sudan, Libya, and Egypt.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7]
The region has a very long history of habitation with fossil finds from the early hominids to modern human and is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse regions of the world, being the home to many civilizations and located on an important trade route that connects multiple continents.[8][9][10][11][12]
History of the region
A range of linguistic,[13] biological anthropological,[14][15] archaeological[16][17][18] and genetic data[19][20][21][22] have identified shared affinities between early Egypt and northeastern African populations.[23] Genetic evidence has identified the Horn of Africa as a source of a genetic marker "M35/215" Y-chromosome lineage for a significant population component which moved north from that region into Egypt and the Levant.[24] This genetic distribution paralleled the spread of the Afrasian language family with the movement of people from the Horn of Africa into Egypt and added a new demic component to the existing population of Egypt 17,000 years ago.[24]
Mainstream scholars have situated the ethnicity and the origins of predynastic, southern Egypt as a foundational community primarily in northeast Africa which included the Sudan, tropical Africa and the Sahara whilst recognising the population variability that became characteristic of the pharaonic period.[25][26][27][28] Pharaonic Egypt featured a physical gradation across the regional populations, with Upper Egyptians having shared more biological affinities with Sudanese and southernly African populations, whereas Lower Egyptians had closer genetic links with Levantine and Mediterranean populations.[29][30][31]
Ancient Nubians pioneered early antibiotics and established a system of geometrics which served as the basis for initial sunclocks. Nubians also exercised a trigonometric methodology comparable to their Egyptian counterparts.[32][33][34][35]
The area comprising Somaliland, Somalia, Djibouti, the Red Sea coast of Eritrea and Sudan is considered the most likely location of the land known to the ancient Egyptians as Punt (or "Ta Netjeru", meaning god's land), whose first mention dates to the 25th century BCE.[36] The Puntites traded myrrh, spices, gold, ebony, short-horned cattle, ivory and frankincense with the Ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Indians, Chinese and Romans through their commercial ports. An Ancient Egyptian expedition sent to Punt by the 18th dynasty Queen Hatshepsut is recorded on the temple reliefs at Deir el-Bahari, during the reign of the Puntite King Parahu and Queen Ati.[37][38] According to Christiane Noblecourt, these expeditions were further facilitated by the existence of a common language between Egypt and Punt.[39]
