Ethiopia

• 1. Introduction

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  Ethiopia holds a fossil named Dinkinesh, found in the Awash Valley of the Afar Region in 1974 by Donald Johanson. The world knows her as Lucy. She is one of the most complete adult Australopithecine skeletons ever uncovered, and she lived roughly 3.2 million years ago. From this same ground came older finds still, including the 4.2 million-year-old Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed Ardi, unearthed by Tim D. White in 1994. Few places on Earth carry a deeper human record. Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa, covering 1,104,300 square kilometres and home to around 135 million people. That makes it the 14th-most populous country in the world. But the bones in its valleys are only the beginning of the story. How did a kingdom here become the second country on Earth to officially adopt Christianity? Why did this nation remain independent through the Scramble for Africa while neighbours fell to European rule? And what does it mean that its capital sits on a rift slowly splitting the country between two tectonic plates? The answers run from ancient inscriptions to a modern dam on the Blue Nile.

• 2. Bones In The Valley

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  Omo-Kibish I, from southern Ethiopia, is the oldest anatomically modern Homo sapiens skeleton currently known, dated to 196,000 years ago give or take 5,000. The Omo remains were excavated in the southwestern Omo Kibish area and placed in the Middle Paleolithic, around 200,000 years ago. Skeletons of Homo sapiens idaltu turned up in the Middle Awash valley, dated to roughly 160,000 years ago, possibly an extinct subspecies or the immediate ancestors of modern humans. At Gademotta, the stone tips of javelins or throwing spears date to around 279,000 years ago, among the earliest known stone-tipped projectile weapons. In 2019, additional projectile points were found at Aduma, dated between 100,000 and 80,000 years ago, likely darts thrown by spear-throwers. High in the Bale Mountains, at the Fincha Habera site, archaeologists in 2019 found a rock shelter at 3,469 metres above sea level. At that altitude, humans face hypoxia and extreme weather. A study in the journal Science called this dwelling proof of the earliest permanent human occupation at high altitude yet discovered. Thousands of animal bones, hundreds of stone tools, and ancient fireplaces revealed a diet that featured giant mole rats. The story of a people, it turns out, begins long before the story of a state.

• 3. Kingdoms And Crowns

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  In 980 BC, the Kingdom of Dʿmt was established in present-day Eritrea and the northern Tigray region, with its capital at Yeha. Many believe it was the successor state to Punt. Most modern historians treat it as a native Ethiopian civilization, though Ge'ez, the ancient Semitic language of Ethiopia, is thought to have developed independently of the Sabaean language. The Kingdom of Aksum emerged in the 1st century AD, holding a unified civilization in the region for 900 years. The Persian prophet Mani listed Axum alongside Rome, Persia, and China as one of the four great powers of his era during the 3rd century. Around 316 AD, two brothers from Tyre, Frumentius and Edesius, were taken to the Aksumite court as slaves after their ship's other travellers were killed. They converted members of the royal court, and Frumentius became the first bishop of Aksum. A coin dated to 324 shows Ethiopia became the second country to officially adopt Christianity, after Armenia did so in 301. The kingdom adopted the name Ethiopia during the reign of Ezana in the 4th century. Aksum came to an end in 960 when Queen Gudit defeated its last king. The surviving population shifted south and established the Zagwe dynasty, moving the capital to Lalibela.

• 4. The Solomonic Line

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  In 1270, at the Battle of Ansata, the Shewan usurper Yekuno Amlak overthrew the Zagwe dynasty and inaugurated the Ethiopian Empire and the Solomonic dynasty. The dynasty asserted its lineage through the biblical Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, naming Menelik I as its first emperor. Amda Seyon I launched campaigns against Muslim adversaries to the east, shifting the balance of power toward the Christians for two centuries. Under Emperor Zara Yaqob, the Ethiopian Empire reached its pinnacle. His rule consolidated territory, oversaw the construction of churches and monasteries, promoted literature and art, and strengthened central imperial authority. The Adal Sultanate tried to conquer Ethiopia during the Ethiopian-Adal War of 1529 to 1543, but was defeated at the 1543 Battle of Wayna Daga. In 1632, Emperor Fasilides halted Roman Catholic state administration and restored Orthodox Tewahedo as the state religion. He relocated the capital to Gondar in 1636, opening the Gondarine period. Fasilides built the royal fortress Fasil Ghebbi, constructed forty-four churches, and is credited with seven stone bridges over the Blue Nile River. After his line declined, Ethiopia entered the Zemene Mesafint between 1769 and 1855, the Age of Princes, when emperors became figureheads controlled by regional lords like Ras Mikael Sehul.

• 5. The Independence Anomaly

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  Tewodros II ended the Age of Princes at the start of his reign in 1855, beginning the reunification and modernization of Ethiopia. He started a process of consolidation and centralisation, reducing the power of regional rulers, restructuring administration, and creating a professional army. Menelik II, king of Shewa, then expanded the state to roughly its current form, ruling as Emperor from 1889 until his death in 1913. From his base in Shewa he annexed lands to the south, east, and west, areas inhabited by the Oromo, Sidama, Gurage, Welayta, and other peoples. He signed the Treaty of Wuchale with Italy in May 1889, but the Italians used the gap before ratification to expand their claims. The First Italo-Ethiopian War culminated in the Battle of Adwa on the 1st of March 1896, where Italy's colonial forces were defeated. During this period about a third of the population died in the Great Ethiopian Famine of 1888 to 1892, and rinderpest destroyed much of the herd economy. On the 11th of October 1897, Ethiopia adopted the green, yellow, and red stripes of the pan-African flag. Together with Liberia, Ethiopia became the only African country never fully colonized, resisting even the Second Italo-Ethiopian War thanks to the resistance fighters known as the Arbegnoch.

• 6. Emperors To Juntas

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  Haile Selassie succeeded Empress Zewditu as emperor on the 2nd of November 1930. In 1931 he gave Ethiopia its first constitution, modelled on Imperial Japan's 1890 Constitution. British Empire forces and the Arbegnoch liberated Ethiopia during the East African campaign in 1941, and full sovereignty was restored with the Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement in December 1944. On the 24th of October 1945, Ethiopia became a founding member of the United Nations, and Haile Selassie helped form the Organisation of African Unity. His rule ended on the 12th of September 1974, when he was deposed by the Derg, a committee of military and police officers. After executing 60 former officials, the Derg abolished the monarchy in March 1975 and declared a Marxist-Leninist state. Mengistu Haile Mariam gained undisputed leadership in 1977. Between 1976 and 1978, up to 500,000 people were killed in the Red Terror. A famine in 1983 to 1985 affected around 8 million people and left 1 million dead. EPRDF forces advanced on Addis Ababa in May 1991, and Mengistu fled to asylum in Zimbabwe.

• 7. A Federal Republic Under Strain

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  In 1994, a new constitution established a parliamentary republic with a bicameral legislature and ethnic-based federalism. In April 1993, Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia after a national referendum. A border dispute erupted into the Eritrean-Ethiopian War from May 1998 to June 2000, costing both countries an estimated 1 million dollars a day. Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018 after Hailemariam Desalegn resigned, made a historic visit to Eritrea, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Yet conflict deepened. In November 2020, Ethiopia began a military offensive in Tigray, opening the Tigray war, and by March 2022 as many as 500,000 people had died from violence and famine. A cessation of hostilities was agreed on the 2nd of November 2022. Conflict then spread to the Amhara Region in mid-2023, and the Merawi massacre in early 2024 left 50 to 100 residents dead. The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index ranked Ethiopia an authoritarian regime, and Freedom House rates it Not Free. Under Abiy Ahmed, the country has seen democratic backsliding since 2019.

• 8. Land, Water, And The Dam

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  Addis Ababa sits on the foothills of Mount Entoto at around 2,400 metres, several kilometres west of the East African Rift that splits the country between the African and Somali tectonic plates. The Ethiopian Highlands are the largest continuous mountain ranges in Africa, while Dallol, in the Danakil Depression, holds the world's highest average annual temperature at 34 degrees Celsius. Lake Tana in the north is the source of the Blue Nile, and the country holds the largest water reserves in Africa. Ethiopia delivers roughly 81 percent of the Nile's water volume through the Blue Nile, Sobat, and Atbara basins. In 1959, Egypt and Sudan signed a bilateral treaty giving both countries exclusive rights over the Nile waters, which long discouraged Ethiopian hydropower projects. On the Blue Nile, Ethiopia built the 6,450-megawatt Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, completed in 2023 and slated to be the largest hydroelectric power station in Africa. In 2020, Abiy Ahmed warned that no force could stop Ethiopia from building the dam, and that if war were needed, millions could be readied. Ethiopia is often said to regard its water as white oil. Its other treasure is older still: cultivation of coffee, the country's largest foreign exchange earner, began here in the 9th century.