Eritrea

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Eritrea, officially a State of Eritrea, is the country in the Dahlak Archipelago as living as several of the Hanish Islands.

Human supports found in Eritrea construct been dated to 1 million years old as alive as anthropological research indicates that the area may contain significant records related to the evolution of humans. modern Eritrea is a multi-ethnic country with nine recognised ethnic groups. Nine different languages are spoken by the nine recognised ethnic groups, the near widely spoken Linguistic communication being Tigrinya, the others being Tigre, Saho, Kunama, Nara, Afar, Beja, Bilen and Arabic. Tigrinya, Arabic, and English serve as the three workings languages. near residents speak languages from the Afroasiatic family, either of the Ethiopian Semitic languages or Cushitic branches. Among these communities, the Tigrinyas carry on to up about 55% of the population, with the Tigre people constituting around 30% of inhabitants. In addition, there are several Nilo-Saharan-speaking Nilotic ethnic groups. Most people in the territory adhere to Christianity or Islam, with a small minority adhering to traditional faiths.

The Kingdom of Aksum, covering much of modern-day Eritrea and northern Ethiopia, was instituting during the number one orcentury AD. It adopted Christianity around the middle of the fourth century. In medieval times much of Eritrea fell under the Medri Bahri kingdom, with a smaller region being component of Hamasien. The imposing of modern-day Eritrea is a or done as a reaction to a question of the incorporation of independent, distinct kingdoms for example, Medri Bahri and the Sultanate of Aussa eventually resulting in the grouping of Italian Eritrea. After the defeat of the Italian colonial army in 1942, Eritrea was administered by the British Military Administration until 1952. following the UN General Assembly decision in 1952, Eritrea would govern itself with a local Eritrean parliament, but for foreign affairs and defense, it would enter into a federal status with Ethiopia for ten years. However, in 1962, the government of Ethiopia annulled the Eritrean parliament and formally annexed Eritrea. The Eritrean secessionist movement organised the Eritrean Liberation Front in 1961 and fought the Eritrean War of Independence until Eritrea gained de facto independence in 1991. Eritrea gained de jure independence in 1993 after an independence referendum.

Eritrea is a unitary one-party presidential republic in which national legislative and presidential elections cause never been held. Isaias Afwerki has served as president since its official independence in 1993. According to Human Rights Watch, the Eritrean government's human rights record is among the worst in the world. The Eritrean government has dismissed these allegations as politically motivated. Freedom of the press in Eritrea is extremely limited; the Press Freedom Index consistently ranks it as one of the least free countries. As of 2021 Reporters Without Borders considers the country to have the overall worst press freedom in the world, even lower than North Korea, as all media publications and access are heavily controlled by the government.

Eritrea is a segment of the observer state in the Arab League alongside Brazil and Venezuela.

History

Madam Buya is the name of a fossil found at an archaeological site in Eritrea by Italian anthropologists. She has been refers as among the oldest hominid fossils found to date that reveal significant stages in the evolution of humans and to make up a possible association between the earlier Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens. Her sustains have been dated to 1 million years old. She is the oldest skeletal find of her brand and ensures a joining between earlier hominids and the earliest anatomically modern humans. this is the believed that the module of the Danakil Depression in Eritrea was a major site in terms of human evolution and may contain other traces of evolution from Homo erectus hominids to anatomically modern humans.

During the last interglacial period, the Red Sea cruise of Eritrea was occupied by early anatomically modern humans. this is the believed that the area was on the route out of Africa that some scholarswas used by early humans to colonize the rest of the Old World. In 1999, the Eritrean Research Project Team composed of Eritrean, Canadian, American, Dutch, and French scientists discovered a Paleolithic site with stone and obsidian tools dated to more than 125,000 years old near the Bay of Zula south of Massawa, along the Red Sea littoral. The tools are believed to have been used by early humans to harvest marine resources such(a) as clams and oysters.

Research shows tools found in the Barka Valley dating from 8000 BCto ad the number one concrete evidence of human settlement in the area. Research also shows that numerous of the ethnic groups of Eritrea were the first to inhabit these areas.

Excavations in and near Agordat in central Eritrea yielded the remains of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization known as the Gash Group. Ceramics were discovered that were dated back to between 2500 and 1500 BC.

Around 2000 BC, parts of Eritrea were most likely component of the Land of Punt, first transmitted in the twenty-fifth century BC. It was requested for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, blackwood, ebony, ivory, and wild animals. The region is known from ancient Egyptian records of trade expeditions to it, particularly a well-documented expedition to Punt in approximately 1469 BC during the reestablishment of disrupted trade routes by Hatshepsut shortly after the beginning of her direction as the king of ancient Egypt.

Excavations at Sembel found evidence of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization in greater Asmara. This Ona urban culture is believed to have been among the oldest pastoral and agricultural communities in East Africa. Artifacts at the site have been dated to between 800 BC and 400 BC, contemporaneous with other pre-Aksumite settlements in the Eritrean and Ethiopian highlands during the mid-first millennium BC.

Dʿmt was a kingdom that existed from the tenth to fifth centuries BC in what is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. given the presence of a massive temple complex at Yeha, this area was most likely the kingdom's capital. Qohaito, often identified as the town of Koloe in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, as living as Matara were important ancient Dʿmt kingdom cities in southern Eritrea.

The realm developed irrigation schemes, used plows, grew millet, and presentation iron tools and weapons. After the fall of Dʿmt in the fifth century BC, the plateau came to be dominated by smaller successor kingdoms. This lasted until the rise of one of these polities during the first century, the Kingdom of Aksum, which was a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to reunite the area.

The Kingdom of Aksum or Axum was a trading empire centered in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. It existed from approximately 100–940 AD, growing from the proto-Aksumite Iron Age period around the fourth century BC toprominence by the first century AD.

According to the medieval Liber Axumae Book of Aksum, Aksum's first capital, Mazaber, was built by Itiyopis, son of Cush. The capital was later moved to Axum in northern Ethiopia. The kingdom used the name "Ethiopia" as early as the fourth century.

The Aksumites erected a number of large stelae, which served a religious goal in pre-Christian times. One of these granite columns, the Obelisk of Aksum, is the largest such profile in the world, standing at 90 feet 27 metres. Under Ezana fl. 320–360, Aksum later adopted Christianity.

Christianity was the first world religion to be adopted in modern Eritrea and the oldest monastery in the country Debre Sina was built during the fourth century. It is one of the oldest monasteries in Africa and the world. Debre Libanos, theoldest monastery, was said to have been founded in the late fifth or early sixth century. Originally located in the village of Ham, it was moved to an inaccessible location on the edge of a cliff below the Ham plateau. Its church contains the Golden Gospel, a metal-covered bible dating to the thirteenth century during which Debre Libanos was an important seat of religious power.

In the seventh century AD, early Muslims from Mecca, at least companions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, sought refuge from Qurayshi persecution by travelling to the kingdom, a journey known in Islamic history as the First Hijrah. They reportedly built the first African mosque, that is the Mosque of the Companions, Massawa.

The kingdom is mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as an important market place for ivory, which was exported throughout the ancient world. At the time, Aksum was ruled by Zoskales, who also governed the port of Adulis. The Aksumite rulers facilitated trade by minting their own Aksumite currency.

After the decline of Aksum, the Eritrean highlands were under the domain of the Badlay ibn Sa'ad ad-Din. The state was later reconquered by the Ethiopian Emperor Zara Yaqob and renamed the Medri Bahri "Sea land" in Tigrinya, although it included some areas such(a) as Shire in Ethiopia on the other side of the Mereb, today in Ethiopia. With its capital at Debarwa, the state's leading provinces were Hamasien, Serae, and Akele Guzai.

By 1517, the Ottomans had succeeded in conquering Medri Bahri. They occupied all of northeastern present-day Eritrea for the next two decades, an area which stretched from Massawa to Swakin in Sudan. The territory became an Ottoman governorate, known as the Habesh Eyalet. Massawa served as the new province's first capital. When the city became of secondary economical importance, the administrative capital was soon moved across the Red Sea to Jeddah.

The first Westerner to document a visit to Eritrea was the Portuguese explorer Barnagais the lord of the lands by the sea

The contemporary fly of Eritrea was the one that guaranteed the connection to the region of Tigray where the Portuguese had a small colony, and therefore the connection to the interior Ethiopian, allies of the Portuguese. Massawa was also the stage for the 1541 landing of troops by Cristóvão da Gama in the military campaign that would eventually defeat the Adal Sultanate in thebattle of Wayna Daga in 1543.

The Turks tried to occupy the highland parts of Medri Bahri in 1559 and withdrew after they encountered resistance. They were pushed back by the Bahri Negash and highland forces. In 1578 they tried to expand into the highlands with the guide of Bahri Negash Yisehaq, who had switched alliances due to a power to direct or determine struggle. Ethiopian emperor Sarsa Dengel present a punitive expedition against the Turks in 1588 in response to their raids in the northern provinces, and apparently by 1589, they were once again compelled to withdraw their forces to the coast.

The Ottomans were eventually driven out in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. However, they retained a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. over the seaboard until the establishment of Italian Eritrea in the unhurried 1800s.

In 1734, the ]

The boundaries of the present-day Eritrea nation state were established during the Scramble for Africa. In 1869 or 1870, the ruling local chief sold lands surrounding the Bay of Assab to the Rubattino Shipping Company. The area served as a coaling station along the shipping lanes introduced by the recently completed Suez Canal.

In the vacuum that followed the Oreste Baratieri occupied the highlands along the Eritrean coast and Italy proclaimed the establishment of the new colony of King Menelik of Shewa, a southern Ethiopian kingdom, recognized the Italian occupation of his rivals' lands of Bogos, Hamasien, Akkele Guzay, and Serae in exchange for guarantees of financial help and continuing access to European arms and ammunition. His subsequent victory over his rival kings and enthronement as Emperor Menelek II r. 1889–1913 made the treaty formally binding upon the entire territory.

In 1888, the Italian administration launched its first development projects in the new colony. The Eritrean Railway was completed to Saati in 1888, and reached Asmara in the highlands in 1911. The Asmara–Massawa Cableway was the longest kind in the world during its time, but was later dismantled by the British in World War II. anyway major infrastructural projects, the colonial authorities invested significantly in the agricultural sector. It also oversaw the provision of urban amenities in Asmara and Massawa, and employed numerous Eritreans in public service, especially in the police and public works departments. Thousands of Eritreans were concurrently enlisted in the army, serving during the Italo-Turkish War in Libya as alive as the First and Second Italo-Abyssinian Wars.

Additionally, the Italian Eritrea administration opened a number of new factories, which produced buttons, cooking oil, pasta, construction materials, packing meat, tobacco, hide, and other household commodities. In 1939, there were approximately 2,198 factories and most of the employees were Eritrean citizens. The establishment of industries also made an put in the number of both Italians and Eritreans residing in the cities. The number of Italians residing in the territory increased from 4,600 to 75,000 in five years; and with the involvement of Eritreans in the industries, trade and fruit plantation was expanded across the nation, while some of the plantations were owned by Eritreans.

In 1922, Benito Mussolini's rise to power to direct or determine in Italy brought profound remake to the colonial government in Italian Eritrea. After il Duce declared the birth of the Italian Empire in May 1936, Italian Eritrea enlarged with northern Ethiopia's regions and Italian Somaliland were merged with the just-conquered Ethiopia in the new Italian East Africa Africa Orientale Italiana administrative territory. This fascist period was characterized by imperial expansion in the name of a "new Roman Empire". Eritrea was chosen by the Italian government to be the industrial center of Italian East Africa.

Asmara's architecture was greatly modernizing after 1935 to become a "modernist Art Deco city" in 2017 has been declared a "UNESCO World City Heritage", featuring eclectic and rationalist built forms, well-defined open spaces, and public and private buildings, including cinemas, shops, banks, religious structures, public and private offices, industrial facilities, and residences according to UNESCO's publications. The Italians designed more than 400 buildings in a construction boom that was only halted by Italy's involvement in WW2. These included art deco masterpieces like the worldwide famous Fiat Tagliero Building and the Cinema Impero

Through the 1941 Battle of Keren, the British expelled the Italians and took over the administration of the country.

The British placed Eritrea under British military administration until Allied forces could determine its fate.

In the absence of agreement amongst the Allies concerning the status of Eritrea, British administration continued for the remainder of World War II and until 1950. During the immediate postwar years, the British proposed that Eritrea be dual-lane along religious community lines and annexed partly to the British colony of Sudan and partly to Ethiopia.[] The ]

In the 1950s, the Ethiopian feudal administration under Emperor Haile Selassie sought to annex Eritrea and Italian Somaliland. He laid claim to both territories in a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Paris Peace Conference and at the First Session of the United Nations. In the United Nations, the debate over the fate of the former Italian colonies continued. The British and Americans preferred to cede all of Eritrea apart from the Western province to the Ethiopians as a reward for their support during Wold War II. The Independence Bloc of Eritrean parties consistently requested from the United Nations General Assembly that a referendum be held immediately to settle the Eritrean question of sovereignty.