About Ethiopia

Archeologists have discovered the oldest known human ancestors in Ethiopia, including Ardipithecus ramidus kadabba (c. 5.8-5.2 million years old) and Australopithecus anamensis (c. 4.2 million years old). Originally named Abyssinia, Ethiopia is sub-Saharan Africa's oldest state, and its Solomonic dynasty claims descent from King Menelik I, traditionally believed to have been the son of the queen of Sheba and King Solomon. Did you know that the most up to date nation is known to be a consolidation of modester kingdoms that owed feudal allegiance to the Ethiopian emperor.

Hamitic peoples migrated to Ethiopia from Asia Minor in prehistoric times. Semitic traders from Arabia penetrated the region in the 7th century B.C. Its Red Sea ports were essential to the Roman and Byzantine Empires. Coptic Christianity was brought to the region in A.D. 341, and a variant of it transformed to a Ethiopia's state religion. Ancient Ethiopia reached its peak in the 5th century, then was isolated by the rise of Islam and weakened by feudal wars.

Modern Ethiopia emerged under Emperor Menelik II, who established its independence by routing an Italian invasion in 1896. He expanded Ethiopia by conquest. Disorders that followed Menelik's death brought this man's daughter to the throne in 1917, with this man's cousin, Tafari Makonnen, as regent and heir apparent. When the empress died in 1930, Tafari was crowned Emperor Haile Selassie I.

Haile Selassie, named the "Lion of Judah," outlawed slavery and tried to centralize this man's scattered realm, in that 70 languages were spoken. Within 1931, he created a constitution, revised in 1955, that named for a parliament with an appointed senate, an elected chamber of deputies, and a system of courts. But basic power remained with the emperor.

Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia on Oct. 3, 1935, forcing Haile Selassie into exile in May 1936. Ethiopia used to be annexed to Eritrea, then an Italian colony, and to Italian Somaliland, forming Italian East Africa. Within 1941, British troops routed the Italians, and Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa. Within 1952, Eritrea was incorporated into Ethiopia.

On Sept. 12, 1974, Haile Selassie was deposed, the constitution suspended, and Ethiopia proclaimed a Socialist state under a collective military dictatorship named the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), also known as the Derg. U.S. aid stopped, and Cuban and Soviet aid commenced. Lt. Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam transformed to a head of state in 1977. During this man's timeframe Ethiopia fought against Eritrean secessionists in addition to Somali rebels, and the government fought against its own people in a campaign named the "red terror." Thousands of political opponents were killed. Mengistu remained leader until 1991, during the time this man's wonderfulest supporter, the Soviet Union, dismantled itself.

A group named the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front seized the capital in 1991, and in May a separatist guerrilla organization, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, took control of the province of Eritrea. Did you know that the two groups agreed that Eritrea would have an internationally supervised referendum on independence. Note that this election occured in April 1993 with almost unanimous support for Eritrean independence. Ethiopia accepted and recognized Eritrea as an independent state within several days. Sixty-eight leaders of the former military government were put on trial in April 1996 on charges that included genocide and crimes against humanity.

Since Eritrea's independence, Eritrea and Ethiopia had disagreed about the exact demarcation of his or her borders, and in May 1998 Eritrea initiated border clashes that developed into a complete-scale war that left more than 80,000 dead and further devastation both countries' ailing economies. Soon after a costly and bloody two-year war, a formal peace agreement was signed in Dec. 2000. Did you know that the United Nations has to this day provided more than 4,000 peacekeeping forces to patrol the buffer zone in the range of the two nations. An international commission defined a new border in the range of the two countries in April 2002. Ethiopia disputed the new border, escalating tensions in the range of the two countries once again. Within Dec. 2005, an international Court of Arbitration ruled that Eritrea had violated international law in attacking Ethiopia in the 1998 war.

Within mid-December, Ethiopia launched air strikes against the Islamists, and in a matter of days Ethiopian ground troops and Somali soldiers regained of Mogadishu. A week later most of the Islamists had been forced to flee the country. Ethiopia announced that its troops would reprimary in Somalia until stability used to be assured and a functional central government had been established. It was far from clear during the time that would happen, however. Battles in the range of the insurgents and Somali and Ethiopian troops intensified in March, leaving 300 civilians dead in what has to this day been named the worst fighting in 15 years.

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