Ethiopia Safari Tours & Holidays
Visitors who hope to find a mirror image of their own countries, either as a result of colonisation or through the trend towards cultural standardisation imposed by globalisation, will be disappointed: Ethiopia remains stubbornly Ethiopian, distinct and different from its neighbours.
Ethiopia has its own script, notational system and calendar. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the oldest in Africa – Christianity was made the state religion in the Axumite Empire in 330 AD, before Rome. Muslim communities were established in Ethiopia before the triumph of Islam in its birth place, the Arabian Peninsula, while Ethiopian Jews, or Bait Israel, date their provenance back to the time of the first temple.
At the time of the scramble for Africa, following the Berlin Congress in 1884, the disparate ethnic groups that make up Ethiopia united to defend the country against foreign invasion: at Adua in 1896 Ethiopian forces under Menelik II delivered a stunning rebuff to the colonial ambitions of Italy.
Ethiopia has the most extensive historic sites in Sub-Saharan Africa, experts estimate that perhaps as little as 10% of the total has so far been discovered and excavated. The oldest hominid remains have been found along the Awash River valley (Lucy, 3.2 million years old, Selam, 3.4 million years old, Ardi, 4.4 million years old) – at any time more than 40 institutions from a dozen countries are excavating in the Afar Region, where most paleo-anthropologists now agree the human race has its origins.
There is every variety of scenery, with tropical rain forests, high moor land with Afro-alpine flora, lakes, savannah and deserts. In elevation it ranges from 120 metres below sea level in the harsh salt flats of the Danakil depression, to the 4624 metre peak of Ras Dashen in the Simien mountains.
Th...
Ethiopia Safari Tours & Holidays
Visitors who hope to find a mirror image of their own countries, either as a result of colonisation or through the trend towards cultural standardisation imposed by globalisation, will be disappointed: Ethiopia remains stubbornly Ethiopian, distinct and different from its neighbours.
Ethiopia has its own script, notational system and calendar. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church is the oldest in Africa – Christianity was made the state religion in the Axumite Empire in 330 AD, before Rome. Muslim communities were established in Ethiopia before the triumph of Islam in its birth place, the Arabian Peninsula, while Ethiopian Jews, or Bait Israel, date their provenance back to the time of the first temple.
At the time of the scramble for Africa, following the Berlin Congress in 1884, the disparate ethnic groups that make up Ethiopia united to defend the country against foreign invasion: at Adua in 1896 Ethiopian forces under Menelik II delivered a stunning rebuff to the colonial ambitions of Italy.
Ethiopia has the most extensive historic sites in Sub-Saharan Africa, experts estimate that perhaps as little as 10% of the total has so far been discovered and excavated. The oldest hominid remains have been found along the Awash River valley (Lucy, 3.2 million years old, Selam, 3.4 million years old, Ardi, 4.4 million years old) – at any time more than 40 institutions from a dozen countries are excavating in the Afar Region, where most paleo-anthropologists now agree the human race has its origins.
There is every variety of scenery, with tropical rain forests, high moor land with Afro-alpine flora, lakes, savannah and deserts. In elevation it ranges from 120 metres below sea level in the harsh salt flats of the Danakil depression, to the 4624 metre peak of Ras Dashen in the Simien mountains.
There are more than 80 ethnic groups and as many languages.
