Axum

A kingdom formed from at least the 1st century AD in southwestern Ethiopia which developed into an empire including northern Ethiopia, Sudan, and southern Arabia. It is also the name of a city there, in existence since the 3rd century AD which rose to be the center of the kingdom. The culture incorporated elements from pre-Axumite cultures of the area. It was the first state in eastern Africa to make gold, silver, and copper coins, which is evidence of economic prosperity from international trade (possibly of ivory). The history of Axum is reflected in the inscriptions and religious symbols on those coins, which run approximately from the 3rd-7th centuries. Axum adopted Christianity in 4th century. There is archaeological evidence for large multi-story stone buildings and a series of monolithic funerary stelae up to 33 meters high. Axum was finally conquered by the Axumites in the 4th century, though it achieved political control over parts of southern Arabia in the 6th century. Thereafter it declined and was sacked in the 10th century.

[Aksum]. From at least the 3rd century ad, this city in the highlands of northern Ethiopia, rose to be the centre of an important kingdom. Its antecedents are clearly rooted in the Pre-Axumite culture of the area, but the origins of the city itself remain uncertain. The political history of Axum is best known from its coins: the series runs from approximately the 3rd century until the 7th century. Inscriptions were first in Greek, latterly in Ethiopic. Religious symbols on the coins reflect the early 4th-century adoption of Christianity in place of the worship of the South Arabian moon god. Archaeologically, Axum has yielded evidence for large multi-storey stone buildings and for an impressive series of monolithic funerary stelae up to 33 metres in height, some of which were carved into schematized representations of multi-storey buildings. The local economic base of the kingdom is poorly known, but on a wider front its prosperity was clearly based upon control of trade between an extensive interior area including the Butana plain to the west and the outside, principally Mediterranean, world via the Red Sea port of Adulis. Ivory was probably the export on which this trade depended. Through the development of this trade Axum’s rise to prosperity was at the expense of Meroe, believed to have been finally conquered by the Axumites in the 4th century. For brief periods in the 3rd and 6th centuries Axum achieved political control over parts of southern Arabia. Thereafter it declined, and was sacked in the 10th century; it remains an important centre of the Ethiopian church. Ayacucho. A valley in southern Peru at which a number of caves (notably Pikimachay or Flea Cave and Jayamachay or Pepper Cave) have evidence of a long sequence of human occupation. Excavated by Richard McNeish, the remains at these caves have produced a series of radiocarbon dates which push the presence of man in South America back to c20,000 years ago. The earliest level, Paccai-casa, is dated 18,000-14,000 bc and is followed by the Ayacucho complex (14,00011,000 bc) which contains basalt and chert core tools, choppers and unifacial projectile points. Succeeding levels contain burins, blades, fishtail points and manos and met-ates, and thus conform to the generally held succession of big game hunting followed by hunting and gathering. It should be noted that in spite of the radiocarbon dates McNeish’s arguments for man’s presence at such early times present many problems. Chief among these are: (1) the possibility that many of the early ‘tools’ are not actually man-made; (2) the possibility that the sloth bones (from which the earlier dates derive) are natural occurrences and not the remnants of man’s hunting activities; (3) the fact that McNeish’s construction hinges on the unlikely proposition that South American glacial periods alternate rather than coincide with those in the Northern Hemisphere.