S6E3: Lost Cities of Azania

 Today's episode focuses on the lost cities of Azania, a name of unclear etymology used for the region of East Africa stretching for the Swahili Coast to the southern regions of Somalia. The region is referred to in ancient Roman geographic manuscripts, such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.

According to the Periplus and other contemporary texts, the grandest city in Azania was known to the Greek speaking authors as Rhapta, or City of Weaving, named after its practice of creating ships made of planks of wood woven together with rope.

The Periplus describes Rhapta as a major exporter of ivory, turtle shells, and other goods, while other Roman sources describe it as a "metropolis", or "mother city", implying that colonists from Rhapta founded cities of their own. 

Despite the city's notable influence, its exact location remains unknown to this day. The city's location in the Periplus is described only as "two days sail south of the island of Menuthias", an island varyingly associated with Madagascar, Zanzibar, and Mafia Island. Recently, however, certain Tanzanian historians have claimed that an underwater site in the Rufiji delta represent the remains of the city, a claim which we will investigate further in our upcoming premium episode.

S6E2: The World's Oldest Trade Route?

Wavy Line Pottery Sherds (D. Wright)

The early history of Tanzania and Kenya is defined by its environment. During the "aqualithic period", the region's hunting and gathering population relied heavily on the exploitation of marine life from the freshwater swamps that covered much of East Africa during a period of especially high humidity and rainfall. 

Coastal Tanzania and Kenya began to shift to an agrarian lifestyle around 3,000 BC, which can be observed in the form of abandoned irrigation canals and grinding bowls from the period.

Kuumbi Cave, an important neolithic site in Tanzania

Kuumbi Cave is one example of a neolithic settlement site on Zanzibar island. These neolithic settlements often consisted of a series of small dwellings surrounding a natural shelter like a cave, used as a community shelter, with these caves also often being used by their paleolithic ancestors. Kuumbi Cave might also contain evidence for the world's oldest transoceanic trade route, as a series of poultry remains, resembling those of domestic chickens, were discovered in the cave during recent archaeological excavations and dated to roughly 4,000 BC.

Red junglefowl, often identified as the earliest wild ancestors of domestic chickens, may have made their way to Kuumbi cave through international trade with South Asia

If Kuumbi Cave features chicken bones from chickens, it would be evidence of a transoceanic trade route, since, by 4,000 BC, chickens were still only known in their home regions of South and Southeast Asia. As a result, the Kuumbi bones might be evidence of an early trade route between East Africa and South Asia.

Helmeted guineafowl, a more likely candidate for the source of the Kuumbi bones

On the other hand, it seems more likely that these bones originated from helmeted guineafowl, a local species that closely resembles chickens anatomically, and are still widely consumed around the world today.

While 4,000 BC might be an excessively old date for the origin of international trade in East Africa, it would soon become better established, as ancient sources record the region as a crucial trade route by the turn of the first millennium. Our next episode will analyze the appearance of East Africa in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea.