Ethiopia : The lost town of Beta Samati – Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient buried town in Ethiopia that was inhabited for 1400 years. The town was part of a powerful civilisation called Aksum that dominated East Africa for centuries and traded with other great powers like the Roman Empire.
“This is one of the most important ancient civilisations, but people [in the Western world] don’t know it,” says Michael Harrower of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “Outside of Egypt and Sudan, it’s the earliest complex society or major civilisation in Africa.”
The lost town of Beta Samati –
The Empire of Aksum dominated East Africa and parts of Arabia from about 80 BC to AD 825. It was one of the leading powers of the time, alongside Rome, Persia and China. Its capital, also called Aksum, still exists and has many tall, stone obelisks.
Nobody knows how the Aksum civilisation developed. It was preceded by a “pre-Aksumite” society, the name of which is unknown. This earlier civilisation may have been based around Yeha in northern Ethiopia, which has the oldest writing and standing architecture in sub-Saharan Africa. For this reason, Harrower and his colleagues have surveyed the surrounding area.
A vanished town
After discussions with local people, the team began excavating a hill near a village. The researchers found a grid of stone walls: the remains of buildings.
“That’s what’s great about Ethiopia,” says Harrower. “In Greece and Rome, a lot of places have been explored and studied, so there’s not a lot of discoveries of major ancient towns any more.”
The researchers called the town Beta Samati, which means “house of audience” in the local Tigrinya language.
