TANZANIA

Coastal Traders and Plateau Dwellers

Humans have occupied the region of Tanzania (tan-zuh-NEE-uh) at least since the Stone Age, perhaps for more than thirty thousand years. The earliest inhabitants hunted, fished, and gathered food and were probably related to ancestors of the Khoisan-speaking peoples of southern Africa (see BOTSWANA, NAMIBIA, and SOUTH AFRICA). Cattle herders and farmers from the north moved into the Tanzania region around 2,500 years ago.

	CLIMATE
	Tanzania’s coast and islands are warm and humid, while the inland plateau is hot and dry. However, highland and mountain regions remain pleasantly cool. The heaviest rainfall is from December to May.

From about 100 B.C.E. new peoples began to move into the region from the central African lands to the west. They were speakers of the Bantu (BAN-too) group of languages from west-central Africa. These farmers brought new technologies into the region, including pottery and ironworking.

Some Bantu peoples settled along the coast and on the Indian Ocean islands. They traded with Arabs, who began arriving late in the 600s C.E., and with Persians, who settled along the coast between the 700s and 900s. They built houses, at first of wattle and daub (interlaced sticks plastered with clay), but later of stone and a lime mortar made by heating coral rocks in furnaces. The Bantu peoples adopted the Islamic faith and built mosques, perhaps as early as the 800s. Their way of life became known as Swahili (swah-HEE-lee), meaning "coastal."

The Swahili culture extended down the eastern African coast, from Kenya’s Lamu Archipelago in the north, past Zanzibar and the Comoros. The chief port from the 1200s was Kilwa Kisiwani (KEEL-wah kee-see-WAH-nee), in what is now Tanzania. It was located on a coral island about 200 miles (320 kilometers) south of Zanzibar, near the mainland port of Kilwa Kivinje (kee-VIN-jae). Large wooden sailing ships sailed across the Indian Ocean, exporting hides, rhinoceros horn, tortoiseshell, slaves from the interior, and gold from Great Zimbabwe (see ZIMBABWE). The people of Kilwa Kisiwani traded with Arabia, Persia, India, and China. They imported pottery, beads, and fine silks.

Arabs formed an elite that controlled and governed the Swahili states. However, the Swahili culture was in its essence African, and the Swahili language that developed on the coast was a Bantu language, which had already begun to develop before the Arabs arrived. Only later did it borrow words from Arabic.

During this early development of the coastal strip, the African interior supplied the wealth, but the dry plateau region of Tanzania itself was sparsely inhabited. Here, the Bantu-speaking peoples organized powerful chiefdoms. Attempts were made to irrigate parts of the Great Rift Valley, and stone villages were built there in the 1500s. The Kalenjin (kuh-LEN-jin) people moved into northern Tanzania from what is now Kenya, and they were followed by the Masai (mah-SIE), cattle herders who had occupied the Tanzanian section of the Great Rift Valley by the 1700s (see KENYA). Their advance southward was halted around Dodoma (doe-DOE-mah) by the Hehe (HEH-hae) and Gogo (GOE-goe) peoples in the 1800s.

Meanwhile, power on the coast had been changing hands. The Portuguese aimed to control all Indian Ocean trade. During the 1500s they seized Zanzibar and built forts, from which they raided and looted the whole Swahili coast. In 1699 Zanzibar was taken by Omani Arabs, and during the 1700s the Omanis (oe-MAH-neez) gained control of all of the Swahili coastal strip.

During the reign of Seyyid Said as sultan of Zanzibar (1804–1856), cloves were planted on the island. The cultivation of this fragrant spice demanded more and more slaves to work the plantations.

Trading caravans crossed the inland plateau throughout the 1800s. The Yao (YAH-oe) people brought in slaves from what is now Malawi (see MALAWI), while the Nyamwezi (nee-ahm-WAE-zee) people brought ivory in the form of elephant tusks down to the coast. Soon Swahili and Arab traders were traveling far inland themselves, carrying muskets, textiles, and beads for trading. The Masai demanded tribute from passing trade caravans. In the 1840s the peoples of the interior were disrupted by an invasion of Ngoni (uhn-GOE-nee) warriors from South Africa. Soon the Ngoni split into several separate groups. Some traveled on to Zambia and Zimbabwe, while others settled in Tanzania and were eventually absorbed into the local Nyamwezi population.