Kenya: Africa's variety show

Kenya: A Brief History

Homo habilis lived in the rich fertile rift valley about 2.5 million years ago. By 50,000 BC, Homo erectus had emerged and stone age cultures spread over Kenya. The forefathers of Homo sapiens became hunter gatherers. Cushitic-speaking agro-pastoral people from Ethiopia and pastoral Nolites (from the Nile Valley) followed during 3000 to 1500 BC.

Between 500 BC and 500 AD, Bantu-speaking cattle herders and cultivators entered from the Sudan and West Africa. By about 800 AD Omani-Arab trade centres, under the Sultan of Zanzibar, operated down the coast and subsequent intermarriages with Bantu created the Swahili culture.

From 1500 to 1600 AD the Portuguese gained control of coastal trade but Arab resistance saw the latter's power restored.

During 1780 and 1850 Britain, France, Germany and America established trading concessions with Zanzibar, but by 1895 Kenya had become a British Protectorate. During the early 1900s the Kenya-Uganda railway was built and a white settler farming community established on land taken from the Masai and others.

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