By: Jamel Johnson (a.k.a Jamel Jahiz)
Title of Book: Timeline: A Journey Into the Black Existence

Chapter 3: The Origins of Melanoid Societies
 Ethiopia: The Predecessor of All Antiquity

According to historians (religious, scientific, or archeological, etc.), Ethiopia is acknowledged as being the world oldest civilization.  Greek historians Homer and Herodotus said Ethiopian people inhabited these regions: The Sudan, Somalia, Central Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Palestine, Western Asia, and India.  Greek philosophers Homer and Herodotus described the Ethiopians as “the tallest and most beautiful and long lived of the human race, and the most just of men; favorite of the Gods.”  John D. Baldwin wrote in his book, Pre-Historic Nations, “To the Cushite (Ethiopian) race belongs the oldest and purest Arabian blood, also that great and very ancient civilization that ruins abound in almost every district of the country.” 

There is a large amount of ancient history to learn about this wonderful kingdom of Ethiopia once called Abyssinia.  Ethiopia is where present day scientists look to this region to find the earliest remains of human existence.  Ethiopia has produced the most antique traces that are known of human civilization; it also has close historical association to three of the world’s major Abrahamic faiths.  Ethiopia has been credited to being the world oldest Christian nation.  Ethiopia is the place where the first Hijra or migration occurred in Islamic history and the oldest Muslim settlement is in the Ethiopian village of Negash located in the Tigray region. 
Until the 1980s, a large number of Ethiopian Hebrews lived in this country.  Ethiopia inhabits approximately 80 different ethnic groups and the largest is the Oromo people who are speakers of the Afro-Asiatic Languages.  Another interesting finding about Ethiopia is that this is the place where the Biblical Adam and Eve lived; Ethiopia was their Garden of Eden.  Ethiopia is also the place of origin for all Semitic people and languages (Hebrew, Amharic, Aramaic, Arabic, etc).

The following sentences are commentary on the original people that occupied the Arabian Peninsula.  In 1923, Elliot Smith, author of The Ancient Egyptians and the Origins of Civilization wrote, “There is a considerable mass of evidence to show that there is a very close resemblance between the proto-Egyptians and the Arabs between either became intermingled with Armenoid (Armenian) racial elements.”  In 1869, Francois Lenormant cited, “The Cushites, the first inhabitants of Arabia, are known in the national traditions by the name of Adites, from their progenitor, who is called Ad, the grandson of Ham.”