Southeast Arabia (2,637 – 910 BCE) Bronze and Early Iron — Incense, Pastures, and Canoe Hubs

Geographic and Environmental Context

• Eastern Yemen (Hadhramaut, eastern Aden interior, al-Mahra).

• Southern Oman (Dhofar Highlands with the khareef monsoon, al-Wusta gravel plains, Sharqiyah Desert fringes).

• The Empty Quarter (Rubʿ al-Khālī) margins in adjoining Saudi territory.

• The offshore island of Socotra in the Arabian Sea.

• Anchors: Wādī Ḥaḍramawt–Shibam–Tarim, Dhofar escarpments (Ẓafār/Al-Balīd, Mirbat), al-Mahra dunes, al-Wusta plains, Sharqiyah sands, Socotra’s Hagghier Mountains and dragon’s-blood groves.

• Dhofar terraces, Hadhramaut wadis, Socotra.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Increasing aridification; terraces and fog-belt stability buffered upland.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Terrace horticulture of millet, dates, tubers; goat/camel pastoralism.

• Resin harvesting expanded.

• Maritime dried-fish economies.

Technology & Material Culture

• Bronze tools; iron appears late.

• Sewn-plank dhows; cisterns.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Incense moved north to Yemen; Socotra resin/aloe exported; Gulf links.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Ritual incense burning; ancestor tombs.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

• Resilient trinity: terrace, herd, incense, fish.

Transition

By 910 BCE, incense trade tied Southeast Arabia to broader West Asian exchange.

East Africa (2637 – 910 BCE): Bronze and Early Iron — Lakes, Monsoons, and the First Farming Shores

Regional Overview

From the Ethiopian highlands and Great Lakes to the monsoon coasts of Somalia, Kenya, and Tanzania, Early Antiquity in East Africa was an age of agro-pastoral expansion, lake-rim towns, and the earliest coastal farming villages.
Interior river–lake corridors drew grain, cattle, and copper toward the Nile–Sudan world, while on the seaboard small canoe communities began to stitch the western Indian Ocean into local life.
By 910 BCE, iron was entering the toolkits of interior farmers, coastal horticulture had taken root, and the cultural preconditions for later highland states and Swahili city-states were in place—even as Comoros and Madagascar still lay beyond settled human presence.

Geography & Environment

East Africa divides naturally into two ecological theaters:

• Interior & Highlands: the Axum/Yeha uplands, Blue Nile headwaters, Rift escarpments, and Great Lakes basins (Victoria, Tanganyika, Malawi), extending south through the Zambezi corridor into northern Zimbabweand northwestern Mozambique.

• Maritime Rim: the Somali–Kenyan–Tanzanian littoral and nearshore islands—Lamu–Pate, Mombasa–Kilifi, Zanzibar–Pemba–Mafia, and the Kilwa coast—with offshore atolls (Seychelles, Mascarene) and, farther south, the Comoros and Madagascar (still unpeopled in this epoch).

Monsoon seasonality and altitudinal gradients created a lattice of complementary niches—grain plateaus, cattle savannas, lake fisheries, mangrove estuaries—linking inland production to coastal exchange.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

Late-Holocene rainfall fluctuations alternated wetter lake years with arid pulses, but lakes and highland springs provided enduring fallback.
Along the coast, monsoon winds remained reliable, enabling predictable canoe travel despite episodic drought onshore.
These regimes favored diversification: mixed cropping inland; arboriculture and fisheries on the coast.

Societies & Settlement

Interior East Africa: Agro-Pastoral Core

By the mid–second millennium BCE, millet–sorghum farming and cattle herding were widespread across the Rift and Great Lakes, with lakeside and highland towns growing at defensible, water-rich nodes.
Household compounds and clustered villages managed fields, herds, and woodland patches; iron tools appeared late in the period, accelerating clearance and intensification in the Ganga–Malawi–Zambezi arc.
Trade in ivory, copper, and obsidian drew caravans toward the Sudan–Nile interface, seeding long-distance habits that later empires would inherit.

Maritime East Africa: First Farming Shores

On the Somali–Kenyan–Tanzanian coast, small farming villages expanded on river mouths and back-reef soils, pairing sorghum gardens and cattle/goats with lagoon fishing and shellfish.
Canoe mariners exploited seasonal runs of turtles and pelagics; pottery and outrigger craft proliferated.
Comoros and Madagascar remained unsettled through 910 BCE; Austronesian landfalls belong later (late 1st millennium BCE to early CE), but the technical pathways—monsoon timing, sewn-plank hulls, arboriculture packages—were forming on the wider Indian Ocean rim.

Economy & Technology

• Food economies: interior grain–cattle systems; coastal gardens–reefs–mangroves; lake fisheries and flood-recession harvests.

• Metals: bronze was rare; iron entered late and then diffused rapidly inland, transforming hoes, adzes, and clearing regimes.

• Canoes & gear: dugouts and early outrigger canoes with paddles (sailing to come) moved people, fish, salt, and ceramics alongshore; storage pits, drying racks, and granaries stabilized surplus.

• Ceramics & textiles: widespread pottery signaled household autonomy and exchange; spindle whorls attest to growing craft specialization.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Rift–Nile–Sudan link: funneled ivory, copper, obsidian, and grain northward; ideas, metals, and ritual traffic southward.

• Zambezi–Lakes arc: distributed cattle, salt, and later iron tools among floodplain and plateau communities.

• Monsoon littoral: tied Lamu, Zanzibar, and Kilwa coasts into a canoe-based provisioning web; Comoros/Madagascar lay just beyond regular reach, on the conceptual horizon of Indian Ocean navigators.

Belief & Symbolism

Interior rock art and shrines recorded a deepening fusion of herder and farmer cosmologies—rain, cattle, and ancestor power.
Iron’s arrival was ritually marked in many communities, its furnaces and slag heaps embedded in initiation and founding myths.
Coastal villages maintained ancestor shrines near house compounds and canoe landings; later Austronesian symbolic systems (to come) would find ready dialogue with this ancestor-focused ritual landscape.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Resilience derived from portfolio strategies:

• Interior: grains + cattle + lake fisheries buffered drought; iron hoes widened the margin of cultivable land.

• Coast: gardens + reefs + mangroves + canoe mobility smoothed maritime lean years; shellfish and dried fish stocked household stores.
  Inter-zone exchange (salt, fish, grain, livestock) created redundancy, while settlement siting on levees and springs reduced climate risk.

Regional Synthesis & Long-Term Significance

By 910 BCE, East Africa had become a two-part system: an agro-pastoral interior linked to Nile–Sudan trade and a monsoon littoral of first farming shores and canoe exchange.
Iron’s late arrival and monsoon navigation together set the stage for the highland polities and Swahili maritime civilization of later centuries; and though Comoros and Madagascar were not yet settled, the know-how and routesthat would carry Austronesian voyagers across the Mozambique Channel were already taking shape in the broader Indo-Pacific world.

Maritime East Africa (2,637–910 BCE) Bronze and Early Iron — First Farming Villages and Austronesian Landfalls

Geographic and Environmental Context

Maritime East Africa includes littoral and nearshore islands from Somalia through Kenya and Tanzania to northern/central Mozambique and southern Malawi, plus Lamu–Pate–Mombasa, Zanzibar–Pemba–Mafia, Kilwa Kisiwani–Songo Mnara, the Comoros, Madagascar, Seychelles, and the Mascarene Islands.

• Anchors: Lamu archipelago, Mombasa–Kilifi, Zanzibar–Pemba–Mafia, Kilwa Kisiwani–Songo Mnara, Comoros (Ngazidja, Nzwani, Mwali), Madagascar highlands/coasts, Seychelles/Mascarene atolls.Sea level ~100 m lower, exposing broad Somali–Kenyan–Tanzanian shelves

• Inland herding + coastal farming intensified.

• Comoros/Madagascar remain unpeopled until late.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

• Arid pulses; monsoon still reliable.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Farming villages grew on coast; iron entered region late.

• Austronesian voyagers reached Comoros/Madagascar c. late 1st millennium BCE–early CE.

Technology & Material Culture

• Iron hoes/adzes, pottery, outrigger canoes.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Canoe + monsoon navigation linked East Africa to Madagascar/Comoros.

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

• Ancestor shrines in farming villages; Austronesian symbolic systems introduced.

Adaptation & Resilience

• Combined African–Austronesian crops/animals diversified diets.

Transition
By 910 BCE, Austronesian colonization reshaped the southern arc.

Near East (2,637 – 910 BCE) Bronze and Early Iron — Delta Kingdoms, Aegean City-Coasts, Arabian Caravan Seeds

Geographic and Environmental Context

• Anchors: the Nile Valley and Delta; Sinai–Negev–Arabah; the southern Levant (with Tyre as the sole Levantine node in this subregion); Hejaz–Asir–Tihāma on the Red Sea; Yemen’s western uplands/coast; southwestern Cyprus; western Anatolian littoral (Smyrna–Ephesus–Miletus–Halicarnassus–Xanthos; Troad).

Climate & Environment

• Nile floods oscillated; Aegean coastal plains fertile; Arabian west slope aridity increased, highland terraces scaled slowly.

Societies & Settlement

• Lower/Upper Egypt (full Pharaonic cores just south but contiguous influence); Aegean Anatolia (Minoan/Mycenaean interactions; later Aeolian/Ionian/Dorian successors).

• Levantine Tyre (within this subregion) arose as Phoenician node; Arabian west oases supported caravan precursors; Yemen west highlands nurtured terrace farming and incense beginnings.

Technology

• Bronze widespread; early iron in Anatolia/Levant; sail-powered shipping matured; terracing and cisterns in Hejaz–Yemen highlands.

Corridors

• Nile–Delta–Aegean maritime bridge; Tyre connected to Cyprus/Anatolia; Red Sea coastal cabotage began; Incense path seeds in Yemen–Hejaz.

Symbolism

• Egyptian temple cosmology radiated north; Aegean cults at capes; Tyrian Melqart/Asherah; Arabian highland local cults.

Adaptation

• Floodplain–coastal–terrace redundancy stabilized economies; incense gardens hedged aridity.

The Land of Punt, also called Pwenet, or Pwene by the ancient Egyptians, is a trading partner known for producing and exporting gold, aromatic resins, African blackwood, ebony, ivory, slaves and wild animals.

Information about Punt has been found in ancient Egyptian records of trade missions to this region.

At times, Punt is referred to as Ta netjer, the "land of the god.” The exact location of Punt remains a mystery.

Most scholars today believe Punt was located to the southeast of Egypt, most likely on the littoral of the Horn of Africa in what is today Puntland in northern Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and the Red Sea coast of Sudan.

However, some scholars point instead to a range of ancient inscriptions that locate Punt in Arabia.

Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth Dynasty (twenty-fifth century BCE) organized the earliest recorded Egyptian expedition to Punt although gold from Punt is recorded as having been in Egypt in the time of king Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty of Egypt.

The pyramid complex of Sahure, the second king of Egypt’s Fifth dynasty, is the first built at the new royal burial ground at Abusir a few kilometers north of Saqqara (though Userkaf had probably already built his solar temple there) and marks the decline of pyramid building, both in the size and quality, though many of the reliefs are very well done.

His pyramid provides us most of the information we know of this king.

When it was excavated in the first years of the nineteen-hundreds BCE, a great amount of fine reliefs were found to an extent and quality superior to those from the dynasty before.

Some of the low relief-cuttings in red granite are masterpieces of their kind and still in place at the site.

The construction of the pyramid was on the other hand (like the others from this dynasty) made with an inner core of roughly hewn stones in a step construction held together in many sections with a mortar of mud.

The reliefs in his mortuary and valley temple depict a counting of foreigners by or in front of the goddess Seshat and the return of a fleet from Asia, perhaps Byblos, with huge cedar trees.

This may indicate a military interest in the Near East, but the contacts may have been diplomatic and commercial as well.

As part of the contacts with the Near East, the reliefs from his funerary monuments also hold the oldest known representation of a Syrian bear.

We also have the first documented expedition to the land of Punt, which apparently yielded a quantity of myrrh, along with malachite and electrum, and because of this, Sahure is often credited with establishing an Egyptian navy.

There are also scenes of a raid into Libya which yielded various livestock and showed the king smiting the local chieftains.

The Palermo stone also corroborates some of these events and also mentions expeditions to the Sinai and to the exotic land of Punt, as well as to the diorite quarries northwest of Abu Simbel, thus, far into Nubia.

The Near East (2349–2206 BCE): Cultural Flourishing and Shifting Power Dynamics

Establishment of Shedyet (Crocodilopolis)

Around 2300 BCE, the city of Shedyet (later known as Crocodilopolis) emerges as a major religious center in Egypt's Heptanomis region, situated southwest of Memphis. This city, capital of the Arsinoites nome, becomes the foremost center for the worship of Sobek, the crocodile god. A sacred crocodile named Petsuchos, lavishly adorned with gold and gemstones, is worshipped in a specially constructed temple complete with a pond and food offerings. Upon the death of a Petsuchos, another crocodile takes its sacred place, perpetuating the tradition.

Religious Transformations and the Ascendance of Osiris

In the Sixth Dynasty (circa 2345–2183 BCE), royal patronage shifts significantly from the sun god toward the god Osiris, who becomes central to Egyptian religious practices. Osiris symbolizes resurrection and eternal life, ideals increasingly associated with deceased kings. This transition is vividly captured in the Pyramid Texts, the world’s oldest known religious scriptures, inscribed on pyramid walls and sarcophagi at Saqqara, dating back to between 2400 and 2300 BCE. These texts codify beliefs about the afterlife and royal divinity, reinforcing Osiris’s prominence.

Socio-Political Shifts and Emergence of Feudalism

The Sixth Dynasty witnesses growing influence among provincial nobles and wealthy officials, who compete with pharaohs in the splendor of their funerary monuments. This signals the onset of a feudal era, as provincial lords become increasingly powerful, challenging centralized royal authority. Administrative systems evolve, marked notably by the establishment of an organized relay system using horseback messengers and relay stations, initially for official correspondence but later expanded to commercial and private uses.

Artistic Innovation and Bronze Craftsmanship

Egyptian artisans excel in bronze working during this period, creating finely detailed works, such as the life-size bronze depiction of King Pepi I and his son (circa 2300 BCE). Bronze sheets, pressed into molds or skillfully shaped over wooden forms, illustrate advanced metallurgical techniques and artistic capabilities of Egyptian craftsmen.

Ecological and Faunal Changes

Exotic fauna such as elephants and giraffes, once prevalent west of the Nile Valley, retreat permanently southward around 2300 BCE, indicating ecological shifts affecting regional biodiversity.

Military and Territorial Challenges

Egypt faces increasing external pressures during this era. Regional kingdoms in Canaan and southern Nubia strengthen significantly, placing Egypt on the defensive. Despite continuous military campaigns, Egypt’s dominance over these regions becomes increasingly tenuous as local powers assert their independence.

Daily Life, Fashion, and Cosmetics

Egyptians of the Old Kingdom wear simple yet elegant clothing suited to their warm climate. Men typically wear belted linen loincloths, occasionally complemented by linen capes or animal hides. Women don linen tunics or skirts extending from chest to ankles, often held by shoulder straps. Accessories, including belts, collars, and ornate headdresses of gold and semi-precious stones, provide embellishments. The use of wigs, cosmetics such as kohl (for eyes) and henna (for hair and body), and daily beauty routines involving oils and perfumes, demonstrate a highly refined culture of personal adornment.

Advances in Mummification and Export Trade

Mummification practices evolve notably by 2350 BCE. Egyptians begin placing crystal pieces on the foreheads of the deceased and coating mummies with green-tinted plaster masks. The demand for scents and unguents—previously restricted to ritualistic purposes—expands into an important export industry. Ingredients from across the Mediterranean, including almond, olive, sesame oils, frankincense, myrrh, saffron, rosewater, and chypre, are compounded in Egypt and traded widely as perfumes, creams, and lotions.

Troy’s Golden Age and Subsequent Decline

In Anatolia, the city of Troy II flourishes economically around 2250 BCE, strategically positioned to control the vital trade route through the Dardanelles. The city is fortified with formidable stone walls enclosing a royal acropolis. However, Troy II’s prosperity abruptly ends in destruction by fire, mistakenly identified by the archaeologist Schliemann as Homeric Troy. Among the ruins, valuable gold jewelry and ceremonial vessels—dubbed “Priam's Treasure”—are discovered. The subsequent settlement, Troy III, marks a clear economic and architectural decline.

Rise and Fall of Canaanite Settlements

The Canaanite city of Gaza, specifically the site of Tell as-Sakan, experiences renewed growth beginning around 2500 BCE. Yet by 2250 BCE, civilization in Gaza and surrounding regions dramatically collapses. Urban centers are abandoned, replaced by semi-nomadic, pastoral communities, ushering in a period of significant demographic and cultural transformation across the region.

This era marks a time of cultural flourishing, shifting power dynamics, and significant social, ecological, and religious transformations across Egypt and the broader Near East.

The Near East (2349–2206 BCE): Cultural Flourishing and Shifting Power Dynamics

Establishment of Shedyet (Crocodilopolis)

Around 2300 BCE, the city of Shedyet (later known as Crocodilopolis) emerges as a major religious center in Egypt's Heptanomis region, situated southwest of Memphis. This city, capital of the Arsinoites nome, becomes the foremost center for the worship of Sobek, the crocodile god. A sacred crocodile named Petsuchos, lavishly adorned with gold and gemstones, is worshipped in a specially constructed temple complete with a pond and food offerings. Upon the death of a Petsuchos, another crocodile takes its sacred place, perpetuating the tradition.

Religious Transformations and the Ascendance of Osiris

In the Sixth Dynasty (circa 2345–2183 BCE), royal patronage shifts significantly from the sun god toward the god Osiris, who becomes central to Egyptian religious practices. Osiris symbolizes resurrection and eternal life, ideals increasingly associated with deceased kings. This transition is vividly captured in the Pyramid Texts, the world’s oldest known religious scriptures, inscribed on pyramid walls and sarcophagi at Saqqara, dating back to between 2400 and 2300 BCE. These texts codify beliefs about the afterlife and royal divinity, reinforcing Osiris’s prominence.

Socio-Political Shifts and Emergence of Feudalism

The Sixth Dynasty witnesses growing influence among provincial nobles and wealthy officials, who compete with pharaohs in the splendor of their funerary monuments. This signals the onset of a feudal era, as provincial lords become increasingly powerful, challenging centralized royal authority. Administrative systems evolve, marked notably by the establishment of an organized relay system using horseback messengers and relay stations, initially for official correspondence but later expanded to commercial and private uses.

Artistic Innovation and Bronze Craftsmanship

Egyptian artisans excel in bronze working during this period, creating finely detailed works, such as the life-size bronze depiction of King Pepi I and his son (circa 2300 BCE). Bronze sheets, pressed into molds or skillfully shaped over wooden forms, illustrate advanced metallurgical techniques and artistic capabilities of Egyptian craftsmen.

Ecological and Faunal Changes

Exotic fauna such as elephants and giraffes, once prevalent west of the Nile Valley, retreat permanently southward around 2300 BCE, indicating ecological shifts affecting regional biodiversity.

Military and Territorial Challenges

Egypt faces increasing external pressures during this era. Regional kingdoms in Canaan and southern Nubia strengthen significantly, placing Egypt on the defensive. Despite continuous military campaigns, Egypt’s dominance over these regions becomes increasingly tenuous as local powers assert their independence.

Daily Life, Fashion, and Cosmetics

Egyptians of the Old Kingdom wear simple yet elegant clothing suited to their warm climate. Men typically wear belted linen loincloths, occasionally complemented by linen capes or animal hides. Women don linen tunics or skirts extending from chest to ankles, often held by shoulder straps. Accessories, including belts, collars, and ornate headdresses of gold and semi-precious stones, provide embellishments. The use of wigs, cosmetics such as kohl (for eyes) and henna (for hair and body), and daily beauty routines involving oils and perfumes, demonstrate a highly refined culture of personal adornment.

Advances in Mummification and Export Trade

Mummification practices evolve notably by 2350 BCE. Egyptians begin placing crystal pieces on the foreheads of the deceased and coating mummies with green-tinted plaster masks. The demand for scents and unguents—previously restricted to ritualistic purposes—expands into an important export industry. Ingredients from across the Mediterranean, including almond, olive, sesame oils, frankincense, myrrh, saffron, rosewater, and chypre, are compounded in Egypt and traded widely as perfumes, creams, and lotions.

Troy’s Golden Age and Subsequent Decline

In Anatolia, the city of Troy II flourishes economically around 2250 BCE, strategically positioned to control the vital trade route through the Dardanelles. The city is fortified with formidable stone walls enclosing a royal acropolis. However, Troy II’s prosperity abruptly ends in destruction by fire, mistakenly identified by the archaeologist Schliemann as Homeric Troy. Among the ruins, valuable gold jewelry and ceremonial vessels—dubbed “Priam's Treasure”—are discovered. The subsequent settlement, Troy III, marks a clear economic and architectural decline.

Rise and Fall of Canaanite Settlements

The Canaanite city of Gaza, specifically the site of Tell as-Sakan, experiences renewed growth beginning around 2500 BCE. Yet by 2250 BCE, civilization in Gaza and surrounding regions dramatically collapses. Urban centers are abandoned, replaced by semi-nomadic, pastoral communities, ushering in a period of significant demographic and cultural transformation across the region.

This era marks a time of cultural flourishing, shifting power dynamics, and significant social, ecological, and religious transformations across Egypt and the broader Near East.

The Egyptians of the Old Kingdom, like all peoples of this time, wear sandals.

Egyptian men wear belted loincloths wrapped around the waist; sometimes supplementing it with a linen cape or an animal hide draped over the shoulders.

Egyptian women wear linen tunics or skirts that extend from above or below the breast down to the ankle.

Shoulder straps often support the garments, although some tunics are short-sleeved.

The basic design of Egyptian clothing is minimal because of the warm temperatures, and simple: the usual fabric is linen, left in its natural off-white color, some of which is so finely woven that it is transparent. (The Egyptian practice of weaving gold thread into fabric is today a lost art.)

The elaboration and color of the costumes comes from the belts, collars, and headdresses that accessorize them.

Wide collars and other adornments are of gold and semiprecious stone or of glass.

Headdresses are ornamented with elaborate depictions of birds or serpents in gold and with colorful stones signifying rank.

Black wigs and cosmetics invariably complete the costume.

Both men and women use kohl, a paste made from soot, antimony, or galena, a form of lead ore, on the lashes, lids, and eyebrows and for protection against the sun, edging the underside of the eye with a green paste made from ground malachite and outlining the eyes with a mixture of ground ants' eggs.

Henna is used as a hair dye, and to dye the fingernails, the palms of the hands, and the soles of the feet.

Both sexes among the upper classes daily employ rouges, whitening powders, abrasives for cleaning the teeth, bath oils, and lipsticks.

The Pyramid Texts, a collection of ancient Egyptian religious texts from the time of the Old Kingdom, are the oldest known religious texts in the world.

Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts are carved on the walls and sarcophagi of the pyramids at Saqqara during the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties of the Old Kingdom.

The oldest of the texts date to between 2400-2300 BCE.

Egyptians begin placing small pieces of crystal on the forehead of the deceased before mummification.

By about 2350, Egyptians coat the bandaged corpse of mummies with a layer of plaster, colored light green; the facial features are represented in paint like a mask.

Scents and unguents, initially restricted to use in the rituals of mummification, now become an important product in the Egyptian export trade.

Raw essences are gathered from throughout the Mediterranean to be compounded in Egypt and sold as perfumes, creams, and lotions.

Almond, olive, and sesame oils, thyme and oregano, frankincense and myrrh, spikenard, saffron, rosewater, and chypre provide the basis for concoctions that will eventually find use throughout the world.