ASMARA, Eritrea (AP) -- Archaeologists have unearthed one of sub-Saharan Africa's oldest settled agricultural communities on the outskirts of the Eritrean capital, the team's leader said Saturday.
Peter Schmidt, a professor at the University of Florida and the University of Asmara who has been conducting archaeological research in Africa for three decades, said the discovery significantly affects theories about the Horn of Africa."The dominant paradigm about the rise of complex societies in this region is blown away by these finds," said Schmidt.
Other known early African settlements were established much later, in the first millennium or early in the present millennium. In contrast, radiocarbon tests at the Asmara sites dated the settlement to between 400 and 700 B.C., suggesting that complex societies flourished in Africa hundreds of years before the birth of Christ.
Schmidt believes the newly unearthed Asmara settlement will demonstrate that the Horn of Africa agricultural communities developed without major outside influence.
Until now, it had been believed that early complex societies in the Horn of Africa highlands in what are now Ethiopia and Eritrea grew up around the Auxumite kingdom in Ethiopia's northern Tigray province and were significantly influenced by the Sabean culture from the biblical kingdom of Sheba across the Red Sea in present-day Yemen.
The team of archaeologists -- mainly Asmara university students -- unearthed at least a dozen sites ranging from 15 acres to 26 acres. Many smaller sites were found around Asmara.
The settlement's inhabitants ate cows and goats, engaged in agricultural activity and built stone houses with mud mortar.