Historical Cities & Sites
Tanzania has a long history of tribal habitation stretching back at least 10,000 years, to the early hunter-gatherers who lived around Olduvai Gorge. Later tribal migrations, occurring between 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, brought agricultural and pastoral knowledge to the area as competing tribal groups spread over the country in search of fertile soil and plentiful grazing for their herds. European missionaries and explorers mapped the interior of the country by following well-worn caravan routes, including Buron and Speke who in 1857 journeyed to find the source of the Nile. Traditional ways of life remained largely intact until the arrival of German colonizers in the late 19th century.
On the Swahili Coast, Indian Ocean trade began as early as 400 BC between Greece and Azania, as the area was commonly known. Around the 4th century AD, coastal towns and trading settlements attracted Bantu-speaking peoples from the African hinterland. They settled around mercantile areas and often facilitated trading with the Arabs and Persians, who bartered for slaves, gold, ivory, and spices, sailing north with the monsoon wind. Between the 13th and 15th centuries, the civilizations of Kilwa Kisimani and the Zanzibar Archipelago reached their peak, with a highly cosmopolitan civilization of Indian, Arab and African merchants trading in luxury goods that reached as far as China. The completion of Portuguese domination in 1525 meant that trade, for a short time, was lessened, but rival Omani Arab influences soon took control of the caravan routes and regained complete control of the islands, even going so far as to make Zanzibar the capital of Oman in the 1840's.
In the late 19th century, British influence in the Zanzibar Archipelago - in contrast to German influence on the Tanzanian mainland - slowly suppressed the slave trade and brought the area under the influence of the Empire. Local rebellions in German East Africa - most notably the Maji Maji rebellion from 1905 to 1907 - slowly weakened the colonizer's grip on the nation and at the end of the First World War, Germany ceded Tanganyika to English administration. Under the leadership of Julius Nyerere, popularly referred to as Mwalimu, or 'teacher,' Tanganyika achieved full independence in 1962. Meanwhile, a popular revolution in Zanzibar ousted the Om ani Arabs and established majority rule in 1963. A year later, the United Republic of Tanzania was formed, unifying the Tanganyika mainland with the semi-autonomous islands of the Zanzibar Archipelago.
Engaruka (N)
Mysterious ruins of complex irrigation systems span the area around Engaruka, the remnants of a highly developed but unknown civilisation that inhabited the area at least 500 years ago - and then vanished without a trace.
Kilwa Kisiwani (C)
The island of Kilwa Kisiwani and the nearby ruins of Songo Mnara are among the most important remnants of Swahili civilization on the East African coast. The area became the centre point of Swahili civilisation in the 13th century, when it controlled the gold trade with Sofala, a distant settlement in Mozambique. In the 14th century, Arab traveller Ibn Battuta described Kilwa as being exceptionally beautiful and well-developed. After a brief decline under the rule of the Portuguese, Ki1wa once again became a centre of Swahili trade in the 18th century, when slaves were shipped from its port to the islands of Comoros, Mauritius and Reunion.
Lindi (C)
The port town of Lindi, in south-western Tanzania, was the final stop for slave caravans from Lake Nyasa during the heyday of the Zanzibari sultans. In 1909, a team of German pa1aeonto1ogists unearthed the remains of several dinosaur bones in Tendunguru, including the species Brachiosaurus brancai, the largest discovered dinosaur in the world.
Mikindani (C)
Another central port in the Swahili Coast's network ofIndian Ocean trade, in the 15th century Mikindani's reach extended as far as the African hinterlands of the Congo and Zambia. The area became a centre of German colonial administration in the 1880's and was a chief exporter of sisal, coconuts, and slaves.