The Mahdi Times The Mahdi Times July 2014 | Page 47

Ethiopians had knowledge of wheat and
barley long before 1000 B.C. Soft wheat
cultivation was concentrated around the
centres of Axum, Harare and Addis
Ababa. “The farmers of Arwe used the
plough and the hoe or digging stick to
prepare their fields for cultivation.”
From here the plough was taken to
South Arabia. (Winters, 2006).
Moreover, the expertise developed by
the Southern Arabian monumental
stone builders could have only been
worked out in Ethiopia because in
Ethiopia was the nearest and the most
abundant stone quarries of the region,
whereas Arabia being mostly desert and
coast had little source of natural stones.
It is logical to assume that stone
building traditions must have developed
in a region that had abundant stones
even though it may later have dispersed
to outlying areas.
The African Ethiopian-Axumites, began
ruling parts of Himyar (e.g. the
Tehama/Tihama district) way before
1000 B.C. although grudge-filled
western historians with an agenda
against Black Africans would only
concede A.D. 378 as the beginning of the
over lordship. Yet there is repletion of
evidence suggesting Ethiopia’s historical
overweening influence over Arabia.
According to Fattovich: during the late
2nd millennium BCE, a cultural complex
arose in the Tihama region of Yemen
and northern Ethiopia and Eritrea
(specifically Tigray Region, central
Eritrea, and coastal areas like Adulis).
Based on the profusion of
archaeological, cultural and textual

evidence an African origin has been
posited. (Fattovich, Rodolfo 1997)
By 525, when the Black Ethiopian
Axumites regained dominance in Arabia,
overthrew the upstart Himyarite power,
and destroyed its fledging ambition,
Ethiopia-Axum was entering into its
waning period of political dominance in
the region.
In 568 the Black Ethiopian-Axumites
were lost their political dominance in
Arabia. Political power became more
localized and the native Yemenites
gradually replaced the Ethiopian
aristocracy. Eventually this nascent
kingdom was again conquered by the
Persians, and it became a vassal
kingdom of the Persian Empire until the
year 634, when it was absorbed,
together with all the other Arabian
States, by the Mohammedan conquest.