HISTORY
Fossils found in East Africa suggest that protohumans roamed the area more than
20 million years ago. Recent finds near Kenya's Lake Turkana indicate that
hominids lived in the area 2.6 million years ago.
Cushitic-speaking
people from what is now Sudan and Ethiopia moved into the area that is now
Kenya beginning around 2000 BC. Arab traders began frequenting the Kenya coast
around the first century AD. Kenya's proximity to the Arabian Peninsula invited
colonization, and Arab and Persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the
eighth century. During the first millennium AD, Nilotic and Bantu peoples moved
into the region, and the latter now comprise two thirds of Kenya's population.
The Swahili language, a Bantu language with significant Arabic vocabulary,
developed as a trade language for the region.
