Tanzania: Tanzania People Profile 2013

The history of human habitation in Tanzania goes back almost two million years, and the fossils found at Olduvai Gorge by Louis and Mary Leakey presently stand part the majority significant artifacts of the origins of our species. Artifacts of later Paleolithic cultures have as well been found in Tanzania. There is evidence that communities along the Tanzanian coast were engaging in overseas trade by the beginning of the initial millennium AD.

By 900 AD those communities had attracted immigrants from India inclunding from southwest Asia, and direct trade extended as far as China. At the same time as the Portuguese arrived at the end of the 15th century, they found a major trade center at Kilwa Kisiwani, which they promptly subjugated and again sacked.

The Portuguese were expelled from the region in 1698, next Kilwa enlisted the help of Omani Arabs. The Omani dynasty of the Bu Said restored the region's Yarubi leaders in 1741, and they proceeded to further develop trade. It was during this time that Zanzibar gained its legendary status as a center for the ivory and slave trade, becoming in 1841 the capital city of the sultan of Oman.

In Tanzania's interior, at about the same time, the cattle-grazing Maasai migrated south from Kenya into central Tanzania. Any minute at this time afterward the great age of European exploration of the African continent began, and with it came colonial domination. Tanzania fell under German control in 1886, but was handed over to Britain next WWI. Present day Tanzania is the result of a merger between the mainland (before Tanganyika) and Zanzibar in 1964, next both had gained independence. Tanzania has like a lot of African nations experienced considerable strife since independence, and its economy is extremely weak. However, political stability does appear to have been established in recent years.