When the Indian Ocean Was the Center of the World

A History of Mankind (245)

To read previous newsletters in the History of Mankind, which is pretty long, you can click here.

As merchants based across the Roman empire took advantage of advancements in shipping and better knowledge of the Indian Ocean, the Kingdom of Aksum in modern Ethiopia, the biggest and most successful successor state of N’mt, became Africa’s most powerful independent polity.

Described in the “Periplus of the Erythraean Sea” as a dominant highland power, around the turn of the 1^st century it had controlled over two ports on the Red Sea, a vital source of foreign products including – as the author of the Periplus writes – Greek literature for King Zoskales¹.