The Onset of Turbulent Times

Abstract

To venture is to enlarge one’s life. To venture into Ethiopia is to encounter a cornucopia of unmatched physical and cultural diversity. Poised high and commanding above the Nile plains to the west, the Red Sea littoral to the east and the Kenyan savannah to the south, Ethiopia’s castellated plateaus have been home, rallying ground and refuge to a two thousand year-long succession of ruling emperors (and empresses!). Ethiopia, today an increasingly powerful influence in Africa, has an ancient name worthy of the birthplace of Homo sapiens, expressive of its hospitality to the Queen of Sheba and possibly the Ark of the Covenant, and a refuge for early followers of the prophet Muhammad. Yet the kaleidoscopic human history of Ethiopia has been conditioned by a far older history, that of its landscape. For as the author of this book rightly remarks, “In Ethiopia geology lies behind almost every experience”. The spectacular landscape of Ethiopia has been moulded and sculpted by forces inside the earth which continue to act today: volcanoes simmer in the lowlands, earthquakes episodically open chasmic fissures in Afar, and the Rift Valley continues slowly but inexorably to widen in response to ongoing continental drift. At the same time, great rivers impressed on the highlands continue to roar and cut deep into their awesome canyons: the Abay (Blue Nile), Tekeze, Omo and Shebeli. This is nature alive on the grand scale! Frances Williams’ love affair with Ethiopia stems from close to half a century’s acquaintance with the land and its people. She has travelled it from east to west, north to south and peak to gulf. As a field scientist, photographer, linguistic artist, and convivial and sensitive companion, she now expresses in this gem of a book her knowledge of not only the geological tapestry of Ethiopia, but also its archaeology and ancient human cultures. With clarity and, in the best sense, simplicity, she communicates the drama of the moulding of Ethiopia’s geology, both for the novice and for those advanced but still learning! Between these covers, the traveller, on the move or at home, can savour and more fully appreciate the remarkable and complex choreography of Ethiopia’s geological evolution. The first section of the book, after introducing some essential geological concepts, describes its 600 million year-long story: from an initial, crunching continental collision; then successively through glaciation near the South Pole, gentle flooding by tropical seas, violent flooding by gigantic white-hot lava flows; and lastly and still ongoing, the uplifting of the high plateaus while at the same time they are being rifted apart. The second section devotes fifteen chapters to the various geological regions of Ethiopia, well illustrated with colourful maps, informative diagrams and photographs that display an artist’s eye. For the artistry of geology teaches us that ultimately “It is the beginning and the end that shadows the civilisations that pass upon the surface”.