The Taita hills, Sagalla and Kasigau rise like islands out of the dry Tsavo plains between the coast and Kilimanjaro.
Their farmers speak Bantu languages of their own (Taita), and the hills were probably settled by the end of the first millennium (linguistic inference). The plains round them were the range of hunter-foragers and herders whose rock shelters, excavated by the Kusimbas, show exchange with the coast (glass beads, cowries, coast pottery) for ivory, skins and other goods in the first half of the second millennium: the interior end of the ivory trade that fed Mombasa and Malindi. The Kamba and Oromo-speaking Waata hunters of later times are later.
Who holds it
- Name
- Not named
- Title
- Hill-village elders; forager and herder bands on the plains
- Since
- Not pinned
- Confidence
- low
What it holds
- The Taita, Sagalla and Kasigau hills
- The Tsavo plains between the Tana bend and the Tanzanian border
How things stand that morning
Self-governing.
Customs
Hill-village elders; forager bands.
Where the sources disagree
Evidence: Rock-shelter archaeology in Tsavo (Kusimba and Kusimba) and linguistic inference.
On the map: A very large outline over thin country; the hills were the settled core.
Sources and studies
- C. M. Kusimba and S. B. Kusimba (eds.), East African Archaeology: Foragers, Potters, Smiths, and Traders (2003), on Tsavo and the coast's hinterland
- C. Ehret, An African Classical Age: Eastern and Southern Africa in World History, 1000 B.C. to A.D. 400 (1998) and History and the Testimony of Language (2011), on the language families of East Africa
Last revised 4 November 2026. Published 4 November 2026. Suggest a correction on the OMNIA Discord.