3000 BC to 51 BC

Before Aksum

Stone tools found in an ancient reef on the Red Sea shore at Abdur show that people lived there about 125,000 years ago. In the first millennium BC, farming villages of the Ona culture spread around today's Asmara, and the kingdom of D'mt, with close links across the sea to southern Arabia, rules parts of the highlands of Eritrea and neighbouring Tigray.