A History of the Afar People

The Afar people are one of the nine officially recognised ethnic groups of Ethiopia, although there are numbers of Afar in the Ste of Eritrea and the Republic of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. There are an estimated 1.5 million Afar in these regions, and have played an important part in the territorial politics of the Horn of Africa.

'Afar' is the name the peoples in this article give themselves, rather than 'Danakil' or 'Adal' by which their traditional adversaries know them. Danakil is used specifically for the northern Afar while Adal (or Adel) is used for the southern Afar. Although a number of this ethnic group have migrated to the cities, the majority have remained true to their nomadic pastoralist roots.

One of the Afar’s claims to fame is due to an anthropological find in the Afar Depression. In 1974, anthropologists discovered a ‘new species’ of man at Hadar in the Awash Valley in Ethiopia. This new species was termed Australopithecus afarensis ("afar ape-man"), and is believed to have walked around Eastern Africa between 2.9 to 3.8 million years ago. The body was found to be female and named Lucy. Lucy was able to walk upright on a human-like body but still retained a small ape-like head and primitive teeth.

Despite their decentralized political structure, the Afar have remained cohesive in their culture. One important aspect of such unity has been the custom of cross-cousin marriage, with a son being required to marry a maternal uncle's daughter as his first wife (Harbeson, p.483). Both boys and girls are required to undergo circumcision.

The first non-African presence with the Afars was with the Islamic world, as early as the 10th century CE. Today, the religion of the Afars is Sunni Islam.

Today, the Afar have not forgotten the loss of grazing lands or the invasion of highland agriculturalists. At least partly for that reason they have responded with ambivalence to Ethiopian government pressures to participate in rural modernization programmes (Harbeson, p.479).

Bibliography:

Flood, Glynn (1975) Nomadism and Its Future: The ‘Afar, RAIN, Royal Anthropological Institute for Great Britain and Ireland.

Harbeson, John. W. (1978) Territorial and Development Politics in the Horn of Africa: The Afar of the Awash Valley, African affairs, Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal African Society.

Science News (1974) New Species of Man: Ancestors from ‘Afar’, Society for Science and the Public.