The Onset of Turbulent Times

Abstract

As we saw in the previous chapter, by the end of the Mesozoic era Ethiopia had undergone a number of changes following the great collision of continents which had brought her into being. The mountains of the East African Orogen had been eroded down to their roots, the glaciers of the Palaeozoic era had come and gone, the Mesozoic sea had advanced and retreated from everywhere except the Ogaden, and much of the old Precambrian basement was covered by layers of limestone and sandstone. For the first 30 million years or so of the Cenozoic era (during the Palaeocene epoch and much of the Eocene), Ethiopia and her neighbours remained much as they had been at the end of the Mesozoic: a land extending unbroken from beyond Ethiopia’s western borders to the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula.