Cushitic language speaking people from northern Africa moved into the area that is now Kenya
begigining around 2000 BC . Arab traders began frequenting the Kenya Coast around the 1st. century AD. Kenya's proximity to the Araabian Peninsula invited colonisation,and Arab and persian settlements sprouted along the coast by the 8th century. During the firwt millineum AD, Nilotic and Bantu peoples moved into the region, and the laternow comprise 3/4 of Kenya's population.
In the 1890s the interior of Kenya was coompletely unknown to the Europeans, because of the desert between it and the caost, and itwas indeed barredto them by the fierce and warlike Masai-who are not negroes but nilotics like the peasants of Egypt.The masais are nomads , terrifying and decimating the Bantu peoples like the Kikuyu, and keep
ing the interior highlands unpopulated by their raids.The settled tribes who dared to cultivate the land near the forest areas keep watching so that they could flee when the Masais attack.
ing the interior highlands unpopulated by their raids.The settled tribes who dared to cultivate the land near the forest areas keep watching so that they could flee when the Masais attack. The coast, however, had been colonised by Arabs since the 10th century. They raided for slave.
