Either way, unlike its vastly more unfortunate neighbors Ethiopia stayed cohesive throughout the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.

Largely for this reason it is remarkably well-off for an African nation, even though a combination of famine and civil war killed over a million people in the 1980s and its modern democratic government has been accused of vote-rigging.  It has the most powerful economy in East and Central Africa and is considered a rapidly-rising local powerhouse.  It has more World Heritage Sites than anywhere else in Africa.  Its name was mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, its Aksum region was home to the first major empire to convert to Christianity (which baffled Europeans when they arrived later and discovered churches), and it might just have been the birthplace of the entire human species.  Take that, Egypt.