The country was an important centre for commerce with the rest of the ancient world, [ 1 ] [ 2 ] and according to most scholars, [ 3 ] [ 4 ] it was the seat of ancient Land of Punt that thrived during bronze age. Additionally, the port towns of Barawe and Merca played significant roles in this commercial network which were part of the Azania city states during classic era [ citation needed ].
Preceding these medieval states were ancient civilisations such as the legendary Macrobian Kingdom , noted by Herodotus for its wealth and wisdom, and the Barbario civilisation , an early pre-Islamic civilisation that helped lay the foundations for the region's prosperous trade routes.
In the late 19th century, through a succession of treaties with these kingdoms, the Italian colonial empire gained control of parts of the coast, and established the colony of Italian Somaliland.
Italy acquired full control of the northeastern, central and southern parts of the territory after successfully waging a Campaign of the Sultanates against the ruling Majeerteen Sultanate and the Sultanate of Hobyo. In , the Trust Territory of Somaliland under Italian administration was established as a United Nations Trusteeship , with a promise of independence after 10 years. British Somaliland, nominally independent as the State of Somaliland now Somaliland for four days, merged as planned with the trust territory in In , the Somali Civil War divided the entire country.
Despite the establishment of the Interim , Transitional , and Federal governments , Somalia remains divided with Somaliland gaining de facto independence. Somalia has been inhabited since at least the Paleolithic , when the Doian and Hargeisan cultures flourished. According to an autosomal DNA research in on ancient and modern populations, the Afroasiatic languages likely spread across Africa and the Near East by an ancestral population s carrying a newly identified "non-African" Western Eurasian genetic component, which the researchers dub the "Ethio-Somali" component.
