Snow in Ethiopia: A Review of the Evidence
1960; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 50; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/212283
ISSN1931-0846
Autores Tópico(s)African history and culture analysis
ResumoAMONG the most persistent contradictory statements about Africa are those which deal with the question of snow in Ethiopia. Does true snow fall in Ethiopia? Are there snow-capped mountains in that country? Does the Nile flood derive to any extent from the melting of the Ethiopian snows? The differences of opinion on these questions had their origins in the Mediterranean world in classical times in the controversy that raged about the causes of the seasonal flooding of the Nile in Egypt. Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.), for example, wrote of Egypt nurtured by the which implied that the Nile flood was due to the melting of snows upstream; Anaxagoras (ca. 500-428 B.C.) and Euripides (ca. 484-407 B.C.) also reported the notion that the Nile flood derived from the melting of snows upstream; and Ptolemy (ca. A.D. 15o) spoke of the Mountains of the Moon whose snows fed the lakes at the sources of the Nile. These contentions were denied by other classical writers, who asserted that there were no snows in Ethiopia' to contribute to the floods. Curiously, contradictory statements about snow in persisted after the Europeans established ties with the Abyssinian kingdom of highland northeast Africa. This is the part of ancient snow is most likely to occur, because of its high peaks. Even today statements about snow in Ethiopia differ strikingly. Some writers within the last decade have spoken of towering snow-clad peaks, many of them permanently snow covered, in northern Ethiopia, where the meltimg snows and monsoon rains combine to swell the flood of the Nile River. Other recent writers state, with equal assurance, that although hail falls in Ethiopia, snow is never encountered there. The purpose of this paper is first to consider the statements on the question of snow made by ancient and modern travelers to Ethiopia, particularly to the highest mountain areas of Semien in the northwest, and then, using these statements as evidence, to answer the three questions posed above. Although it may seem that Westerners could readily determine by questioning natives whether or not snow does fall in Ethiopia, there is no Amharic word for snow. It is true that there is a word of more general meaning, beredo, but people use it for all forms of solid precipitation. Beredo has even been extended by Ethiopians abroad to ice cubes. Thus, when local Ethiopians say that beredo occurs, there is no certainty whether they mean snow, hail, or some other form of solid precipitation. Nor can the question of snow in Ethiopia be resolved simply by consulting Ethiopians who have lived abroad and have experienced snow there; for most of them come from middle elevations of
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