Ethiopian Highlands

The Ethiopian Highlands are the largest continuous stretch of high terrain in Africa, a rugged mass of mountains and dissected plateau covering much of Ethiopia and parts of Eritrea, with broad areas above 2,000 metres and summits reaching 4,550 metres. Cut deep by gorges and split by the Great Rift Valley, this cool, watered upland - sometimes called the Roof of Africa - is a striking exception to the popular image of the Horn as arid lowland, and it has shaped the history of the region for millennia.

The highlands are a great dome of volcanic basalt, built up by floods of lava some 30 million years ago and then domed upward and torn apart as the African continent began to rift. The Great Rift Valley slices through the plateau, dividing it into northwestern and southeastern blocks and studding it with lakes and volcanoes. Rivers carve dramatic canyons into the basalt, the Blue Nile gorge foremost among them, and the Blue Nile itself rises here at Lake Tana before plunging toward Sudan and Egypt, supplying the bulk of the Nile's waters.

The cool, fertile highlands have been a cradle of civilisation, home to the ancient kingdom of Aksum, to one of the oldest Christian traditions on Earth, and to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. They are also the birthplace of coffee, whose wild ancestor grows in their forests. Densely farmed and densely settled, the highlands hold most of Ethiopia's population and its capital, Addis Ababa, one of the highest capital cities in the world, perched near 2,400 metres.

• Ethiopia
  The ancient highland heart of the Horn of Africa located in
• Africa
  The world's second-largest continent and humanity's birthplace located on