Editing History of Eritrea (section)

===Gash Group & Wetenet empire===
{{main|Gash Group}}
Excavations in and near [[Agordat]] in central Eritrea yielded the remains of an ancient pre-Aksumite civilization known as the Gash Group,<ref name="Leclant402">{{cite book|last1=Leclant|first1=Jean|title=Sesto Congresso internazionale di egittologia: atti, Volume 2|date=1993|publisher=International Association of Egyptologists|page=402|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0B1yAAAAMAAJ|access-date=15 September 2014}}</ref> a territory overlapping chronologically and territorially with the ancient Wetenet empire.<ref>Cooper, Julien. "Egyptian Geography of the Southern Red Sea: The Land of Wetenet." Journal of Egyptian History 17.1 (2024): 1-45</ref> Ceramics were discovered that were related to those of the [[Nubian C-Group|C-Group]] (Temehu) pastoral culture, which inhabited the [[Nile Valley]] between 2500 and 1500 BC.<ref name="Cole">{{cite book|last1=Cole|first1=Sonia Mary|title=The Prehistory of East|publisher=Weidenfeld & Nicolson|date=1964|page=273}}</ref> Sherds akin to those of the [[Kerma]] culture, another community that flourished in the Nile Valley around the same period, were also found at other local archaeological sites in the Barka valley belonging to the Gash Group.<ref name="Leclant402"/> According to Peter Behrens (1981) and Marianne Bechaus-Gerst (2000), linguistic evidence indicates that the C-Group and Kerma peoples spoke [[Afro-Asiatic languages]] of the [[Berber languages|Berber]] and [[Cushitic languages|Cushitic]] branches, respectively.<ref name="Bechaus-Gerst">{{cite book|last1=Marianne Bechaus-Gerst|first1=Roger Blench, Kevin MacDonald (ed.)|title=The Origins and Development of African Livestock: Archaeology, Genetics, Linguistics and Ethnography – "Linguistic evidence for the prehistory of livestock in Sudan" (2000)|date=2014|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1135434168|page=453|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-t5QAwAAQBAJ|access-date=15 September 2014}}</ref><ref name="Lbant">{{cite book|last1=Behrens|first1=Peter|title=Libya Antiqua: Report and Papers of the Symposium Organized by Unesco in Paris, 16 to 18 January 1984 – "Language and migrations of the early Saharan cattle herders: the formation of the Berber branch"|date=1986|publisher=Unesco|isbn=9231023764|page=30|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=p_hwAAAAMAAJ|access-date=14 September 2014}}</ref>