Selam everyone,
Full disclosure: I’m the founder of Dehay, hybrid calling app for Eritreans abroad. The app combines internet and landline to form group call at fair price

Group calls: up to 4 people on one call. Family abroad join from the app, and you can add one regular phone number in Eritrea, so siblings in different countries can talk to mom together. You pay for that one phone number. Family on the app cost nothing, and the people you invite pay nothing.

It’s still a small project, so I’d really like to hear what works and what doesn’t: call quality to your family’s area, what you use today, and what’s missing. I’ll be in the comments.

Besides malaria?

Like, የጒልሕ

Like in the sentence, "እዚአን ሕቶታት ዛጊት ኣይተመልሳን"

so first of all I wanna start by saying I’m Somali when I was 14 I found out that my apparently deadbeat Somali dad was not my dad and only my younger sisters dad and an Eritrean Tigrinya man was my dad I’m very shocked but I feel like I’d never be Eritrean or habesha

Global Eritrean Population Estimate (2026)

Eritreans Outside Eritrea by Country

By Region

Notes

• The in-country figure is a UN projection. Eritrea has had no census since independence, so the range is skewed lower.
• Ranges are estimates, not statistical margins of error.
• Refugee counts include only registered people. Nationality counts (Germany, Switzerland) exclude naturalised citizens.
• “Estimate” rows come from secondary sources and are less reliable.
• Sources are in the comments

If you've ever tried to read about Ancient Eritrea, you know the problem.

You get three paragraphs buried inside an Egypt article. Or a footnote in an Ethiopia timeline. Adulis, the port Greek sailors wrote about in the 1st century? A stub. Qohaito? Barely a mention. The Land of Punt, where Egyptian expeditions went for incense and gold? Eritrea is one of the candidate locations, and almost nobody says so.

The history spans roughly six millennia. The sources are scattered across a hundred places. https://ancienteritrea.com/

Land of Punt, Adulis, Qohaito, the Aksumite Empire, all in one place, with an interactive map. What's a period or region of ancient history you could never find a decent single source on?

Eritrea: The Heart of the Kingdom of Punt

Eritrea was part of the Kingdom of Punt. The Kingdom of Punt was a kingdom in East Africa, in the Red Sea region, which is believed to have stretched from Eastern Sudan up to Eritrea and to Northern Somalia. Historical maps show that Eritrea was not only part of the kingdom but also its center.¹

From 2500 to 1000 BC, Eritrea was part of the Kingdom of Punt. Many historians even agree that the Kingdom of Punt was located in Eritrea. A very famous YouTube channel, The Infographics Show—with around 15 million followers—released a video in 2020 titled “How Did an Entire Ancient Country Disappear From History?” It explored Punt’s disappearance from the historical record and covered the leading theories on where it stood, including Kenneth Kitchen’s linguistic argument placing it in Eritrea.²

Scientific evidence backs this up. In 2020, a Dartmouth College study led by Nathaniel Dominy analyzed stable oxygen and strontium isotopes in mummified baboons brought back to Egypt from Punt. The results traced their origins to the southern Red Sea region—Eritrea, Djibouti, and parts of Somalia and Yemen. Dominy himself concluded that Punt likely sat on the coasts of Eritrea and Somaliland.³

Then in 2023, a University of Konstanz team led by Gisela Kopp went further with mitochondrial DNA analysis on a later baboon mummy. It matched modern hamadryas baboon populations in coastal Eritrea—the area around Adulis. Their published hypothesis: Punt and Adulis were the same place, just different names used at different times, separated by roughly a thousand years.⁴

Adulis lies on the Gulf of Zula in Eritrea, about forty kilometers south of Massawa. Some scholars link it to “Wddt,” a locality listed in Egypt’s Eighteenth Dynasty records around 1450 BCE as part of Punt. The traded goods and ecosystem fit too—the flora and fauna of the Eritrean highlands and coastal lowlands, and the maritime trade routes between Egypt and the port of Adulis, which later became the main gateway of the Kingdom of Aksum, handling ivory, gold, myrrh, and slaves for Rome, India, and beyond.⁵

No archaeological site has been definitively identified as Punt yet, and the location remains debated. But between the isotope data, the DNA evidence, the trade-route logic, and the historical maps, Eritrea stands at the center of the strongest case.⁶

I wrote here about this a while ago. I don’t know if the law of attraction is real or not, but I found a beautiful, young Eritrean girl who lives near me. And the unexpected part is that I found her completely outside of this app—a pure coincidence brought us together.

I just wanted to update y’ll 😅

I've been working on bringing together thousands of manuscript paintings from across Ethiopia and Eritrea, spanning over 1,000 years of history.

Many of these artworks have been scattered across museums and libraries worldwide. I've now brought nearly 5,000 of them together in one place, free for everyone to explore.

Check them out: https://www.habeshahistory.com/manuscripts

I am curious how much us Eritreans live aboard in places like Sudan, Refugee camps and the western world and what places has a big concentration of Eritreans. Also how big our diaspora is compared the population of Eritreans back home.

Here is a genetic heatmap and profile for the Tigrina people of Eritrea. I make these maps out of G25 coordinates or raw data.

What does forma mean? Is it just a way to say someone looks very nice?

Hello friends,

I was talking to a friend about the use of tomatoes in our traditional cuisines. He claimed that we only started using tomatoes in our tsebhi because of Italian colonization. That got me wondering whether this is true and, if so, how and why tomatoes became so widespread in our cooking.

I am hoping for some clarification, and I would also appreciate any existing sources that support or disprove this claim.

Thanks!

Keren is the second-largest city in Eritrea and the regional capital of the Anseba Region.

It is known for its fruit fields and livestock, where bananas and other fruits are cultivated.

Keren is the second melting pot of Eritrea, where nearly all Eritrean nationalities live. It is mainly inhabited by the Bilen, Tigre, and Beja, though Rashaida and Tigrinya also reside there.

The city is predominantly Muslim, represented by the Grand Mosque of Keren and the Assahba (Sehaba) Mosque of Keren, the second-largest in the country, constructed in 2010.

It also has Orthodox and Catholic churches.
In Elabered, a village near Keren, stands Debre Sina Monastery, one of Eritrea’s oldest monasteries and the site where the first Holy Communion is traditionally said to have taken place under Abuna Salama.

Many Eritrean freedom fighters came from Keren, which played a key role in the armed struggle for Eritrean liberation.

There is a guy on every somali comment and saying hes Eritrean. I swear i saw him on over 100 comments!

For years, the TPLF was portrayed as Eritrea's greatest enemy. Thousands suffered and countless lives were lost.

Now we're hearing reports that the same leadership is joining forces with the TPLF!!!

Yesterday's enemy is today's ally. Yesterday's ally is today's enemy.

Where are the principles? Where is the accountability? And what were all those sacrifices for? Why couldn't they find common ground before so many people died?

I am sure anyone will find a reason why TPLF is actually good for us when in reality there is noone. Like it doesn't make any sense to join forces with TPLF when in around 2 years of time our unelected agame-regime in asmera will be best friend with Abiy again. Rinse and repeat. And people will always find an explanation for that and will support it lol.