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I'm talking about a sort of rough African-cognate to the romanticized city-states in Ancient Greece. By "cognate" I'm not talking 'there is a Swahili/Somali clone of Socrates' (as amusing and intriguing as it might be), I mean more- could we see coastal East Africa as having such a significant and lasting impact on the polities around it, like Greece did? I realize many states historically have had a great deal of influence along the Horn (mythical Punt and Axum come to mind immediately), but I hope I'm not off in assuming you get what I mean by Greek-like influence... if it's not, I mean a sort of ageographical influence wherein some ancient political order of city-states generates a bunch of influencial thinkers whose works are heavily studied throughout history (up until today).

The influences of Ancient Greece penetrated borders beyond religion and ethnicity, as Islam and North Africa was just as affected by the thought of Aristotle and Plato as the West would be in years to come- so I'm not exclusively confining any sort of influence to just Africa. The reason I ask for this is like the Greeks, the Horn of Africa or the Swahili Coast (either really) are both very well situated along a very rich three-way trade route, albeit in this case an African-Persian-Indian one. Specifically along the Horn, the terrain in Dijibouti/Eriteria/Western Ethiopia isn't all that different from Greece (strictly in terms of the mountain ranges / coastal regions / interspersed fertile farmland, climatically and flora/fauna wise I'm not comparing them). In Somalia, the large deserts and hilly regions favor urbanization- particularly along the coast. The Swahili coast I included as well for similar reasons- although it's quite different geographically and climatically, it has quite a history of city-states and is still well-suited for trade links between the Persian Gulf and India.

So am I totally off in trying to transplant a sort of Greek-like socio-cultural phenomenon in the Horn or the Swahili Coast? If not, is there anyway to get a sort of Athens-Sparta situation (or more players, whatever) in East Africa that remains a big part of regional lore? Have African thinkers, philosophers, etc. emerge? Preferably this would be an early PoD, not necessarily at the same time as the Greeks but still in the Classical / Dark Ages-era in Europe. This might butterfly away Islam, I guess- I'm open to whatever but PoDs post-Islam would be impressive. Antiquity then might be misleading: I just mean similar to Greeks here not necessarily married to the same tech era.
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