Qohaito was a pre-Aksumite city that thrived during the Aksumite period. Located over 2,500 meters above sea level in the Debub region of Eritrea, on a high plateau at the very edge of the edge of the Great Rift Valley, As of 2011[update], Qohaito's ruins have yet to be excavated. The ancient port of Adulis lies directly to the east.
Rock art near the town appears to indicate habitation in the area since the fifth millennium BC, while the town is known to have survived to the sixth century AD. Mount Emba Soira, Eritrea's highest mountain, lies near the site, as does a small successor village.
It is often identified as the town Koloe of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a document dated to the end of the first century AD.[1] Qohaito thrived as a stop on the trade route between Adulis and Aksum, and Qohaito may have been a summer capital of the Aksumite empire. It is thought that crops were interspersed with buildings in the town, ruined buildings including the pre-Christian Temple of Mariam Wakino and the Sahira Dam (which may be pre-Aksumite).
The ruins at Qohaito were first located in 1868, but at the time erroneously identified as a "Greek depot".[2] However, decades of civil war and autocratic rule have prevented Eritrea from properly excavating this important site and learning more of its poorly detailed history. A related site outside of Senafe, Matara, lies about 15 kilometers to the south, and was excavated in the 1960s.