We saw in chapter 9 that until almost the end of our period the later Iron Age societies which were emerging on the great plateau of East Africa had practically no connection with the Indian Ocean coast. From Mogadishu in the north to Vilanculos bay and the Bazaruto archipelago in the south, the Zanzibar coast was a world of its own, based on the coastal plain and the offshore islands, oriented towards the sea, and exploiting only tenuously even the immediate hinterland as a source of ivory and slaves. The population of the coast from the Tana river southwards had been since early Iron Age times almost entirely Bantu-speaking, its many, still closely related, languages descending from the most recent and rapid phase of the general Bantu dispersion. The Pokomo of the lower Tana valley, the Giriama and the Digo north and south of Mombasa, the Bondei around the mouth of the Pangani river, the Zaramo between Dar es Salaam and the Rufiji, the Makonde and Makua between the Rovuma and Mozambique Island, were all, basically, peoples who lived by a combination of fishing, hunting and farming in the coastal plain and in the wooded hillsides leading up towards the central plateau, governing themselves in small clan and family units and interacting little with the townspeople who lived so near them.