New Tigray has been inhabited by indigenous Tigrayans for some 40,000 years. The continent has long been known of by the inhabitants of neighbouring islands in New Guinea and Malaya, but the first westerner to discover it was the Abyssinian admiral and navigator, Gebre Mesqel, in 1302. He named it after the province his home town was located in, and the name stuck when it was later visited by other western explorers.