The Swahili are unique Bantu inhabitants of the East African Coast mainly from Kenya, Tanzania, and Mozambique. They are mainly united by culture and under the mother tongue of Kiswahili, a Bantu language. There are Arab, Persian, and other migrants who reached the coast some believe as early as the 7th-8th c. CE, and mixed with the local people there, that are regarded as Swahili now. Because of this influence the Swahili language contains many loan words from Arabic and Persian. Archaeologist, Felix Chami thinks that Bantu settlements at the East African coast existed already at the beginning of the 1st millennium. From the 6th century onward they became more important as there was an increase in trade (mainly with Arab merchants), population growth, and further centralized urbanization. So the Swahili City-States developed.