The town inhabitants belong to various mainly Afro-Asiatic-speaking ethnic groups (Afar and Somali-Issa), On Asa Ragid site, the material found consists of shell middens from oysters, basalt rhyolite peaks whose dating for older, is at 5000–5800 years BC Also circular stone structures and a microlithic industry red jasper and obsidian and pottery shards more or less decorated beads and ostrich egg shell.

As for the site of Asa Koma (Red Hill) near to As Eyla, he revealed a life towards the end of the third millennium with a population of fishermen who hunted jackal, raised cattle and made pottery decorated with prints and chiseled features of good quality and which shapes and colors are similar to ceramics found in Sudan.

In one of these mounds in Balho, we found a fragment of cranium from the early first millennium BC The diversity of these burials attests different periods to which they relate.

The village was originally built on the plain of Gobaad near a wadi, with houses constructed of mud and stone, before the French arrived.

From 1862 until 1894, the land to the north of the Gulf of Tadjoura was called Obock and was ruled by Somali and Afar Sultans, local authorities with whom France signed various treaties between 1883 and 1887 to first gain a foothold in the region.