One Response to “The triumph and consequences of the Bantu expansion in Africa.?”

1. FOX News is the best says:

   January 7, 2010 at 12:36 am

   The Bantu expansion was a millennia-long series of migrations of speakers of the original proto-Bantu language group. This group is hypothesized to have originated from modern day Cameroon. A diffusion of language and knowledge spread among neighbouring populations, and a creation of new societal groups involving inter-marriage spread to new areas and communities. The expansion is taken to have begun after the introduction of agriculture, which would indicate a date of ca. 3000-2500 BC for the early expansion within West Africa, followed by first eastwards and southwards migrations beyond West Africa from about 1500 to 1000 BC.

   Bantu-speakers developed novel methods of agriculture and metalworking which allowed people to colonize new areas with widely varying ecologies in greater densities than hunting and foraging permitted. They pushed out the hunter-forager Khoisan, who formerly inhabited these areas. Meanwhile in Eastern and Southern Africa, Bantu-speakers adopted livestock husbandry from other peoples they encountered, and in turn passed it to hunter-foragers. Herding practices reached the far south several centuries before Bantu-speaking migrants did. Archaeological, linguistic, genetic and environmental evidence all support the conclusion that the Bantu expansion was one of the most significant human migrations and cultural transformations within the past few thousand years.