An outline, era by era

Bantu expansion across central and southern Africa

Classical Antiquity · ~500 BCE – ~500 CE

The Bantu expansion was the gradual spread of speakers of the Bantu languages from a homeland in the borderlands of present-day Nigeria and Cameroon across central, eastern and southern Africa. It began around 3000 to 2500 BCE and continued for several thousand years. During the Classical Antiquity period, roughly 500 BCE to 500 CE, Bantu-speaking communities moved through the equatorial forest and out into the savannas of the south and east, reaching what is now South Africa by about the third to fifth centuries CE.

It was not a single migration or an invasion by one army. Most scholars see it as many movements of farming and fishing communities, who mixed with the hunter-gatherer and herding peoples they met. These communities spread village farming and pottery, and in many regions iron-working appears alongside them, though ironworking had different local histories and its link to Bantu speakers is debated. Today several hundred Bantu languages, such as Swahili, Zulu, Shona and Kikongo, are spoken by hundreds of millions of people. The expansion is reconstructed from linguistics, archaeology and, more recently, genetics, since almost no written records exist for it.

Things happened, and the rest is history

  1. Iron working appears in West and Central Africa

    Event

    What happened

    By about 500 BCE and possibly earlier, iron smelting is practised at sites in West and Central Africa, including Nok in Nigeria and sites in Cameroon, Gabon, Rwanda and Burundi. Dates come mainly from radiocarbon analysis of charcoal found with furnaces and slag. Iron tools and weapons become more common over the following centuries.

    The rest is history

    Whether iron was invented independently in Africa or came from elsewhere is still debated. Iron-using farmers later appear across many regions that Bantu speakers settled, and iron tools helped clear woodland for fields. Some very early dates from Rwanda and Burundi, around 700 to 500 BCE or earlier, are contested, but they suggest ironworking may already have been present in the Great Lakes region before the main eastward movements.

    Sources

    1. BookSchmidt, Peter R. Iron Technology in East Africa: Symbolism, Science, and Archaeology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997.
    2. BookPhillipson, David W. African Archaeology. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

  2. Farmers move into the equatorial forest

    Event

    What happened

    From the late third millennium BCE onward, speakers of early Bantu languages spread south and east from the Cameroon grasslands. Pottery-making villages appear along rivers and in forest clearings from Cameroon into Gabon and the Congo basin. A drier spell in the region around 2500 to 2000 BCE may have opened up the forest edge.

    The rest is history

    This western stream carried Bantu speech into Gabon, Congo and the Congo basin. Archaeologists trace it through related pottery styles, such as Imbonga and Pikunda-Munda. The role of climate change is debated, and the dating of settlement in much of the Congo basin is later and less certain than for the coast and forest margins. By the last centuries BCE and early centuries CE, Bantu-speaking farmers were established across much of Central Africa.

    Sources

    1. BookVansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
    2. BookBostoen, Koen, and Rebecca Grollemund. Bantu Languages: Past and Present. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2018.

  3. Settlement of the Great Lakes and the East African coast

    Event

    What happened

    Around 500 BCE to 400 CE, Bantu-speaking communities settle around the African Great Lakes, making pottery of the Urewe tradition and smelting iron. From there, groups spread to the east African coast and south into the savanna. By the early centuries CE they live in villages on the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast.

    The rest is history

    The Urewe sites, around Lake Victoria, are among the earliest dated iron-using farming settlements in eastern Africa. Later coastal communities grew into the Swahili trading towns. Linguists and archaeologists still debate how far the eastern and western streams of Bantu speakers were separate movements.

    Sources

    1. BookNurse, Derek, and Thomas Spear. The Swahili: Reconstructing the History and Language of an African Society, 800-1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985.
    2. BookPhillipson, David W. African Archaeology. 3rd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

  4. Farming communities reach southern Africa

    Event

    What happened

    In the first centuries CE, farming communities using iron and making pottery of the southern African Early Iron Age, such as the Happy Rest and Silver Leaves traditions, appear south of the Limpopo. By about 300 to 500 CE, villages with cattle, sheep, millet, sorghum and iron tools are found in the Limpopo valley and in what is now KwaZulu-Natal and the Transvaal.

    The rest is history

    These settlers met Khoisan hunter-gatherers and herders already in the region, and the groups mixed in varying ways. Later states such as Mapungubwe, around 1000 CE, grew from these farming societies. Genetic studies show Bantu-related ancestry spread widely across southern Africa, but admixture dates vary greatly between populations and do not point to a single regional event.

    Sources

    1. BookHuffman, Thomas N. Handbook to the Iron Age: The Archaeology of Pre-Colonial Farming Societies in Southern Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2007.
    2. BookMitchell, Peter. The Archaeology of Southern Africa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

  5. Linguists reconstruct Proto-Bantu

    Event

    What happened

    In the 1960s Malcolm Guthrie compares hundreds of Bantu languages and reconstructs a shared ancestral vocabulary, publishing Comparative Bantu in 1967 to 1971. Earlier, Joseph Greenberg's classifications of African languages, published in the 1950s and 1960s, placed Bantu within the wider Niger-Congo family and pointed to a homeland near the Nigeria-Cameroon borderland. Words for farming, pottery and iron appear in many Bantu languages.

    The rest is history

    Guthrie's work was later refined by computer methods. Together with archaeology and, more recently, genetics, such studies shaped the picture of the expansion's direction and timing. Studies in the 2010s, using Bayesian methods, support a start near Cameroon around 5,000 years ago. The reconstruction showed that the spread of Bantu languages was a historical process that could be studied.

    Sources

    1. BookGuthrie, Malcolm. Comparative Bantu: An Introduction to the Comparative Linguistics and Prehistory of the Bantu Languages. 4 vols. Farnborough: Gregg International, 1967-1971.
    2. ArticleGrollemund, Rebecca, et al. "Bantu Expansion Shows That Habitat Alters the Route and Pace of Human Dispersals." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 43 (2015): 13296-13301.

  6. The Bantu as one conquering people

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common older view says a single Bantu people swept out of West Africa as a conquering host, driving out or wiping out the hunter-gatherers in their path. The picture is often drawn as arrows on a map.

    The rest is history

    This idea took shape in early twentieth-century writing, which drew on colonial ideas of race and migration. Modern research shows no single people or army. Language spread through many communities over centuries, partly by migration and partly by neighbours adopting Bantu speech. Genetic work shows mixing with earlier populations in many regions, though relations varied from place to place. Bantu is a language grouping, not an ethnic group.

    Sources

    1. BookVansina, Jan. How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004.
    2. BookOliver, Roland. The African Experience. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991.

  7. Kintu and the origin of the Baganda

    Origin story

    The legend

    In Ganda tradition, Kintu, the first man, arrives in Buganda with a single cow. Gulu, king of heaven, sets him tests, and with the help of Gulu's daughter Nambi he passes them and brings his family to earth. Death comes into the world through Nambi's brother Walumbe.

    The rest is history

    The story was written down in the early twentieth century, notably by Apolo Kagwa, from oral tradition. Kintu may reflect early settlers or the first rulers of Buganda, but dating is uncertain. Archaeology shows Bantu-speaking farmers lived around Lake Victoria for over two thousand years before the kingdom emerged, perhaps in the fourteenth century CE.

    Sources

    1. BookKagwa, Apolo. The Kings of Buganda. Translated by M. S. M. Kiwanuka. Nairobi: East African Publishing House, 1971.
    2. BookWrigley, Christopher. Kingship and State: The Buganda Dynasty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

  8. Unkulunkulu and the reed

    Myth

    The legend

    In Zulu tradition, Unkulunkulu, the Great-Great-One, is the first ancestor. He breaks off from a bed of reeds, uNkalankala, and brings forth people, animals and the first customs, and teaches people how to live.

    The rest is history

    The story was recorded in the nineteenth century by missionary Henry Callaway from Zulu informants in Natal. Reed-origin motifs are widespread among Nguni and other southern Bantu-speaking peoples. The Zulu kingdom itself arose only in the early 1800s, so the myth long predates it. The tale cannot be dated, but reflects the beliefs of long-settled farming communities.

    Sources

    1. BookCallaway, Henry. The Religious System of the Amazulu. Springvale, Natal: J. A. Blair, 1868.
    2. BookBerglund, Axel-Ivar. Zulu Thought-Patterns and Symbolism. London: C. Hurst, 1976.

  9. Mwindo and the Nyanga epic

    Heroic tale

    The legend

    Mwindo, born walking and carrying a scepter, a bag and an axe, defies his father the chief. He travels through the underworld and sky, wins battles against a dragon, and brings back his people's prosperity.

    The rest is history

    The Mwindo epic is sung by Nyanga bards in the eastern Congo. Daniel Biebuyck recorded it in the 1950s. It is a living oral tradition and cannot be dated, but its heroes and settings belong to the forest-dwelling Bantu-speaking communities of central Africa. It shows how stories of the farming villages were kept in song rather than writing.

    Sources

    1. BookBiebuyck, Daniel, and Kahombo C. Mateene. The Mwindo Epic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

  10. Great Zimbabwe and the myth of foreign builders

    Popular belief

    The legend

    From the late nineteenth century, many European writers claim that the stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe cannot be the work of Africans. They say it was built by Phoenicians, Arabs or the Queen of Sheba's people, and treat it as a lost foreign city.

    The rest is history

    The claim came from colonial-era assumptions, not evidence. Gertrude Caton-Thompson's excavations in 1929 showed that the site was African in origin, and later work has confirmed this. Great Zimbabwe was built between about the eleventh and fifteenth centuries CE by ancestors of Shona- and related-speaking communities. Their societies grew out of the farming communities that had settled the region in earlier centuries, though the exact links are still studied.

    Sources

    1. BookCaton-Thompson, Gertrude. The Zimbabwe Culture: Ruins and Reactions. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1931.
    2. BookPikirayi, Innocent. The Zimbabwe Culture: Origins and Decline of Southern Zambezian States. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 2001.

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