The Bantu peoples (c.1200B.C.–c. 500 A.D.)

Source: "." Ancient Civilizations Reference Library. Ed. Judson Knight and Stacy A. McConnell. Detroit: UXL, 2000. Student Resources in Context. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

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Around the area of modern-day Nigeria, the Bantu (BAHN-too) peoples had their origins. In some regards, the Bantu do not qualify as a full-fledged civilization. They had no written language, nor did they build cities or even stay in one spot. Theirs was a history characterized by migration, as they moved out of their homeland in about 1200 B.C. to spread throughout .

In fact, the Bantu were not even a nation or a unified group of people in the way that the Egyptians, Kushites, or Aksumites were. They were simply a group of more or less related peoples, all sub-Saharan African (i.e., "black") in origin. However, as in many other instances, the important distinction is one of language, not race. It was language that gave the Bantu peoples their distinctive character, which has influenced the culture of southern Africa up to the present day. Though they spoke a variety of tongues, they all used the same word for "people": bantu.

Whether or not they qualified as a true civilization, the Bantu had a strongly developed culture based on family ties. Families became grouped into clans, and clans into tribes. Loyalty to the extended family— including one's ancestors—was the most important bond in Bantu society. As in China, the ancestors played an important role in Bantu religion, which also deified the forces of nature. Though they had a variety of gods, the Bantu also believed in a supreme being above all.

The world of the Bantu peoples was a tightly knit one, in which everyone had a place and everyone belonged. In modern-day southern Africa, where the Bantu peoples settled, this is symbolized by the carefully organized layout of family compounds, or enclosed areas with a number of buildings. In the compound, there are specific areas for each family member, as well as areas for the animals and for cooking and other facets of daily life.

No one, it seems, lacked a place in Bantu society. To further strengthen the bonds among people, the Bantu were organized by age and gender groups, for instance, older men often belonged to secret societies. This is not unlike the idea of the Masonic lodge in modern America. For the Bantu, however, the strength of the ties between people meant much more than such ties do to Americans. Whereas Americans are defined partly by their independence, interdependence was and is a defining characteristic of Bantu society.

Each society has a certain way that it transmits its values: that is, the things that are important to it. In modern America, values are transmitted primarily through the media: TV, movies, radio, magazines, and newspapers. The Bantu, lacking a written language, had a strong oral tradition. In other words, they transmitted their values, and indeed much of their cultural heritage, primarily through stories committed to memory by elders. Music was also an important part of the Bantu oral tradition. At musical performances, everyone present participated. Participation was easy, because every member of the tribe knew the songs—which concerned aspects of daily life as well as the stories of legendary heroes—from early childhood. Greek culture in Homer's time was likewise centered around oral traditions, stories memorized by wandering poets who sang them to listeners, often over a period of days.

Ironworking and agriculture

Another notable quality of the Bantu was their technological advancement in the area of ironworking, a remarkable achievement for a people who had no written language. The Olmec of Mesoamerica, by contrast, did have a written language, yet they never progressed beyond the Bronze Age—and then only in about A.D. 1200. Since the Sahara Desert provided a virtually impenetrable barrier between the Bantu peoples and the Egyptians, it is apparent that they developed their iron-smelting technology entirely on their own.

The same is true of Bantu agriculture: studies by archaeologists and linguists suggest that domestication of plants occurred more or less simultaneously—and independently—in several parts of Africa before the Sahara became a desert. By about 1600 B.C., the Bantu peoples had a set of staple crops that included rice, yams, and various grains.

As for iron-working, it flourished as early as 1000 B.C. among the Nok (NAWK) people, a Bantu group in what is now Nigeria. The Nok also excelled in textile-weaving, sculpture, and jewelry-making. Based on the large number of high-quality figurines (FIG-yoo-reenz), or small sculptures, found at Nok archaeological sites, they must have been wealthy. As with the ancient Saharan culture at its high point, only people well past the point of mere survival could afford to spend so much energy on creating beauty.

The spread of Bantu culture

In their migration southward and eastward into the savanna, which contains the continent's best land, the Bantu displaced a number of native peoples in southern Africa. These included the Pygmies, a group whose average height was under five feet, who were forced into the less desirable rain forest. There were also the (koy-SAHN) peoples, speakers of the so-called "click language"—one can hear it spoken in the 1980 movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, which humorously contrasts Khoisan and Western societies. The Bantu peoples drove the Khoisan-speaking tribes into the much less favorable Kalahari (kahl-ah-HAHR-ee) Desert.

It is doubtful that the Bantu waged war against the native peoples of these areas; they probably did not have to, since they were the more technologically sophisticated group. By about A.D. 500, the ethnic map of southern Africa was more or less complete. The Bantu controlled the best areas. They would continue to do so until the Europeans arrived more than 1,000 years later.

Africa: Human Geography

SOURCE: National Geographic Education http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/africa-human-geography/?ar_a=1

Cultural Geography

Historic Cultures The African continent has a unique place in human history. Widely believed to be the “cradle of humankind,” Africa is the only continent with fossil evidence of human beings (Homo sapiens) and their ancestors through each key stage of theirevolution. These include the Australopithecines, our earliest ancestors; Homo habilis, our tool-making ancestors; andHomo erectus, a more robust and advanced relative to Homo habilis that was able to walk upright.

These ancestors were the first to develop stone tools, to move out of trees and walk upright, and, most importantly, to explore and migrate. While fossils of Australopithecines andHomo habilis have only been found in Africa, examples ofHomo erectus have been found in the Far East, and their tools have been excavated throughout Asia and Europe. This evidence supports the idea that the species of Homo erectusthat originated in Africa was the first to successfully migrate and populate the rest of the world.

This human movement, or migration, plays a key role in the cultural landscape of Africa. Geographers are especially interested in migration as it relates to the way goods, services, social and cultural practices, and knowledge are spread throughout the world.

Two other migration patterns, the Bantu Migration and theAfrican slave trade, help define the cultural geography of the continent.

The Bantu Migration was a massive migration of people across Africa about 2,000 years ago. The Bantu Migration is the most important human migration to have occurred since the first human ancestors left Africa more than a million years ago. Lasting for 1,500 years, the Bantu Migration involved the movement of people whose language belonged to the Kongo-Niger language group. The common Kongo-Niger word for human being is bantu.

The Bantu Migration was a southeastern movement. Historians do not agree on why Bantu-speaking people moved away from their homes in ’s Niger Delta Basin. They first moved southeast, through the rain forests of . Eventually, they migrated to the savannas of the southeastern and southwestern parts of the continent, including what is today and .

The Bantu Migration had an enormous impact on Africa’seconomic, cultural, and political practices. Bantu migrants introduced many new skills into the communities they interacted with, including sophisticated farming and industry. These skills included growing crops and forging tools and weapons from metal.

These skills allowed Africans to cultivate new areas of land that had a wide variety of physical and climatic features. Many hunter-gatherer communities were assimilated, or adopted, into the more technologically advanced Bantu culture. In turn, Bantu people adopted skills from the communities they encountered, including animal husbandry, or raising animals for food.

This exchange of skills and ideas greatly advanced Africa’s cultural landscape, especially in the eastern, central, and southern regions of the continent. Today, most of the population living in these regions is descended from Bantu migrants or from mixed Bantu-indigenous origins.

BBC “The Story of Africa” : Early History http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/2chapter5.shtm l

People on the Move

Armed with iron smelting technology the Bantu of west and central Africa dispersed across the continent, changing its linguistic and cultural landscape. A number of theories have been put forward to explain this migration.

NEED TO MOVE "When people move they move for a reason. They move because the population has expanded. They move because the resources which support the population in the settlements have become more or less inadequate. They move because there are changes to the climate and they move for the sake of finding better areas in which to live." Professor Leonard Ngcongco, University of .

SLOW BUT STEADY One theory is that there were waves of migration, one moving through the east of Africa and another making its way through the centre of the continent. In Zambia, there is evidence of at least three routes of migration - from the great lakes, from the Congo forest and from Angola.

There is evidence that the Bantu ancestors of the modern Swahili peoples mastered sailing technology and possessed canoes and boats so they could make their way along the Zambezi river.

"Chief among the reasons for migration is environmental stress and population increase in West Africa, forcing people to move. It is important to realise that these people are not moving across the landscape like bugs bunny or the energiser bunny, but essentially they are moving slowly, gradually inhabiting areas that were good for farming and livestock raising." Dr Chapirukha Kusimba, Field Museum, Chicago.

CONQUERORS, COLONISERS OR ADVENTURERS? Most historians appear to believe that rather than arriving en masse like a conquering horde, the migrations were more sporadic with small pockets of people moving from one point to another.

It is not entirely clear how the Bantu reacted when they came upon existing communities but it is likely that there was considerable absorption, assimilation and displacement of other peoples during the migration period. The Bantu were armed with superior weapons and their iron implements allowed them to cultivate land and clear forests efficiently.

If they came as colonisers, then it is unlikely to be in the sense we understand the term today.

Historians believe there was social interaction and intermarrying and trade.

EVIDENCE The evidence for migration is based on three main areas of research. They are:

 Linguistic A comparative study of languages spoken in some parts of eastern, central and southern Africa show similarities with the mother tongues originally spoken in West Africa. There are some 450 known languages in the Bantu family from Gikuyu in the north to Setswana in the south.  Pottery There is evidence of similar pottery technology in eastern, southern and western Africa. Iron Age farmers were skilled pot makers and decorated their pots with grooves and patterns. Related groups of peoples used similar styles of decoration.  Iron There is little or no evidence of iron working in east and southern Africa before the arrival of the Bantu suggesting that new technology was spread by the migrants.

The Bantu proved enormously successful at adapting to their new environments and it has been argued by some historians that they brought not only new methods of survival but the development of the system of statehood that we still find today.

"In some areas they brought notions of government, controlling people, development of leadership, chieftaincy, state-craft and organising people for campaigns for battles and also maybe a kind of advanced religion." Professor Leonard Ngcongco.

But as with most areas of early African history there is a note of caution to be sounded when discussing the Bantu migration. There is even an argument for saying that it did not happen at all.

DID IT HAPPEN? "The question concerning whether or not the Bantu migration actually occurred will await further research. It's very easy to assume that we know so much. Actually we know so little because very little research has been done. So far there is a huge area in DR Congo, and where no field work has been done and these are areas that the Bantu peoples would have passed through." Dr Chapirukha Kusimba, Field Museum, Chicago.