Origins and expansion The predominant paternal haplogroup among the Bantu is
E1b1a1-M2. The ancestors of the Bantu originally came from
Northeast Africa and moved around the
Green Sahara. The gradual movement of the Proto Bantu to West/Central
Africa (the area of modern-day
Cameroon) may have been associated with the expansion of
Sahel agriculture in the African Neolithic period, following the
desiccation of the Sahara in c. 3500 BCE. Bantu languages derive from the Proto-Bantu reconstructed language, estimated to have been spoken about 4,000 to 3,000 years ago in the area of modern-day Cameroon. They were supposedly spread across Central,
East and
Southern Africa in the so-called
Bantu expansion, comparatively rapid dissemination taking roughly two millennia and dozens of human generations during the 1st millennium BCE and the 1st millennium CE.
Bantu expansion Scientists from the Institut Pasteur and the CNRS, together with a broad international consortium, retraced the migratory routes of the Bantu populations, which were previously a source of debate. The scientists used data from a vast genomic analysis of more than 2,000 samples taken from individuals in 57 populations throughout
Sub-Saharan Africa to trace the Bantu expansion. During a wave of expansion that began 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Bantu-speaking populations – some 310 million people as of 2023 – gradually left their original homeland West-Central Africa and travelled to the eastern and southern regions of the African continent. During the Bantu expansion, Bantu-speaking peoples absorbed or displaced many earlier inhabitants, with only a few modern peoples such as
Pygmy groups in Central Africa, the
Hadza people in northern Tanzania, and various
Khoisan populations across southern Africa remaining in existence into the era of European contact. Archaeological evidence attests to their presence in areas subsequently occupied by Bantu speakers. Researchers have demonstrated that the Khoisan of the Kalahari are remnants of a huge ancestral population that may have been the most populous group on the planet prior to the Bantu expansion. Before the Bantu expansion had been definitively traced starting from their origins in the region between Cameroon and Nigeria, two main scenarios of the Bantu expansion were hypothesized: an early expansion to Central Africa and a single origin of the dispersal radiating from there, or an early separation into an eastward and a southward wave of dispersal, with one wave moving across the
Congo Basin toward East Africa, and another moving south along the African coast and the
Congo River system toward Angola. Genetic analysis shows a significant clustered variation of genetic traits among Bantu language speakers by region, suggesting admixture from prior local populations. Bantu speakers of South Africa (Xhosa, Venda) showed substantial levels of the SAK and Western African Bantu AACs and low levels of the East African Bantu AAC (the latter is also present in Bantu speakers from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda). The results indicate distinct East African Bantu migration into southern Africa and are consistent with linguistic and archeological evidence of East African Bantu migration from an area west of Lake Victoria and the incorporation of Khoekhoe ancestry into several of the Southeast Bantu populations ~1500 to 1000 years ago. Bantu-speaking migrants would have also interacted with some
Afro-Asiatic outlier groups in the southeast (mainly
Cushitic), as well as
Nilotic and
Central Sudanic speaking groups. According to the early-split scenario as hypothesized in the 1990s, the southward dispersal had reached the
Congo rainforest by about 1500 BCE and the southern savannas by 500 BC, while the eastward dispersal reached the
Great Lakes by 1000 BCE, expanding further from there as the rich environment supported dense populations. Possible movements by small groups to the southeast from the Great Lakes region could have been more rapid, with initial settlements widely dispersed near the coast and near rivers, because of comparatively harsh farming conditions in areas farther from water. Recent archeological and linguistic evidence about population movements suggests that pioneering groups had reached parts of modern
KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa sometime prior to the 3rd century CE along the coast and the modern
Northern Cape by 500 CE. Cattle terminology in use amongst the relatively few modern Bantu
pastoralist groups suggests that the acquisition of cattle may have been from
Central Sudanic,
Kuliak and
Cushitic-speaking neighbors. Linguistic evidence also indicates that the customs of milking cattle were also directly modeled from Cushitic cultures in the area. Cattle terminology in southern African Bantu languages differs from that found among more northerly Bantu-speaking peoples. One recent suggestion is that Cushitic speakers had moved south earlier and interacted with the most northerly of Khoisan speakers who acquired cattle from them and that the earliest arriving Bantu speakers, in turn, got their initial cattle from Cushitic-influenced Khwe-speaking people. Under this hypothesis, larger later Bantu-speaking immigration subsequently displaced or assimilated that southernmost extension of the range of Cushitic speakers. Based on dental evidence, Irish (2016) concluded:
Proto-Bantu peoples may have originated in the western region of the
Sahara, amid the
Kiffian period at
Gobero, and may have migrated southward, from the Sahara into various parts of
West Africa (e.g.,
Benin,
Cameroon,
Ghana,
Nigeria,
Togo), as a result of
desertification of the Green Sahara in 7000 BCE. From Nigeria and Cameroon,
agricultural Proto-Bantu peoples began to
migrate, and amid migration, diverged into East Bantu peoples (e.g.,
Democratic Republic of Congo) and West Bantu peoples (e.g., Congo,
Gabon) between 2500 BCE and 1200 BCE. Comparable sites in Southern Africa include
Bumbusi in Zimbabwe and
Manyikeni in Mozambique. From the 12th century onward, the processes of state formation amongst Bantu peoples increased in frequency. This was the result of several factors such as a denser population (which led to more specialized divisions of labor, including military power while making emigration more difficult); technological developments in economic activity; and new techniques in the political-spiritual ritualisation of royalty as the source of national strength and health. Examples of such Bantu states include: the
Kingdom of Kongo,
Anziku Kingdom,
Kingdom of Ndongo, the
Kingdom of Matamba, the
Kuba Kingdom, the
Lunda Empire, the
Luba Empire,
Barotse Empire,
Kazembe Kingdom,
Mbunda Kingdom,
Yeke Kingdom,
Kasanje Kingdom,
Empire of Kitara,
Butooro,
Bunyoro,
Buganda,
Busoga,
Rwanda,
Burundi,
Ankole, the
Kingdom of Mpororo, the
Kingdom of Igara, the
Kingdom of Kooki, the
Kingdom of Karagwe,
Swahili city states, the
Mutapa Empire, the
Zulu Kingdom, the
Ndebele Kingdom,
Mthethwa Empire,
Tswana city states,
Mapungubwe,
Kingdom of Eswatini, the
Kingdom of Butua,
Maravi,
Danamombe,
Khami,
Naletale,
Kingdom of Zimbabwe and the
Rozwi Empire. On the coastal section of East Africa, a mixed Bantu community developed through contact with Muslim Arab and
Persian traders,
Zanzibar being an important part of the
Indian Ocean slave trade. The
Swahili culture that emerged from these exchanges evinces many Arab and Islamic influences not seen in traditional Bantu culture, as do the many
Afro-Arab members of the Bantu
Swahili people. With its original speech community centered on the coastal parts of Zanzibar, Kenya, and Tanzania – a seaboard referred to as the
Swahili Coast – the Bantu Swahili language contains many
Arabic loanwords as a result of these interactions. The Bantu migrations, and centuries later the Indian Ocean slave trade, brought Bantu influence to
Madagascar, the
Malagasy people showing Bantu admixture, and their
Malagasy language Bantu loans. Toward the 18th and 19th centuries, the flow of
Zanj slaves from Southeast Africa increased with the rise of the
Sultanate of Zanzibar. With the arrival of European colonialists, the Zanzibar Sultanate came into direct trade conflict and competition with Portuguese and other Europeans along the Swahili Coast, leading eventually to the fall of the Sultanate and the end of slave trading on the Swahili Coast in the mid-20th century. ==List of Bantu groups by country==