Bantu expansion

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The Bantu expansion was a major series of prehistoric migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, which spread from an original nucleus around West-Central Africa across Central Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers absorbed, displaced, and possibly in some cases replaced pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered. There is linguistic evidence for this expansion – a great many of the languages which are spoken across sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, suggesting a recent common cultural origin of their original speakers. The linguistic core of the Bantu languages, which constitute a branch of the Atlantic-Congo language family, was located in north-western Cameroon to southern Nigeria. Genetic evidence also indicates that there was a large human migration from central Africa, with varying levels of admixture with local populations. The expansion is believed to have...

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