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Western Bantu Expansion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2009

Jan Vansina
Jan Vansina
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

Linguistic studies are now advanced enough to allow us to sketch how Central Africa was settled by farmers who spoke western Bantu languages. From the second millenium B.C. onward, yarn-growers with neolithic tools spread in the rain-forests of the Cameroons. By adapting repeatedly to different environments they expanded over the whole forest area and also over the savannas and woodlands further south. These people were in search of optimal environments, quite willing to move to settle in favoured locales. Although they multiplied there, their expansion over such huge areas meant that their settlements remained very thinly scattered over Central Africa.

A thickening of settlement would only occur when new crops – the banana in the rain-forest, cereals in more open lands – allowed farmers to settle in most places. Iron-smelting was less important here than these new crops. These induced further population growth, densities rose and movements in search of the best unknown lands ceased. If the first settlement had only moderately inconvenienced the autochthones, the thickening of population led in time to their absorption, dependence on villagers, or emigration in search of ever-decreasing empty areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , April 1984 , pp. 129 - 145
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

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21 As on Fig. 2 for Ubangian, Gbaya and Central Sudanic enclaves in Bantu territory or Western Bantu enclaves on the Mbomu River and in Bahr el Ghazal. At a less remote level and between Bantu language clusters examples of Cameroun (the splitting of the group labelled A 80) are known. The location of Bobangi also betrays later movement.

22 The nomenclature adopted is new and may not become standard. Bastin et al., ‘Classification’, do not provide a nomenclature while Heine et al., Neuere Ergenbisse, does not quite fit. Labelling by letters or numbers is confusing because the standard referential classification (not genetic!) using letters and numbers varies in different classifications.

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